Fighter: Drake
Trainer (Gym): 40 (Young Money, Cash Money, Republic)
Cut Men: 40, Drake, Boi-1da, Kanye West, Metro Boomin, Allen Ritter, Axlfolie, Brian Alexander Morgan, Cardiak, Cardo, Cubeatz, Daxz, Di Genius, DJ Maphorisa, Stwo, Frank Dukes, Hagler, Jordan Lewis, Jordan Ullman, Maneesh Bidaye, Murada Beatz, Nineteen85, OZ, Ricci Riera, Sarz, Sevn Thomas, Southside, Supa Dups, The Beat Bully, Wizkid, Yung Exclusive
Weight Class: Rap Heavyweight
Notable Fire: Weston Road Flows, 9, Still Here
Notable Trash: Keep The Family Close, Too Good (Feat. Rihanna)
Tale Of The Tape: “You feel the pressure? Man, I know the pressure.”
True indeed, two years of hype and anticipation amounts to pressure above anything else.
In actuality, the deck was stacked against Drake. In addition to carrying OVO on his shoulders, putting Toronto and the Raptors on the map to the best of his ability, fending off attackers so brilliantly they actually turned into sympathetic figures, and forming the most powerful rap group in hip-hop on the fly, Drake was faced with having to deliver a masterpiece with the whole world waiting on him. This wasn’t a surprise “three-step-drop” situation, and consider that Drake had just signed a lucrative deal with Apple Music. Perhaps when Drake dropped the “From the 6” portion of the album title, it was because his “view” was from the window of Tim Cook’s corner office.
It would explain a lot. Drake kept us waiting so he could close this deal with the tech conglomerate. In the mean time, he dropped individual records that were more traditional hip-hop, mixed in a rap beef or two and joined forces with the current king of “trap rap”, all in a meticulously crafted effort to establish credibility with the traditional hip-hop crowd. Save for a special few though, “traditional hip-hop” or gangsta rap doesn’t move major units. As a result, you get the most popular rapper in the world essentially denying his rap roots, while captivating two nations at the same time. Views offers fans the opportunity to get reacquainted with Aubrey Graham. Like the young man that went off to college or traveled abroad to expand his thinking, Drake, who has lent himself out to seemingly everything and everyone, now returned home to reestablish his position in the rap game.
And naturally, the best way for Drizzy to illustrate his position in the rap game IS… by whining about his trust issues created by random women that curved him years ago. Views started with a dud known as “Keep the Family Close”, where the singer’s emotional neediness is underscored by his desire to lean on his ex’s for support (as if this is normal behavior). This record also seems a bit out of place batting leadoff— the album doesn’t really begin until track two, where 40 and Boi-1da collab on “9”, one of the project’s better instrumentals. Drake pledges his allegiance to The 6 and describes the cathartic feeling of giving back to his community, while claiming his work has done enough to turn The 6 upside down. The inconsistency of these back-to-back tracks were a microcosm of the entire project.
Production on Views, Drake’s fourth solo studio album, was creative but far from transcendent. With over 30 credited producers (and an unknown number of non-credited producers— seriously, it could be zero, but it could be more), we could be dealing with “too many cooks in the kitchen” situation. On the other hand, trying to construct an album of quality that’s one part hip-hop, one part R&B and one part dance hall means you’ll need differing perspectives. Perhaps this was the impetus for an album that was extremely reliant on sampling. Maybe all these producers didn’t quite know how to create a hip-hop/R&B/dance hall record.
40 and Boi-1da, per usual, flanked Drake throughout the majority of the LP. While tracks produced by Boi-1da were hit & miss, 40 shined, particularly on records like “Still Here”, “Grammys”, “U With Me?” and the show-stealing song on Views, “Weston Road Flows”.
As Drake insists on walking fans down memory lane of his loves and loves lost (to the point that it feels like he has a pistol to your back), fans are less privy to his personal stories of just, well…running through The 6 with his woes. “Weston Road Flows” puts this lens onto Aubrey’s Toronto origins. While floating over the smoothest Mary J. sample you’ll ever hear in your life, Drake recounts his early years through some of the best bars Views has to offer.
“Weston Road flows, my confidence level gettin’ settled/Don’t get hyped for the moment then start to backpedal/Don’t let your newfound fame fool you or cloud up your judgement/To talk loosely, I really do this/Been flowin’ stupid since Vince Carter was on some through the legs arm in the hoop shit/Drinkin’ Hpnotiq with Glenn Lewis, I been through it”
Unfortunately, moments like these were few and far between. Even on a song like “Weston Road Flows”, Drake offers up sub-par bars that he desperately tries to sell us on like he’s reading from the script of a Glengarry Glen Ross reboot. “The best ever, don’t ever question, you know better/But shit ain’t how it always seams when it’s sewed together/(Pause) Yeah, I let that last line breathe, it take a second to get it.”
Sidebar: Hard to blame Drizzy for the sales job though. After all, coffee is for closers.
There’s no better illustration of this than “Hype”. Performed on SNL, “Hype” is 3:29 of Drake taking aim at his critics (well, mostly), except he does it in a really pedestrian way over an equally pedestrian beat. It’s not wack, but falls considerably short of dopeness given his capabilities. The same can be said for the album’s title track.
Ignoring “Hotline Bling”, technically a bonus track, the song “Views” concludes the album with “rapper Drake” rhyming hookless over two verses. This is a classic Drake move— ending a work with pure lyricism, serving as a reminder to the rap world that no matter how much he goofed around over the last hour, he can still go bar for bar with your favorite emcee. We’ve seen it on What a Time to Be Alive (“30 For 30 Freestyle”), If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (“6pm in New York”), Nothing Was The Same (“Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2”), Take Care (“The Ride”), Thank Me Now (“Thank Me Now”) and So Far Gone (“Congratulations”). Drake calculatedly likes to go out with a bang; “Views” was fine, but didn’t provide the punch we’re used to on the finale. And given that rapping only made up for about 50% of this entire album at best, the final track carried more weight than usual. “Tippin’ scales, bars heavy like triple XL/I never tag no one in, I’d rather get you myself“, is just one example of the unimpressive rhymes Drake uses to close the show.
The rest of the album is made up of mostly non-rap records, which makes it challenging to gauge within a hip-hop context. However “Hotline Bling”, “Controlla” and “One Dance” aren’t as gut-wrenching as one traditional hip-hop fan might assume (“Hotline Bling” is actually catchy as hell, with a catchy video to boot— that’s right, it was a catchy video. Drizzy had the gif streets on fire when it first dropped). But even though we semi-jokingly called out Joe Budden’s podcast, Views in fact did not off much in terms of creativity from Champagne Papi. Old flames, money, being the best, taking shots at his enemies— we’ve heard it all before.
If you like quality music and eclectic sounds, you’ll enjoy Views. But listening to a Drake album has increasingly become a chore for rap fans, which is especially disheartening considering his rap heavyweight status. It’s like watching passive LeBron James going into hyper-facilitator mode. All the talent is there to takeover the game, but for some reason, sometimes, he just doesn’t do it. LeBron’s response to pressure throughout his career has been a bit of a mixed bag, although James has been dynamic of late. Conversely, it feels like Views collapsed under the enormity of nearly two full years of expectations.
Fight Night: Loser 10th round KO
Amazingly, Views has been an absolute monster on the charts — spending eight straight weeks at #1 (Eminem, Vanilla Ice and Hammer are the only other rap acts to pull that off) in spite of there not being any fun moments on the entire album, other than Future’s verse on “Grammys”. No seriously, you can’t find two minutes in hip-hop today more fun than Future’s verse on “Grammys”.
But we’ve heard better from Drake. We heard better on Game’s “100” last year. “4pm in Calabasas” was better than almost anything on Views. Drake must be quite comfortable with his decision given the wave of success he’s currently riding. But true hip-hop heads are suffering if the hottest MC in the game is voluntarily vacating the belt. Is it versatility, or does he not care enough about the craft to dedicate himself to it full time? Why should rap fans have to settle for a king who only cares enough about the masses to actually deliver the goods half the time? And what happens when that half is less than stellar?
Sidebar: See “Pop Style”, or more specifically, the “Pop Style” album version which was sans Kanye’s verse, Kanye’s “PERFECT” Street Fighter ad lib and all 18 words from Jay Z.
In fairness, this is who Drake has always been, even going back to the classic So Far Gone mixtape. But the music scene stood idly by as country superstar Taylor Swift got swept away into the top 40 world. Rap is extremely different, with the history of the appropriation of black music and culture always at the forefront of discussion. We can’t afford to have Drake swept away in the same fashion. But if Drake’s goal truly is global domination, we’ll never see the rap heavyweight we all know is within him.