For the past few months, it seems like Drake has been the most hated man in hip-hop. Endless blogs have attacked him and his self-developed cult of personality, calling him out for being “soft” in all-caps rants or decrying his lack of being able to “say anything new”. Does he deserve all the hate? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, the attacks on his “softness” are really just thinly-veiled homophobic comments masquerading as criticism, and it’s also interesting how the only time artists are demanded to “say something new” is when they’re rapping. On the other hand, “Take Care” wasn’t necessarily the sequel to “So Far Gone” that his fans wanted it to be. On the Canadian rapper’s sophomore effort, Drake proves to be the most talented and visionary of all the Young Money rappers, but hits a few stumbling blocks along the way to truly classic territory.
In interviews before his 2nd LP was finalized, Drake claimed that he wanted to do away with the feature-heavy feel of the previous album. Upon a quick glance at the tracklist, it seems that he’s reneged on that promise. The album features guest spots by Rick Ross, a furious Kendrick Lamar, Nicki Minaj, Doom’n’B crew The Weeknd, Lil’ Wayne (twice), and 1/4 of Andre 3000s total rap output this year. Strange thing is, nearly all of them seem to be trying harder than Drake.
Take “The Real Her”, for example, the most guest heavy track on the album. Lil’ Wayne comes off more lucid than he has in years, spitting “cause to her I’m just a rapper, and soon she’ll have met another/so if tonight’s an accident, tomorrow we’ll recover”, while Andre 3000 is “sittin’ here sad as hell, listening to Adele, I feel ya baby/ “Someone Like You”? More like someone unlike you, or something that’s familiar maybe”. Both features are legends, and both of them give it all that they’ve got on this joint. What does Drake have to say, however? “Dying to meet your girlfriends, that you said you might bring/If they’re the ones that tell you that you do the right thing.” Sorry, what? Did Drake just rhyme “bring” with “thing”?
This is the problem with Drake’s rapping on “Take Care”. There are not nearly enough quotables, and the ones that are quotable are often atrocious. Take the following two lines: “Tuck my napkin in my shirt cuz I’m just mobbin’ like that”, and “You gon’ make someone around me catch a body like that.” The first one sounds more like something you’d hear at a high-school lunch table, and the second is completely ludicrous. Nobody is going to be catching bodies for Drake. Rick Ross can lie and say that people will kill for him, but that’s because you can half-believe it – he’s Rick Ross. Drake, on the other hand, sounds like the only bodies he’s going to be catching are little kids jumping off a trampoline. Drake needs to pick how to carry himself; the man can’t be a high-level mafia don on one track and checking his girls’ text messages while she uses the bathroom in the next.
Occasionally, Drake manages to balance his desire to be seen as both a man who REALLY UNDERSTANDS WOMEN and a hardcore thug, such as on “Under Ground Kings”. A sequel of sorts to “So Far Gone” standout “Ignant Shit”, “Under Ground Kings” shows that when Drake pushes himself, he spit the kind of lyrics that had people proclaiming him the Next Big Thing back in 2009: “You Girl, you right there, you look like you like this shit/How’d I know, how’d I know? That’s me on some psychic shit/I could tell a lie if you asking me my where-abouts/But I might talk that real if you ask me what I care about/Rappin’ bitches, rappin’ bitches bitches/And rappin’ rappin’ an’ bitches until all of us switches”. The wordplay’s there, the flow goes off, and for once on the album, Drake manages to cater to both basic bitches and hip-hop heads successfully.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the lyricism on this album, and there’s a reason for that: That’s really all that needs critiquing. Let’s all be honest about the beats here: They’re gorgeous, beautifully meshing fragile-as-glass piano lines with earth-shattering bass, courtesy of Boi-1da, Just Blaze, and most of all, Noah “40” Shebib. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Drizzy/40 partnership is one of the most important relationships in hip-hop of the past five years. Often times, “Drake” feels less like the name of a rapper than it does a hip-hop group, featuring Aubrey Graham on the mic and 40 on the ones and twos. 40 kills it in almost every way on “Take Care”, especially on “Marvin’s Room”, building yawning piano lines and heartbeat drums into one of the most messed up ballads of the year. On “The Ride”, he perfectly melds 808s and live drumkits over Abel Tesfaye’s funky wailing, and opener “Over My Dead Body” bears a remarkable similarity to Deadboy’s Slo-Mo House Edit of the last Drake LP’s opener “Fireworks”, in it’s cascading piano lines, muffled drums, and downmixed crooning. “Take Care” is the first Drake album to prominently feature hi-hats, and 40 makes excellent use of the new sonic palette over the undulating guitars of “Under Ground Kings”.
However, there are a few serious production missteps on this album. “Take Care” is one of them, relying too heavily on a sample of Jamie XX’s rework of Gil-Scott Heron’s cover of Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “I’ll Take Care of You” (whew!). It fails to do anything remotely interesting with the reshuffle, 40 fails to flip it in any significant way, and aside from a few drums, the track is pretty much untouched- not such a good look. The most egregious error behind the boards, though, is T-Minus’s absolutely unlistenable beat for “Make Me Proud”. In fact, that song is an all-around failure. A throwaway Nicki Minaj verse, Drake conjuring gross images of girls eating salad and running on the treadmill simultaneously, and that horrible dubstep synth that sounds like a cross between a garbage disposal and that thing they use at the dentists’ office that sucks up all your spit.
Despite these two misses, however, the rest of the album’s beats are still pretty great. It’s just that Drake fails to say anything really too interesting on them. I know I mentioned people whining about rappers “not saying anything new” on an album, and I maintain that it’s a silly complaint. Drake, however, could at least find interesting ways to talk about the same tired old subjects. “There’s times where I might just blow 50k on a vacation/for all my soldiers, just to see the looks on all their faces”, Drake boasts on “Crew Love”, a “put my niggas on” style boast that was done to much greater effect when Biggie claimed that “my whole crew is lounging/celebrating every day, no more public housing”.
Even when he’s trying to put a new spin on self-loathing, such as on this-is-not-a-love-song “Marvin’s Room”, he puts himself right before Kendrick Lamar, spitting the album’s best verse, over its best beat, and talking about the same subject- the self-loathing that comes as a byproduct of fame- in a way that completely destroys Drake’s performance. It’s great that Drake hasn’t forgotten his underground roots, and is pushing Kendrick’s music like this. Only problem is, Kendrick is doing it better (and speaking of underground roots, Drake, would it kill you to put K-Os on your album?).
When Drake released the first single from his album, “Headlines”, fans were split 50/50 on whether they loved or loathed it. The thing about “Headlines” is that the beat never really drops. There’s no triumphant chorus, no big bridge, no moment that makes you want to put your hands up and say “Oh my god, this is the best song ever!” That’s my problem with “Take Care”. Though the album flows cohesively, the beats are nice, and it’s got a star-studded supporting cast, the problem is that this new Drake album never really ends up going anywhere — and that’s his own fault.
