As Drake continues to excel on the Billboard charts and break global Spotify records, the Canadian rapper stands out as a household name within the music industry. From his energetic performances during his “It’s All A Blur” tour to the announcement of his eighth studio album, it seemed as if Drake would provide his fans with another eclectic project. The prolific artist has promoted “For All The Dogs” since the beginning of his tour with different mediums; through questionable poetry collections, bizarre hoodies referencing dogs and rekindling friendships with successful R&B artist SZA, fans could not disengage themselves from the rollout of his latest long-playing record (LP).
October 5, Drake released a music video to “8am in Charlotte” exclusively on Instagram. The video opens up with his five-year-old son Adonis Graham explaining why he drew the cover for Drake’s next studio album. As Graham innocently calls his dad the G.O.A.T and addresses the significance of his drawings, the video transitions to Drake rapping his heart out over a sensational beat produced by Conductor Williams. Drake dropped incredible one-liners as he wore colorful hair pins and a jacket dedicated to Virgil Abloh, all whilst rapping next to his son. With this music video, fans truly thought that October 6 would stand out as the day that Drake released his best project in years.
Then, the album was released. The long-awaited LP started strongly with “Virginia Beach,” a track that beautifully intertwines a warped Frank Ocean sample with Drake’s catchy melodies. High expectations continued with the following track “Amen,” where Teezo Touchdown provides a stellar hook and once again showcases his versatility as an artist. The Toronto-based rapper also experimented with rage-inspired tracks co-produced by BYNX such as “Fear of Heights” and “Daylight,” proving to his audience how he can easily adapt to newer sounds within the hip-hop diaspora. Additionally, rapper J. Cole and Drake may potentially mark themselves as one of the best duos of 2023 with their song “First Person Shooter.” From their intense chemistry to J. Cole’s thought-provoking bars to the song’s dynamic instrumental, this song showcases Drake at his best.
“Honestly I believe this album was good. There were a couple of songs where Drake’s features did better than his, but overall I believe Drake did an excellent job creating an album for all his dogs [sic],” McEachern High School senior Jeremy Hardnett said.
Unfortunately, the album begins to falter and it starts to become unpredictable whether or not the next track will remain memorable. As 21 Savage and Drake previously collaborated for their 2022 project “Her Loss,” people understand that these two artists perform with amazing chemistry together and expected the same duality on “Calling For You.” However, the Canadian artist decided to include a drawn-out interlude of a girl complaining about oxtails and men looking through her phone for almost two minutes, resulting in the song losing all replay value and Savage’s verse becoming forgettable. Drake also starts the song by sexualizing a 21-year-old even though he will turn 37 Tuesday, October 24; the opening bar fails to contain excellent wordplay and only reveals a greater issue among celebrities and their drastic age gap relationships.
The album progresses with bland tracks such as “7969 Santa” and “Bahama Promises”, and SZA’s angelic feature could not save “Slime You Out” from its long runtime and Drake’s questionable lyric about slavery. Even when Drake delivered a memorable track, it only remained notable due to the Canadian rapper’s poor wordplay. For example, on the track “Members Only,” the rapper jokingly comes out as bisexual because he views his lover as one of the guys. Also, on the track “BBL Love – Interlude” he compares Brazilian Butt Lifts (BBLs) to love due to people not knowing if love remains real until they feel it.
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Drake managed to deliver a deplorable performance in Spanish on the track “Gently” with Bad Bunny. The song itself stands as an outlier and reveals the way Drake could have condensed the album by not featuring throwaways and filler tracks. Although the album contains the prolific artist’s finest production in years and enjoyable performances from rising artists, such as Yeat and Sexyy Red, the LP heavily suffers from its runtime of 23 tracks. Drake also reached a point in his career where regardless if his next album receives praise or constructive criticism or not, he will only release music if it provides him fame and wealth. The Toronto-based rapper started from humble beginnings, but now that he has reached a certain level of success it seems that Drake barely cares about curating impactful albums.
“For starters, I am not a diehard fan. I don’t dislike Drake. However, I don’t make an effort to listen to all of his music. Because Drake is such a well-known celebrity, I obviously know many songs from him, but I don’t listen to him as often as others. However, for this album, I really anticipated it to be a successful album because most of his albums are above average. For the amount of time that Drake has most likely worked on this album and the amount of effort he has put in for promoting his album I was expecting way more,” NC alumna Ren Lloyd said.
The Chant’s Rating: C-
