June 2016 - Music
Album of the Month - Views by Drake
The best thing you can say about Drake on Views is the worst thing, too: He's a lightweight. That description suits his breathtaking nimbleness in switching between flows, intonations and genres; his fleet-footedness adapting to, and jettisoning, passing trends; his ear for killer stripped-down beats and his stunning economy when crafting hooks – singing irresistibly wounded melodies, finding unlikely musicality in barked refrains about woes and Jumpmen. But his fourth album (seventh if you count three nominal mixtapes) reveals him as a lightweight in other, more frustrating ways: increasingly shallow in his thematic concerns, and ultimately slender in the scope of his creative ambitions. Drake's constantly ranking himself against his contemporaries, mulling over his legacy, and so it's impossible not to compare Views to recent opuses by those fellow pop-titans and culture-movers whose rarefied airspace he's great enough to share: Beyoncé, Kendrick, Rihanna, Kanye. In this company, however, Views is outclassed.
Drake is a virtuoso stylist. On So Far Gone, his 2009 breakthrough, he helped re-direct both the form and content of hip-hop, pairing moody, skeletal beats with an intriguingly mournful brand of arrogance: a Kanye-indebted affect that Drake elaborated upon and made de rigueur, and which reached its apotheosis on his best albums, 2011's Take Care and 2013's Nothing Was The Same. Views is longer than those – at 20 tracks, it edges into bloat – and takes longer to ingratiate itself, although time spent in its company (ideally in a car, after dusk) reveals moments of careful craftsmanship and ingenuity. "Controlla" is an airy dancehall confection; "Still Here" is a remarkable amalgam of aggression and softness, all raging low-end, simple singsong and retro synthesizers: a little Chief Keef, a little Vangelis. Other adrenalized tracks, like "Hype" and "Grammys," approach the lacerating intensity that made 2015's If You're Reading This It's Too Late and What a Time to Be Alive so potent. Elsewhere, on the sumptuous slow-burners "Redemption" and "Fire & Desire," the production – overseen as usual by the indispensable Noah "40" Shebib – puts spectral R&B samples into play with chilly chords and clipped electronic drums. Designed to recede, these tracks gently suggest a mood, then leave the emotional heavy-lifting to Drake. My rating 8/10.
The best thing you can say about Drake on Views is the worst thing, too: He's a lightweight. That description suits his breathtaking nimbleness in switching between flows, intonations and genres; his fleet-footedness adapting to, and jettisoning, passing trends; his ear for killer stripped-down beats and his stunning economy when crafting hooks – singing irresistibly wounded melodies, finding unlikely musicality in barked refrains about woes and Jumpmen. But his fourth album (seventh if you count three nominal mixtapes) reveals him as a lightweight in other, more frustrating ways: increasingly shallow in his thematic concerns, and ultimately slender in the scope of his creative ambitions. Drake's constantly ranking himself against his contemporaries, mulling over his legacy, and so it's impossible not to compare Views to recent opuses by those fellow pop-titans and culture-movers whose rarefied airspace he's great enough to share: Beyoncé, Kendrick, Rihanna, Kanye. In this company, however, Views is outclassed.
Drake is a virtuoso stylist. On So Far Gone, his 2009 breakthrough, he helped re-direct both the form and content of hip-hop, pairing moody, skeletal beats with an intriguingly mournful brand of arrogance: a Kanye-indebted affect that Drake elaborated upon and made de rigueur, and which reached its apotheosis on his best albums, 2011's Take Care and 2013's Nothing Was The Same. Views is longer than those – at 20 tracks, it edges into bloat – and takes longer to ingratiate itself, although time spent in its company (ideally in a car, after dusk) reveals moments of careful craftsmanship and ingenuity. "Controlla" is an airy dancehall confection; "Still Here" is a remarkable amalgam of aggression and softness, all raging low-end, simple singsong and retro synthesizers: a little Chief Keef, a little Vangelis. Other adrenalized tracks, like "Hype" and "Grammys," approach the lacerating intensity that made 2015's If You're Reading This It's Too Late and What a Time to Be Alive so potent. Elsewhere, on the sumptuous slow-burners "Redemption" and "Fire & Desire," the production – overseen as usual by the indispensable Noah "40" Shebib – puts spectral R&B samples into play with chilly chords and clipped electronic drums. Designed to recede, these tracks gently suggest a mood, then leave the emotional heavy-lifting to Drake. My rating 8/10.
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