An overloaded album reveals Drake Has Son – Variety

By the time Drake's fifth studio album, "Scorpion," was finally released last Friday, his first two singles had already spent 18 cumulative weeks at the top of the Billboard singles chart. Straight out of the gate, the gigantic double album broke record-breaking records in one day on Apple Music, Amazon and Spotify, the latter making an extra effort to change the header of its playlists – including those that do not contain any Drake songs – to various images of Drake. In other words, even if your streaming music scheme is limited to Hungarian folk music and Klezmer, it was impossible not to know that Drake had a new album.

So, how does the 31-year-old feel he's reaching a level? of cultural omnipresence generally associated with strong leaders of military dictatorships? Not great, apparently. "There are times when I would like to be where I was when I wanted to be here," he quickly hammered. The expression "I'm so tired" is spoken several times, in addition to "I'm upset", "I'm fed up with this s-", "I'm jaded" and "I'm exhausted and emptied He mentions that at the release of this album he will be out of his recording contract, and does not seem too concerned about the prospect. On "Is There More", he tries to perform a self-audit on his own catalog of excess souls, only to get distracted by an overview of last month's spending reports: " Is there more to life than trips to Dubai ?? "/ Yachts on July 4, the G5 in the sky? Is there more in life than all these corporate bonds and all those happy times?" [19659003] More opinions

The existential dissatisfaction with his own success has been one of Drake's driving themes for most of the decade, but rarely his sense of urgency. Exhaustion was so palpable and so easy to understand for the listener that "Scorpion" stretched up to 90 minutes of numbness. Which does not mean that the album is a failure. Drake is one of the few modern pop artists to stay too big to fail: his ear for hooks is as sharp as they come; his gift for phrasing still allows him to impregnate even the most tough punchlines with undeniable spirit; and his production team (still led by Noah "40" Shebib, with No ID, DJ Premier, and Boi-1da audiences) ensures that each sample, snare snap, and bass swell sounds exactly as expensive as likely. But listening to "Scorpio" feels no less anxious to take a trip rather than turn around a cul-de-sac in a luxurious community, Drake being too in love with the lushness of his landscaping to realize that he's dead.

Made up of 25 unmanageable tracks, "Scorpion" is divided into two "sides", with side A with combative and aggressive hip-hop, and side B concentrating on the morose and bruised R & B. Both have their moments: Singles "God's Plan" and "Nice for What" have lost none of their earwormy insidiousness; the fried streams of the South on "Nonstop" and "Mob Ties" can raise eyebrows, but they also show the versatility of Drake; "Summer Games" and "In My Feelings" project Drake's nocturnal reveries on interesting new textures; and Jay-Z and Ty Dolla $ ign bring energy to their guest slot machines. But it is difficult to listen through all the way without performing a rear edit, and even after several rounds, too much of the album remains indistinguishable confusion.

The beauty of the big albums of cooking monsters, from "The Beatles" to "Sandinista!" and "Wu-Tang Forever", it is that they seem to require curation and personalization; In all weathering and left field experiments, there are combinations of infinite tracks to suit every mood and every aesthetic trend. On "Scorpion", however, the filler could not be more obvious or less interesting. The icy slow-jam "Finesse" may have worked with a powerful locomotive to animate it with a bit of drama or athleticism, but with only Drake's discrete whisper to distinguish it, the song disappears. from memory the second that she ends. It is certainly not the same for the "Ratchet Happy Birthday", which is a kind of studio gaffe that would usually be released for bonuses in a super deluxe anniversary edition. [19659002Autantquelalongueurdel'albumpourraitremettreenquestionl'attentionnumériquel'addictionauxmédiassociauxhanteScorpiontoutcommel'alcoolhanteunalbumdeTownesVanZandtoul'héroïnefaitl'albumLouReeddesannées70consisterendesheuresetdesheuresdedéfilementdelachronologieetdeglissementdeDMmêmes'ilestbienconscientquel'expériencelerendraaffreux"AlleretretourenItaliemasectiondecommentairesmetuer"ilrappetropabsorbédanscedernierpourprofiterdelapremièreSur"Summergames"ilproposeunbrefaperçudelatristecorvéed'amourd'Instagram:"Tudisquejet'aiconduitmaistum'ensivi/Jesuisl'undetesamistum'abandonne/Alorstulesbloquesforwhom?"

Although it is one of the most recognizable humans in the world With the GDP of a small country on his bank account, Drake seems determined to convince us that his downtime is just as lonely and unsatisfactory as ours.These types of lyrics quickly become monotonous, but that's maybe the point. On the album "Emotionless", anchored by an unlikely but ingenious sample of Mariah Carey, he manages to build his Instagram boredom into a generational thesis, rapping: "I know another girl who is asking for help but his last legend says, "Leave me alone" / I know a happy married girl until she puts down her phone … look at our way of living. "

And then he drops the bomb:" I was not hiding my child from the world, I was hiding the For the few people who lived through a bomb shelter at the Drake test in the last month Drake's recently let go of a back-and-forth quarrel with Pusha T. It turned out to be the hip-hop equivalent to launching a ground war in Asia: Pusha hit for the first time. first with some lines on the "Infrared" produced by Kanye West; Drake punched a few with the "Duppy Freestyle" track; Pusha then switched to nuclear tracking, alleging – among many, many other things – that Drake was hiding a child in love.

If Pusha's forensic investigation into the heart of Drake's family business was a fair game for a rap battle question, but judging by the retreat of "Scorpion" in Sudden candor and some subliminal hat-strokes, Drake had trouble answering in kind. On the contrary, his approach shows how much Drake has changed the classical calculation of hip-hop. By traditional standards, Pusha won the battle, pushing Drake until he had to step back and admit defeat; but by possessing the critics and responding with introspection, inviting the empathy of his audience rather than dismissing his opponent, Drake might well have won the war.

But what war? References to parenting flash here and there throughout "Scorpio", but Drake saves the real drama for the closing track. On March 14, he tries to come to terms with his new status as an absentee father, especially as a child of the divorce himself. "I have an empty crib in my empty crib," he laments, continuing to describe his son's purchase as an overabundance of Christmas presents, to learn later that he had already passed them. This is the saddest song of the entire Drake catalog, to a degree that even the artist himself might not recognize, making the 85 minutes of the most insignificant grievances even smaller and more cute that & # 39; them. Drake has spent most of his career sketching the outlines of a vast persecution complex, in which his attempts to be the good resident hip-hop guy are constantly besieged by critics, lovers unfaithful and rivals jealous. Here the terrain has changed, and he is finally faced with a dilemma that he can not humiliate in getting out. That he uses this as an opportunity for growth, or simply more entrenchment in old habits, remains to be seen.