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“Views,” like much of Drake’s music, is relatable because of its vagueness, balancing tales of betrayal and self-loathing with winning celebrations of loyalty and friendship. Maybe there was something there? Probably not, he concludes, comparing a certain woman to a Chrysler designed to fool passersby into thinking it’s a Bentley.Ī lot of the songs on “Views” find Drake running through his relationship woes, recounting arguments at the Cheesecake Factory or dead-end discussions about trust, wondering if he was so “good” that it was inevitable that he would be taken for granted. “All of my ‘let’s just be friends’ are friends I don’t have anymore,” he croons on “Keep the Family Close,” one of the many songs on the album which function as autopsies for relationships past. Late last month, Drake released his fourth album, “Views.” On the cover, he poses high up on Toronto’s CN Tower-an apt, if melodramatic, image of loneliness at the top. He mines his past, not as a reason to change but as rationalization for his worst behavior. In recent years, Drake has grown perhaps too comfortable in this perpetual state of self-examination and light sadness-he bleeds onto the page and then admires the pattern he leaves behind. While this is a healthy realization with which to greet every day, it doesn’t make for the most compelling narrative. The thing about introspection, though, is that it allows us to think of ourselves always as works in progress. The music sounded intimate and precise, owing largely to a close-knit circle of producers, led by his friend Noah (40) Shebib, who swaddled his voice within their digital purrs and tolling bells. It was the harshness of his raps and the unabashed softness of his singing, the way his music flitted between styles and rhythms, expressing a restless desire to become someone or something better. It wasn’t just his interest in scrutinizing his own contradictions, by now a trope for any thoughtful rapper.
Starting with the ornate melancholia of “Take Care,” from 2011, Drake elevated the unfurling of one’s imperfections into an art form. This last motif has defined Drake’s growth as an artist. He is like an algorithm cycling through a set of durable themes: Nobody believed in me always be loyal my enemies are out to get me we should be together I’ve tried to be faithful, but I just can’t. Since the success of “So Far Gone,” Drake has become one of pop music’s most polarizing figures as well as one of its most influential. (Under his birth name, Aubrey Graham, he played a basketball star on “Degrassi: The Next Generation.”) As with his predecessor Kanye West, there was something novel about a male rapper who appeared to be so sensitive.
But what distinguished Drake was a sense of shameless guile, a confidence in his complex persona that was due partly to his background as an actor. There had been artists before him, like Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliott, who toggled between rapping and singing.
On “Views,” the rapper bleeds onto the page and then admires the pattern.