LM: The thing that struck me about the production is that it’s really spooky, and really cagey, and really disorientating. Apart from low-end or whatever, what do people think about the production overall, compared to past Drake records? I think that he’s tried so hard to build an album, from start to finish, and the fact that it lulls is quite telling… But is it the production that causes that, or Drake on his own, or a combination? What are people’s takes on 40 and Drake as a team?

TL: I think it lulls because of Drake – I don’t think he has the hooks to carry it through here. I think 40’s production is almost more hooky than it’s ever been; as you say, it’s quite eerie, but there are also these almost Just Blaze-esque moments to it, which are quite buried but they’re there. And if it was carried by someone with better hooks, which traditionally Drake has been, then I think it could work. You mentioned meme bait before, and one thing Drake’s always been incredibly good at, whether it’s YOLO or No New Friends or whatever, is having these throwaway lines that stick around and take on a life of their own. I don’t even see what could do that from this album.

CK: Flexible? Plus, ‘Started from the Bottom’ is on the record, and has dominated the conversation for the last however many months. I think Drake still has it, whether it’s in hooks or not I don’t know.

LM: This is the thing though, YOLO’s the biggest fucking thing ever, right, and that was just a throwaway line. I’m listening to this record and I’m not trying to find a hook, but I can’t even see a smaller, lesser equivalent to something like that. I’m struggling with this record to find the few lines, or few moments, that could define it. I feel like there are a lot of choices, but no clear winner or two.

CK: I think that’s how it works – I know it’s stage-managed and controlled on his part, but is he actually in the studio going ‘ok, this is the line that Twitter’s going to make into a hashtag’? It is a little organic, at least.

JM: It definitely doesn’t have the pained sloganeering that Jay-Z had on his last record. The earworms do at least feel like they’ve been raised on organic soil rather than grown in an earworm factory.

CK: Jay-Z is this close to having a song with a hashtag in the title, and Drake is staying away from that. That’s good at least.

TL: Does anyone else find the Wu-Tang thing really put on?

JT: No! I wanted to reference that specifically, because we were talking about the production and the mood of the record, and I think the mood of the record is perhaps a lot more important than the things he’s saying. The mood, for me, seems most influenced by Wu-Tang – you’re right, he mentions it a lot and it’s pretty trite, but the usage of this spooky, off-key piano stuff, and the way that the samples are chopped, it seems like him and 40 have spent the last year sitting around listening to a lot of Wu-Tang, and letting it influence the mood of the entire album.

LM: Elements of the Wu-Tang thing seem incredibly forced to me, I mean this is the guy who has a tattoo of Aaliyah’s face on his back. And he was a child when she was releasing her records. I’m struggling a little bit with the sincerity of his hero worship.

TL: It feels like he’s rewriting his own history. I can’t remember him ever really referencing Wu-Tang before, and now he’s got all these lines about being a kid listening to Cappadonna or whatever.

LM: This is my point about him trying so hard to build a legacy with this album, he’s referencing legacy rap artists here.

JT: Is anything he says genuine though? Him or 40 have clearly been listening to a lot of Wu-Tang around the making of this record – are we questioning the authenticity of him saying that he’s into it, or are we questioning the fact that he’s saying he’s always been into it?

LM: I don’t think it’s that he’s into it, he’s allowed to like what he likes and I’m sure he likes a ton of music that doesn’t get anywhere near this album. But by labouring the Wu-Tang point and by labouring the legacy point, it feels a little bit trite. Something I really want to talk about with this album is the way that Drake talks about relationships. Listening to this record, the way he talks about women, and what they do post-Drake, is really messing with me. The way he says like, ‘oh well, after me you got married and had kids – poor you’. Drake, just because a women has had sex with you doesn’t mean she owes you anything. It seems like he can’t complete a relationship narrative, everything eventually falls by the wayside.

JT: You’re right to link it to The Weeknd, because that narrative is very similar across the two albums.

JM: With the parallels between this and Kiss Land, what’s interesting about both these records is that Kiss Land really relies on context to work or not work. The fact that Abel Tesfaye went from being this enigmatic, half-shadowy figure that we never quite got a read on gave so much to Trilogy, and after he was outed, Kiss Land feels so meagre by comparison. If you’re going to try and create a very personal, personalised, emotionally wrought aesthetic, then people have to believe in it. People stopped believing in The Weeknd, and I wonder if Drake will undergo that process in the coming months.

CR: It’s a classic problem, but now he’s a few records in it feels like he doesn’t have anything to say – nothing that he hasn’t said before in slightly different ways.

CK: But how many stories has Drake had his entire career? No one respects me, he’s got a chip on his shoulder, he’s got his friends who he’ll hang out with and he’ll never forget, and he has problems with relationships – even before he had money from music that’s been his narrative. The relationship thing is troubling, but I don’t think it’s any more or less troubling than it has been on previous Drake albums.

LM: But the way he talked about relationships beforehand, I feel was very much… about groupies, or whatever, but on this album it’s so fucking bitter, some of the things he talks about. This unnamed, unmentionable slew of women who he sleeps with, apparently, and he’s so bitter about the fact that they have their own lives post-Drake.

JT: It’s bitter in a way that, say, 808s & Heartbreak isn’t. 808s had similar stories, but filled with regret for the fact that these people went and had their own lives while Kanye was still stuck in this cycle of fame. This comes across as the absolute opposite of that, it isn’t regret but resent. It’s interesting that it’s two similarly meteoritic characters who have quite similar personalities, but Kanye has the bad guy character for whatever reason, whereas Drake has this soft, nice guy image. But if you listen closely to the way that they talk about relationships and talk about their lives, it’s closer to the opposite of their public persona.

JM: There’s a surprising amount of crossover in the way that they talk about relationships, but where Yeezus came out with this kind of wham bam, endlessly brutal succession of digs, with Drake I find it as offensive but it’s the insidiousness of it that makes it worse. You know in American Pie, the one who joins the choir in order to get off with Mila Suvari? This feels like that but without the redemptive ending.

CR: Is there a redemptive ending to American Pie? I guess Drake just needs to get laid, then he’ll have his redemption.

JM: This feels like the album where the virulent, if not misogyny, then certainly objectification and one-track mindedness that he’s got… it’s where the sensitivity becomes crocodile tears.

LM: Another thing that I’m really struggling with is his flow? I know that sounds like a boring thing to talk about, but I can’t decide whether he’s trying so hard to sound like he’s trying hard, or whether he’s trying so hard to sound effortless, but I feel that there’s not as much cadence and melody and intrigue in his flow as he had on previous records. I think he’s trying so hard to prove that he’s now a rapper who made amazing r’n’b records and now he’s making the rap record, that his flow’s become really try-hard. It’s almost devoid of melody. It’s quite dull and forced.

JT: It sounds like he’s responding to critics who say he’s not a good rapper. On those early albums he wasn’t one, in a technical sense, but it’s kind of what made them good, and so addictive.

TL: He sounded so natural on them, too, whereas something like ‘Worst Behaviour’ here just feels really forced.

JM: I think some of that is a product of the fact that for the last year, in the public eye at least, he’s been having a succession of fairly regular guest spots – he’s been working as a short-form guest verse writer, and doing quite well at it, but now he’s come back to writing long-form – three, four minute structured songs – he’s struggling at it.

JT: Well in that case he’s part of a long lineage of rappers who study the craft so much that they become totally unlistenable, like Yelawolf. It seems like the more time he’s put into perfecting his craft, the less natural it’s become. You can hear rap tropes much more here, like ‘oh, I know where he picked that up from’, whereas on past albums even if something didn’t work it was more like ‘oh, well that’s Drake’s thing, that’s what he does’. Now it sounds like very specific, learned elements from the rap sphere are raising their head. I don’t know if you can criticise his flow – I mean he’s nailed those guest verses in the past year, he’s made them his own, ‘No New Friends’ may as well be a Drake track…

CK: There’s that line about “working like I have a twin”, and it’s true – him and 2 Chainz seem to have guested on every track released between their albums. But as Drake’s become more workmanlike and his flow’s become more laboured, it’s losing its emotion and its personality. He’s the opposite of Kanye again in that sense.

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