It can just as easily get him in trouble, however: the album’s title track, featuring Rihanna and produced by UK poster child Jamie xx, has already proven divisive, and it sticks out as a sort of step-too-far into the pop realm on Take Care. Even better is when he collapses the difference between the two, adopting a reassuring croon on the latter track and the maudlin-but-touching ‘Doing It Wrong’ (a stunning reversal from the earlier fuck you of ‘Shot For Me’), his trademark lyrical flow keeping him from floating away on a breeze of bathos. He’s still got that keen ear for tiny, unforgettable vocal hooks: the rushed refrain of ‘Make Me Proud’ is anchored with that candy-sweet “I’m so-I’m so-I’m so” hook, a formidable earworm that typifies his approach to micro-melody, while the pre-chorus on ‘The Real Her’ wafts by on a sighing cloud of reverb. Still propped up by autotune, his voice is nevertheless sweeter, more emotionally transparent. When he works with “tumblr’n’b” superstar the Weeknd the results are some of the album’s most fascinating moments, particularly on the disorienting, downright queasy start-stop drumming of ‘Crew Love’, a typically swirling ode to knowing oblivion.ĭrake has always fashioned himself as a singer as much as a rapper, and it’s never been clearer than here. Lex Luger’s contribution, for example, is downright druggy, all slurred metronomes and a half-audible John B sample, laced with Drake’s most laconic drawl, while Just Blaze’s unbelievably epic ‘Lord Knows’ – surging choirs swept up in quaking drum mayhem – has one of those characteristically 40 breakdowns into submerged liquidity before Rick Ross storms in to deliver one of the album’s most memorable verses. Though the album is host to quite a cast of producers – Just Blaze, Lex Luger, Jamie XX, Boi-1da, The Weeknd’s production team – they’re all tinged by 40’s indomitable aesthetic, widescreen drama narrowed down to monochrome tunnel vision.
#Drake take care album cover full
Overseen by Drake’s closest artistic partner, Noah “40” Shebib, the album is full of hollowed-out beats, whooshing synths that feel like liquored lashings of warm breath, and hooks more aching than anthemic. With tracks like the year-defining ‘Marvin’s Room’ – a 2am drunk-dial distilled into song – Take Care isolates and emphasizes what made Thank Me Later so outstanding, that curiously comprehensive exhaustion both emotional and physical. Even his kiss-offs are tinged with undercurrents of regret: ‘Shot For Me’, with lines like “Bitch I’m the man/Don’t you forget it” sung in Drake’s sweetest falsetto, is skin-crawlingly fake, turning what makes him out to be whiny into a psychological weapon sharper than anything this side of Odd Future.
The album cover is ridiculous but accurate, a protagonist at the top of his game simultaneously reveling and wallowing in their own larger-than-life glory. But unlike most hip-hop events, and in true Drake fashion, more time on Take Care is spent reflecting than bragging. Take Care feels like an event, and it sounds like one too: it’s Drake’s self-conscious attempt to make up for his rushed debut Thank Me Later, an album that – as masterful as it was – sounded like the work of a novice visionary, a true debut album that tried to spread out in too many directions at once. But those are the things that make Drake Drake: they’re why he has a dedicated following not only in the mainstream, but with hipsters, stodgy music critics, and avant-garde aficionados alike. Take Care comes with all sorts of baggage: almost half of its tracks were let out before its release in one form or another, and the most divisive things about Drake – his toxic narcissism, his workmanlike singing, and his narcoleptic tempo – have only been emphasized. It isn’t till track three that we get anything close to uplifting, and I don’t think any of us would have it any other way, really. The first sound we hear on one of the most anticipated hip-hop albums since Tha Carter III is the distorted warble of Canadian adult-contemporary singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk.
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