Drake’s “If You’re Reading This, It’s Already Too Late” Reviewed

The assumption is the surprise release new Drake If You’re Reading This, It’s Already Too Late is a contractual obligation type album, Drake trying to join his mentor Lil Wayne out the door of Cash Money, throws some odd and sods he had in the lab and rushes it out, surely anybody who saw the two on tour together last year can’t deny their closeness. So…

Maybe it’s true, this is a good album but it is almost self-parody,  over 17 tracks it is the same flow, the same story taking, the same version of Drake as the hip hop star crossed lover battling the forces of money, power, and old friendships, girls on poles, or is that virgins on poles. Plus there is nothing here to match “Hold On we’re Going Home” or “Started From The Bottom”. “Madonna” on the new song (Drake is promising to make a girl bigger than)  is a metronome tick tock depressive. All steely beats and clipped off spitballs.

BUT, if it is not the real follow up to Nothing Was The Same, it has some things going for it,  the real one might not let him narrow his vision so starkly, nobody will be fighting in parking lots over these beats, or perfect the heart of the sound Drake has used for years now. It doesn’t really peak here all that high though nothing is less than very good,  there is nothing you think will follow “O To 100/The Catch Up” to award winning, trailblazing land.  How much does that matter? Really, not at all. Everything here is a snapshot of a life in action, all the usual haunts, From the hopefully not prophetic “Legend” to the paranoid “6 God” all the way to the Tyga tangle that closes the album “6pm In New York”, it remains very true to its sound, to itself. Like February itself, it all freezing cold days and nights that get dark early.

It works like an extreme ambient, it moves into the background with that steady flow and smooth voice, which he clips and stretches out over and over again. The songs are fully formed and samey, they could segue on the same beats, the same sounds, yet it works over and over again. It is like the ultimate mix tape, a major minor fill em up. If this is his get out of the contract fee material mixtape, the next album should do what Drake keeps on claiming he can do change the game.

“Nobody loves us but us” Drake complains. Us and them.

Grade” B+