One of the most influential artists of the past decade, Drake, has released another full-length studio album, “For All The Dogs.” This album contains 23 songs, 10+ featured artists, but fails to create anything that even his superfans will remember.
Before the album’s release, fans were promised an album that would serve as a trip down memory lane when it comes to Drake’s sound, style, and lyrical ability. Instead of a nostalgic reminder of his musical prowess, this album serves as a blip on his impeccable catalog.
Drake is known for his melodic voice on his tracks, but the artist fell flat when it comes to his performance on a majority of this album. He sounds like he is going through the motions, on lyrical autopilot as he repeats phrases, and loses any sense of personality and charisma that his fans love. Songs such as “Daylight” and “Calling For You” match this description perfectly, sounding like other industry-manufactured songs with no intent to be unique. Drake attempts to use a more exciting tempo in “Daylight” but ends up just repeating the hook multiple times. “Calling For You” is one of the worst performances by Drake and collaborator, 21 Savage sonically and lyrically, with Drake having high-pitched vocals on a terrible beat.
If you thought that Drake’s songwriting would make up for his lack of energy, you were wrong. He has some of the most cringeworthy bars on this album on songs like “Virginia Beach”: “He gon’ find out that’s it’s on sight, like W-W-W.” You have songs like “Drew a Picasso” with infantile lyrics like “Movin like Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Feel like you tryna dog the Kid.” Look, I am here for the corny bars, but this album is taking them to a whole other level of cringe. This is sad because usually Drake is excellent at combining his soothing vocals with addicting lyrical work, but it is not working on this album at all.
The saving grace of this album was the production, which is amazing on this album, but I would not expect anything less from a Drake album. Despite it sounding good with string melodies, drum beats and bold instrumentals like trumpets, it does not make up for the lack of lyrical ability or energy on almost all the songs.
While being underwhelming overall, here are a few amazing highlights that I will definitely come back to. “8am in Charlotte” is by far the best song on this album, having Drake flow on a conductor beat with his usual lyrical ability. “First Person Shooter” has one of the best J. Cole features I have seen, with complex bars, nice flows and is overall a quality feature. “Tried Our Best” also has some catchy and complex bars by Drake, and the usage of SZA’s melodious voice does wonders for the track “Slime You Out.”
This album fails in almost every category. It’s lyrically dull, Drake is on autopilot on most of it, this album sounds like the artist wrote it on one flight. The only thing that is saving this album is the features. Would I listen to it once, yes, but would I listen to it twice, no. There are way better Drake albums to fill your time with and unfortunately this album is one of the worst in his catalog.
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