Feb. 16--On Drake's "10 Bands," a track from the Canadian rapper's latest album/mix tape, "If You're Reading This It's Too Late" (OVO Sound/Young Money/Cash Money), keyboards toll and the global hip-hop star shrinks his world to a claustrophobic bedroom with the phone disconnected and shades drawn.
Hip-hop is defined by its strut, its bravado, but Drake's steps are just as often anxious and hesitant. His propensity to wrestle with his contradictions out loud (or at least in a burned-out whisper) sets him apart, and has also made him a star. The largely downcast quality of "If You're Reading This..." was presaged by a moody 15-minute autobiographical video, "Jungle," and the album plays like a 68-minute sequel: a downcast, burned-out, self-doubting crawl.
The musical language created by Drake's longtime producers Boi-1da and Noah "40" Shebib is stripped to its barest essentials: splashes of keyboards and barely-there beats reverberating in vast, open spaces.
It's not rife with potential hits. The secretivness of the online release a few days ago, and the question about whether it's an official album or a mix tape, usually reserved for works in progress or outtakes, is perhaps meant to deflate expectations. It comes off as a more insular cousin to his 2011 album, "Take Care," which confronted many of the same ill-at-ease millionaire-loner questions.
The album title reads like a suicide note, and though the 17 tracks never quite get that dire, there are no party invites either. "Oh, my God, if I die I'm a legend," Drake declares at the outset, which isn't so much an eye-rolling mixture of boastfulness and self-pity as a commentary on hip-hop's propensity for self-aggrandizing melodrama. His need to over-share also produces moments of vulnerability, but they're often lost amid the monochrome arrangements, loosely inspired by Kanye West's experiment in melancholy on "808's and Heartbreak" (2008). Drake's vocals do most of the heavy lifting in giving shape to the amorphous arrangements. The conversation between his subconscious and public voices on "Madonna" and the sing-speak melodies on "6 God" and "6 Man" provide variety, as do the cameo R vocals of prot駩 PartyNextDoor on "Preach" and "Wednesday Night Interlude."
But the album doesn't lift off until it's nearly over, with a typically transparent song about his mother on "You the 6" that toggles between the humorous (mom tries to hook him up with her workout instructor) and poignant. The closing "6PM in New York" is a long, assertive stream of wordplay without a chorus that finds Drake strangely energized, almost triumphant. It arrives too late to turn the album around.
'If You're Reading This It's Too Late'
Drake
(OVO Sound/Young Money/Cash Money)
Two and a half stars (out of 4)
greg@gregkot.com
