1.5/4 Testudos from Michael Errigo
“Is you with me or what?”
Drake poses this question about 10 minutes into his highly anticipated fourth studio release, Views, and among the many moody lines he spits on the album, it’s the one that stands out the most. Yes, it’s a question meant for some girl with Drizzy in her heart, but if looked at as a query for the millions of fans that pledge their allegiance to Toronto’s native son, then it makes a lot more sense. Are you really with Drake? Because in order to enjoy — or, one might even say, forgive — Views, you need to be.
This album is a marathon. Five of its 20 songs hover near or surpass five minutes, and the entire runtime is a short movie-level 81 minutes. The genre of this brisk film? Well, that’s a good question.
The honesty and emotion that have become Drake’s signature traits are certainly both here, yet nothing seems to approach the depths of “Marvin’s Room” or even “You & the 6” in either of those departments. Instead, just about everything on Views feels empty. Yes, this is good vibe music, something to put on in the background as you get down to work (any kind of work), and it seems that Drake aimed to make something more tonal than previous releases. But when you take the time to listen to the lyrics and really try to feel the beat, what stands out is not only how irksome the repetitiveness of it all becomes, but also how prevalent the feeling of settling is. After 81 minutes, you want to turn to Drake and drop a line that sounds like something he would say to a stripper in a meme: “You’re better than this.”
Sure, there are flashes of greatness. “One Dance” is a bona fide hit that is sure to make its mark on this summer. Also, the line “Certain people need to tell me they’re proud of me” on “Redemption” slapped me in the face on first listen. That’s the kind of slightly stunning fragility we know and love from Champagne Papi. But isn’t it a bit too early to say something is vintage Drake? Shouldn’t he, at 29, be cranking out prime-time work that doesn’t leave us yearning for the past?
The speculation and rumors that surrounded the release of If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late did this album no favors. The idea that If You’re Reading This was a hurried precursor to this larger, presumably greater work now looks like a major misconception. Time will truly tell how firmly Views plants itself into our national cultural consciousness (and it will to some degree; Drake is too big to have a full-scale flop), but at this point If You’re Reading This seems to be the superior work. At least it had some kind of energy to it, a little something for people to get excited about instead of just muse over as you nurse your escape of choice and scroll through old Facebook messages — the prime setup for a listen of Views.
So am I with Drake or what? I want to be — I know that. But I also know that I just can’t answer that question with the kind of certainty I used to.
-M.E.
2/4 Testudos from Patrick Basler
Now Drake, we’re not mad. Just a little disappointed.
Views should have been great — it really should have. After all, rap hadn’t seen a run like Drake’s 2015 in years. It was, in many ways, a truly perfect storm: What A Time To Be Alive wasn’t just a mixtape title, it was a fitting celebration of the contagious confidence the Toronto rapper oozed on “Hotline Bling,” “Back to Back,” and everything in between. Views should have been more of the same, if not better — especially since it seemed to be a return to the more personal Drake of Take Care and Nothing Was The Same.
“This album, I’m very proud to say, I feel like I told everybody how I’m actually feeling, not what this person’s going through and this person’s going through that affects me … This is more like ‘This is where I’m at,'” he told Zane Lowe in a pre-release interview.
But it isn’t really.
Maybe Drake has a different definition of “personal,” but throughout the album’s more than 80 minutes of meandering R&B and stoically sentimental rap verses, there’s barely any semblance of the notoriously calculated rapper’s personality. His usually charismatic smirk is as blunted as longtime collaborator Noah “40” Shebib’s beautiful but colorless production, which sounds crafted to match the album cover. And despite his interview claims, nearly every song here is addressed to a faceless “you;” sometimes a former lover, sometimes an overly-critical hater. If this is truly Drake at his most personal, Toronto’s golden son leads a fairly sad existence apparently platinum albums don’t fuel the ego.
Admittedly, Drake albums are never deep character studies. And if the music on Views was as interesting as it was on previous records, the return of insecure Aubrey might be more tolerable — If You’re Reading This offered introspective tracks that remain amongst his best. But instead, Views is a record that’s twice as long as it needs to be and only half as interesting.
Trap-leaning cuts like “Hype” and “Grammys,” provide 808s without the heartbreak, and emotional R&B ballads like “Redemption” and “Fire & Desire” wax poetic about lost love but wane musically, with beats that overstay their welcome by full minutes. There are definitely great songs on Views: “Weston Road Flows” is an impressive tribute to the city that made the man, and the dance hall-flavored pop tracks — “One Dance,” “Controlla” and the Rihanna-starring “Too Good” — are safe but extremely enjoyable explorations of Toronto’s Caribbean heritage.
It’s always been apparent that Drake plays a character — it’s just that this time, the character has become a little played out. Unlike the obvious progression showcased on each of Drake’s previous albums, Views is an obvious step sideways, marred by expectations too high and a feeling of complacency.
“I’d share more of my story, but you wouldn’t believe it,” he claims on album closer “Views.”
Next time, try us, Drake.
-P.B.
1.5/4 Testudos from Molly Podlesny
I like Drake. I do. For all his over-the-top sports fanboying, grandpa sweaters and his whole ocean of emotions, I’ve got a soft spot for the guy.
Views, though. What to do about Views? The best things to come out of this album weren’t things Drake even did on his own, but the memes he inspired.
I kid. That isn’t fair. But the best tracks are the ones where he’s accompanied by other artists. With help from OVO artist PARTYNEXTDOOR on “With You” and foreign talents Wizkid and Kyla on “One Dance,” Views has a few tracks that warrant tapping the repeat button a few times.
Unfortunately, listeners have to slog through seven tracks to get there. The album starts with “Keep the Family Close,” which is five minutes and 28 seconds of snooze. It would have done better as a bonus track at the end, along with “Hotline Bling.”
There’s a brief reprieve at track four, “Feel No Ways,” a break-up ballad about a girl who was no good from the beginning. With an ’80s vibe and catchy rhyming post-hook, “Feel a way, feel a way, young n—- feel a way / I’ve stopped listening to things you say,” the song throws it back to an earlier time.
Witty lyricism on “Weston Road Flows” redeems the boring flow of the music itself.
“But shit ain’t always how it seems when it’s sewed together / Yeah, I let that last line breathe, it take a second to get it.” When Drake spits that over background singers that sound vaguely like lost souls wailing from the depths of Hades, the effect is surprisingly not terrible.
Views‘ crowning jewel is “Too Good,” a duet with Rihanna. Unpopular opinion alert: It’s better than “Work.” The message is the opposite — it’s typical Drake claiming he’s put too much time and effort into someone undeserving. That mixed with the Caribbean influences and Popcaan sample make it one part relatable, two parts jammable.
A full listen-through will have you wondering: When does it get better? Sometimes, it does. But mostly, it’s just a wait until you get to “Hotline Bling,” which signals the merciful end of a lifeless album.
-M.P.
3/4 Testudos from Casey Kammerle
We live in a time when if a song doesn’t pass the “aux cord test” — a scientific measure evaluating how much a track bumps in the car — it isn’t given the time of day. You might get banished from aux privileges if you play anything other than Desiigner’s “Panda.” Sometimes, though, you just want to throw on an album with ear-massaging jams like those on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which I mention because it’s the last album I’ve enjoyed front to back as much as the masterfully constructed musical treasure that is Drake’s Views.
This 20-song collection of pure sonic relief is Drake’s best work yet, a refreshing turn-around from his disappointing, trap-infused What a Time to Be Alive. It seems as though the 6 God conceived a new recipe for the album that fuses the top qualities of his three greatest bodies of work: Blend the confidence of If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, the consistency of Nothing Was the Same and just a sprinkle of feels from Take Care, and voilà! Views is born.
The journey begins with “Keep the Family Close,” a smooth ballad consistent with Drake’s unwavering ability to produce top-notch opening tracks, joining the likes of “Over My Dead Body,” “Tuscan Leather” and “Legend,” to name a few.
The spine-tingling “Redemption” — next in line after the instant classic that is “Weston Road Flows” — had me contemplating all the mistakes I’ve made with my hypothetical girlfriends over the years.
But in typical Drake fashion, for every track that made you want to dial up your ex, there are equally as many speaker-cranking slappers that come in the form of “Hype” and “Grammys,” featuring Future.
Even the songs we’ve already heard through early releases — including “Controlla,” “One Dance,” “Pop Style” and “Hotline Bling” — have been redefined within the context of the entire body of work. For example, “Hotline Bling,” a song that was bludgeoned to death by American pop-culture (how could the song possibly survive a Saturday Night Live parody featuring Donald Trump?), had a whole new appeal after first listening to the 19 tracks that precede it.
In bestowing Views upon us mere mortals, the 6 God solidified his role as one of the greatest products the music industry has ever had to offer, and he’s doing so in his own self-created genre: He’s neither a rapper nor an R&B artist. Views isn’t the album we expected; it’s the album we deserved, whether we know it yet or not.
Drizzy will always have as many haters as he has nicknames, but that comes with the territory at the top. We can’t all have houses in L.A. and bigger pools than Ye, but we can all have Drake’s newest album (for a mere $13.99 on iTunes). And if you don’t want to give Views a chance because you can’t respect Drake’s success and divine status for whatever petty reason, he explains on the titular track “Views” that it makes sense.
“If I was you, I wouldn’t like me either.”
Too true.
-C.K.
1.5/4 Testudos from Danielle Ohl
“I don’t run out of material / You shouldn’t speak on me, period” a confident Aubrey “Drake” Graham raps on, “Hype,” the fifth track off his recent release, Views.
Well, Drake, I hope you won’t mind too much if I try with you.
By the time Toronto’s most famous native makes this bold claim, it feels mostly like he’s trying to convince himself, as well as his listeners, that his lyrical prowess deserves a 20-song LP. It doesn’t.
On Views, Drake is both cocky and cautious, waxing braggadocious without making the emotional committal that previously endeared entire populations to his signature ballad rap.
The result is boring, boring, boring.
All congratulations to an artist confident enough to sit on his laurels and continue to jack dance-hall pop, but please forgive me if I brush past the uninspired balladic intonations and plastic-wrapped production.
Rap and hip-hop are having their Mesopotamian moment. Experimentation is crucial to stay relevant. So, frankly, you can’t rely on a trap high-hat, some ambient noise and monotone bars for literally half an album when K. Dot is employing an entire orchestra.
There are what I want to call glimmers on the album — “Pop Style” is a flavorful jam, and Rihanna saves “Too Good” — but then, upon second thought, would this album even be worth review if not for the Drake goggles?
Maybe. But me, I’m just done in the hype.
-D.O.
