The next two tracks, “U With Me?” and “Feel No Ways” both tell more stories of Drake’s insecurities and lady troubles, with him dropping such great lines on “U With Me?” like “Yeah, how’s that for real?/You toyin’ with it like Happy Meal.” The beat on Feel No Ways, produced by Jordan Ullman of Majid Jordan, happens to be one of the most fun instrumentals on the album with a choppy sample of Malcolm McLaren’s song World Famous, and will certainly be featured on many summer playlists this year. The title for this song comes from Drake saying “Six upside down, it’s a nine now.” Six referring to the nickname for Toronto, and nine referring to… well I don’t know. While the beat is luscious, the lyrics don’t hold up their end of the song, with Drake rhyming “no good” with “no good” with “no good” with “I should.” Sigh. The next track, “9,” produced by frequent Drake producers, Boi-1da and Noah “40” Shebib, features many of the same problems as the previous song. This begins a barrage of bad similes thrown at the listener in hopes they confuse it for deep meaning or lyrical craftsmanship. On his next verse, he says “Always saw you for what you could’ve been/Ever since you met me/Like when Chrysler made that one car that looked just like the Bentley,” referring to the Chrysler 300. Drake begins the album singing “All of my “let’s just be friends” are friends I don’t have anymore,” a line which will forever be etched on teenage girls’ Twitter pages and Instagram posts for now until forever. On “Keep the Family Close,” it works well enough, until the interesting lyrics begin. Right off the bat, we get Drake singing, a feature in his songs I have yet to warm up to. The album starts with “Keep the Family Close,” a track that features incredible orchestration, the likes of which I haven’t seen on a Drake song since Over back on his debut album, Thank Me Later. So, does it live up to the expectations of his previous work? No, not really… Do I consider Views a bad album? No, not really. A scarier Drake.įinally, after three years since an official album release, Drake released Views, an hour-and-22-minute epic designed to be the rapper’s victory lap celebrating his home town of Toronto. Instead we got Drake rapping cringe-inducing lines such as “got so many chains, they call me Chaining Tatum.” This does not fit the same description of a Drake who will call you an Uber because he has somewhere to be. Luckily Pop Style was still there to theoretically wash Drake of his sins. I felt like he was losing all of the momentum he had gained in favor of lazy beats and even lazier singing. ” One Dance follows a disturbing trend of Drake releasing songs with a dancehall, or Caribbean sound.
Then, on April 5, Drake dropped two new tracks in “ One Dance ” and “ Pop Style. In 2016, Drake started off the year strong with his track, “ Summer Sixteen ,” where he claims to be “Looking for revenge all summer sixteen.” I believed Drake was poised to have an even bigger year than the last, considering he was staying in line with the sounds and lyrical content of If You’re Reading This. While I personally dislike Future, his energy remains hard to be beaten, especially when combined with Drake. After this came What A Time To Be Alive, a collaboration with Atlanta rapper, Future. This rivalry period brought us two of Drake’s best songs in the Grammy nominated Back to Back and Hotline Bling, which peaked at #2 in the Billboard Top 100. This mentality carried on through the summer of 2015, as he became embroiled in a rivalry with Philadelphia rapper, and frequent collaborator, Meek Mill. For once, Drake didn’t seem insecure, and he actually seemed to be confident in his position as one of the biggest names in rap. Drake, a former child-star turned rapper, recently lit the music world on fire with his surprise mixtape release in 2015 of If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, an album that I consider the strongest in his discography.
Toronto-based rapper Aubrey “Drake” Graham really needs no introduction at this point.