'If You're Reading This,' by contrast, is uncharacteristically and unceasingly paranoid, aggressive, and single-minded.

I mean, this is a man who actually said, 'Got so many chains, I feel like chain-ing Tatum.'ĭrake can deliver bars, to be sure, but he's at his best when he blends those bars with moody R&B, decadent production, and melodic vocals - when he blends his narcissism with his jealousy, longing, melancholy, and regret, confronting many moods in a way that feels universal. It sees him at his most forceful and certainly his most boastful, rapping over minimal beats and industrial sounds for 17 straight songs.īut Drake didn't become Drake because he's a great rapper. A wide variety of musical styles, great features like Kanye West, Quavo, and Young Thug, and catchy tropical beats (despite however forced and ingenuine they may sound) will surely mark this album as one of Drake’s best.'If You're Reading This It's Too Late' was released on February 13, 2015.įor those who worship Drake as a rapper, rather than a pop star, 'If You're Reading This It's Too Late' is the holy grail. Not only because when I’m listening to Drake I don’t really care about his genuineness, but because this album has so much more to offer. That would be my one and only criticism, but it’s easy to ignore. So what’s with this tropical vibe he’s been experimenting with? I do think in a time like today, musical change is praiseworthy, but here it seems a little little forced, shown by the fact that Drake has even started speaking in a Jamaican accent. Drake doesn’t even come from Jamaica or Barbados, he’s from Toronto. Songs like “Passionfruit”, “Blem”, and “Madiba Riddim” are the perfect encores to what Drake gave us with “One Dance”.Īll of the sonic positives that come from this change-up bring about some cultural questions. Personally, the song kept me wanting more. Instead of trap beats, the song used piano, bongos, and claves (a Caribbean percussion instrument) which gave a new sound to a lot of his fans. “One Dance” gave us a side of Drake that we had never seen: Caribbean-influenced Drake. Sonically, these songs are what you’d expect: sad and mellow, although, there is one anomaly (compared to the rest of the album, not Drake’s whole career). We can find the “Marvin’s Room” type of Drake in songs such as “Teenage Fever”, “Since Way Back”, and “4422”. These all are reminiscent of songs that would appear in his album “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late”. The classic rap can be found in songs like “No Long Talk”, “KMT”, “ Gyalchester”, and “Free Smoke”. This is a compliment to Drake’s versatility, as in the album you can find relentlessly hard raps, sad R&B, and even Caribbean/Latin-influenced beats. Drake himself actually considers it more of a “playlist” than an album. “More Life” is one of the most unique rap albums that I have heard in the last few years. But for those who aren’t, who want something unique, there is hope. I myself happen to be a fan of this sub-genre.

Rappers by the likes of Lil Yachty, Lil Uzi Vert, and Kodak Black have gained extreme popularity by pairing catchy beats with incoherent “mumbling”. “More Life” is Drake’s newest project, a 22 song album with a wide variety of sound.Ģ017 has seen the birth of a type of music that some derogatorily call “mumble rap”.

Drake more life album songs