Music Review: Drake's 'If You're Reading This It's Too Late'

— -- Rapper Drake dropped a surprise album on iTunes last Friday. This has become a new strategy for many top-tier artists to raise the hype-level for their brands and, for the most part, it has been pretty effective.

Indeed, the industry experts were predicting that Drake would move nearly half-a-million units of this record by the end of the weekend.

The album follows “Nothing Was the Same” and it comes off as a lightweight, experimental response to that record. The production is tight. And, like most Drake records, this would sound better as an instrumental record, with its lush, icy electro beats that sound like something you’d listen to at 4 a.m. while trying to sober up after a party.

The problems with the album lie mostly with Drake himself. He still rarely puts together a decent flow. He’s all about saying a line, taking a breath and saying another line. His lyrics and rhyme-schemes aren’t as cohesive and as impressive as they could be.

Plus, he has a bad habit of rhyming the same word with itself for three (or more) lines in a row. (Come on, that’s just lazy lyric-writing.)

He wants to be an R&B star, too, in the wake of “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” but he lacks a decent sense of melody. His emo-rapping style becomes more of an R. Kelly, “Trapped in The Closet” kind of rambling when elements of melody are introduced.

Plus his nasally, monotone voice doesn’t really lend itself to singing. That might be why he often drowns his voice in digital effects. The worst offender in this way is guest, PARTYNEXTDOOR, whose vocals on “Preach” are so digitized that they are virtually rendered unlistenable.

There’s better success on the next track, “Wednesday Night Interlude,” which makes the most of a backward, sparse synth-line.

On “Energy” and “10 Bands,” Drake seems like he’s trying to rewrite “Started From the Bottom” which will now be forever associated with the opening scene in season one, episode nine of “Broad City.” And let’s face it, to many, the song’s inclusion in “Broad City” made Drake momentarily cooler, not the other way around.

Really, Drake is one-dimensional rapper who gets by more on style than he does on skill. How does he rank among the greats? He doesn’t. For his stature in the industry, he is a remarkably weak lyricist.

That he’s the most visible Canadian rapper in the U.S. mainstream seems like a cruel joke in a world that includes better rappers like Shad and K-os.

On “Know Yourself,” for instance, during the chorus he seems to be doing some of the same bellowed, garbled yelling over an electro beat as Rae Sremmurd did on their rather weak debut earlier this year.

Meanwhile, “You & The 6” is a rather straight-forward ode to his “Mama,” although the nod to his mother trying to set him up with her trainer is quite funny. But let’s face it, in a post Childish Gambino world, we’ve heard this kind of letter home done more effectively.

“If You're Reading This It’s Too Late” offers up more of the same and disguises it as a progression, but the beats and production nearly make it worth it. Still for a guy who seems to have it all, Drake sure does a lot of complaining on record.

Focus Tracks:

He’s aiming for the prize and this is definitely his best effort here.

“No Tellin’” The beat and the overall melancholy mood of this track push it over to the favorable column. Again, Drake has always relied more on style and mood than he has his lyrical flow. He still remains a bit of an aimless rambler on this track, but it actually works.

“Legend” The album’s opener has an underlying ominous quality but, again, it the sparse, careful beat and production-work that make this track interesting.