2011 recap!
Let's get this out of the way. Drake is a pretty shitty rapper. The album reeks of punchin frankensteins cobbled together from a dozen takes, with the new rap standard ample autotune during the crooning, but even during the rapping. Plus, I saw this guy on SNL and he was awful, out of breath, off the beat, struggling his ass off on a song that's not even that intricate, and nothing on this album shook me of the impression that this guy is using every trick in the book to cover up his flow deficiencies.
Also, this album reeks of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, from the reedy deliver, the autotune, the confessional tone, the alternating self promotion and self flaggelation, the shimmering production, right down to the Runaway => Marvin's Room epic-length emotional breakdown centerpiece.
That said, I liked that album a lot, and this pulls off a lot of the same tricks. The production is rich and gorgeous, the pathos occasionally brutally bracing, the structures inventive, unpredictable and exciting (all of which is on display on the strangely brilliant, singularly haunting Marvin's Room). I don't think I like Drake as a rapper, maybe not even as a man, but I can't quite look away from this album, the bad boy, sad boy, maybe we can fix him 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like weird, sad, complex R&B, with an unlovable, unignorable, self-hating narcissist at the center, couched in some the year's most listenable, ethereal soundscapes
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