The beats are rich and thick, and the collaborations are fitting. It’s sprawling and ambitious, but the craftsmanship is remarkable. Take Care might not be as immediate as his previous works, but it is a stronger, more powerful release. It’s all really solid material, and the listener will get out of it whatever they are willing to put in. Wonder busts out a beautiful harmonica solo at the end of “Doing It Wrong.” But picking apart and explaining all of the tracks on this massive album would be tiresome and unnecessary.
The title track sees Drake and Rihanna paint the picture of an odd beginning to a relationship that appears at once promising and troubling. “Lord Knows,” with a monster of a beat provided by Just Blaze, provides a midway energy boost. The Weeknd is perfect for Drake because his music is an embodiment of the escapism that can occur from the feelings articulated throughout the disc. It’s sort of nihilistic.Īs far as new tracks go, “Crew Love” has a throbbing beat, giving off, appropriately, the feeling of being in a club. When before in the history of hip-hop has a rapper of his status expressed regret for having sex four times in a week? Drake so desperately wants to have a real connection with someone that he will (drunkenly) call a former fling, confess his bad deeds, and realize he wants to change while convincing her to cheat on her boyfriend with him. Drake has all the money and women he can imagine (which on Thank Me Later, he thought would fulfill him), but he is ultimately depressed. It doesn’t fit the mood lyrically, while “Marvin’s Room” is almost the thesis of Take Care. But there’s a reason why that single didn’t make the cut over others. In fact, some key tracks such as “Dreams Money Can Buy” are even missing. The crazy thing is that it doesn’t feel like any of these songs don’t belong. It’s kind of a remarkable shift in less than two years.Īnd he really packed the disc to capacity. This is a different sentiment than the one on Thank Me Later, where Drake is more hopeful about where things are going.
There is a sense of alienation here-one that Drake tries to overcome with his money-but as time goes on, he realizes that it just won’t do. And this is the dichotomy that he deals with on Take Care. The album’s cover shows Drake with a lot of useless gold objects and paintings, sitting alone. Fortunately, Drake still has his own thing going on, and these surface comparisons are just that. There’s more: Where West had Bon Iver, Drake has The Weeknd where West got Elton John, Drake got Stevie Wonder. Fridays, the collaboration-heavy song load, the extended interludes, the Gil Scott-Heron sampling, and an appearance by his ex-girlfriend, the album seems to make an attempt at dissecting the formula that made Yeezy’s release so successful from both a marketing and a content standpoint. From the promotional work akin to G.O.O.D. Since Drake is, in some regards, the Young Money response to West’s heart-on-sleeve style of hip-hop, it’s no surprise that Take Care bears a lot of similarities to West’s hugely successful My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. If anything, this gives him a whole different appeal to an entire demographic. Drake deals with the divorce of his parents, the insufficiency of sex or money, and the fear of being alone, among other things, openly and honestly. But, like Kanye West, Drake uses his fame as sort of a cover for his emotional instability and insecurities, and his overtly expressive tunes are genuine and relatable. It strikes a balance between the “I’m rich, bitch” narcissism and love and longing content that permeates modern pop both in sound and lyrics. It works because it has big hooks, big beats and real emotion.
His fusion of R&B, pop and hip-hop in which he moves back and forth from singing and rapping is his own style. What Drake does is almost exclusively a Drake thing. Drake might be hip-hop’s First World Problems poster boy, but tell Arcade Fire that the kids in the suburbs don’t have problems, too.
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