‘No Friends In The Industry’ is one of the highlights of this album. He comes with that aggressive flow that I’m a huge fan of and talked his shit while responding to Kanye amid their ongoing beef. I was a huge fan of this, as Drake is known to be subliminal instead of being direct. As we move through the album, we get ‘7am On Bridle Path’. A time and location is Drake’s formula for an amazing song and this is easily the best on the album. He went at Kanye once again and it was exactly what I wanted to hear from Drake. ‘Race My Mind’ is also enjoyable. I also really loved the interlude ‘Yeba’s Heartbreak’. There were some other cool songs like ‘N 2 Deep’ featuring Future and ‘Pipe Down’. Some will argue ‘Views’ is no great leap forward but, on this evidence, hip hop’s king of whinge still reigns supreme.Finally, the wait is over. After its announcement last October and a prolonged delay, Drake finally dropped his sixth studio album entitled Certified Lover Boy on Friday. We hadn’t heard from Drake in a while, but in early March he dropped a three song EP entitled Scary Hours 2, which was completely rap focused and featured some great songs. Given we hadn’t got any new Drake since August, I thought this would be an indication of the direction this album was going. This was fueled by his features over the last few months, which were all rap focused.ĭrake is synonymous for delivering incredible intros for his projects. He didn’t disappoint on Certified Lover Boy with ‘Champagne Poetry’, where he talks about the pressure being put on him by his hometown Toronto. This led into ‘Papi’s home’, which was another solid track with some typical Drake quotables and a punchy beat. ‘Fair Trade’, was another good song and featured a great Travis Scott verse. ‘Too Good’, a pouty duet with Rihanna, already sounds like his next big smash.
Blige-sampling R&B, ‘Controlla’ and ‘With You’ have glitchy dancehall-style beats and ‘Child’s Play’ is a banger based on New Orleans bounce hit ‘She Rode That D*ck Like A Soldier’. With collaborator Noah “40” Shebib co-producing 13 of the 20 cuts, ‘Views’ sticks to Drake’s murky hip hop sound, but there are brilliant chinks of light. He also recalls an embarrassing squabble at restaurant chain Cheesecake Factory and shows more self-awareness than he is sometimes given credit for: “Lately I just feel so out of character/The paranoia can start to turn into arrogance,” he admits on the title track. “Blew up and I’m in the city still, I’m still here, dog,” he notes proudly on ‘Still Here’.Įlsewhere, Drake shares his relationship troubles (“Why do I settle for women that force me to pick up the pieces?”), his trust issues (“They still out to get me cause they never got me”), the pressures of having so much money (“All these handouts, man, it’s getting outta hand”) and, of course, his own awesome success (“They cannot f**k with my legacy”). The album was originally titled ‘Views From The 6’ after his nickname for Toronto, but though his hometown is a recurring theme, Drake is only really interested in its influence on him and vice versa. But remarkably, his signature brand of downbeat introspection remains gripping. Given that its 20 tracks generally tackle the same theme – namely the trials and tribulations of Toronto-based singer-rapper Drake – ‘Views’ should be a slog. This fourth album, which arrives on the wave of huge crossover hits ‘Hotline Bling’ and ‘One Dance’, has an epic running time of 81 minutes – Drake’s longest yet. The internet is probably right, but Drake’s boast also feels like a direct statement of intent. The internet reckons that when Drake brags, “I don’t run out of material” on the track ‘Hype’, he’s hitting back at Meek Mill, the Philadelphian rapper who accused him of using ghostwriters.