So Views,
When Views dropped I was in a car while it was pouring raining outside. The album starts with rain and car sounds so I figured I was in the right place to listen to it.
And listen to it I did.
Drake makes albums the way Will Smith makes movies; they're all gooood but they're all the same. It's a formula that works pretty well and leaves you satisfied, most of the time.
Views is good, it's fun, but it becomes pretty clear that Drake isn't a rapper. Drake is an entertainer.
Drake wants to rap but he doesn't wanna be a rapper. When Meek called him out for using a ghostwriter he didn't refute the claims. He had his team and the Internet diss Meek FOR him. Plus Meek is kind of an idiot so it wasn't to hard to win. But still, Drake didn't outrap Meek, he out ENTERTAINED him.
Drake is a rapper the same way Jimmy Fallon's a comedian. He's entertaining, can get the job done if necessary and might have a secret drinking problem. But at the end of the day, he works his ASS off. This album has 81 writers, you gotta be on your grind to keep in touch with 81 people.
At the same time with 81 writers this album has a lot of corny lines (Shout out to Chaining Tatum) Plus He's also not the deepest guy in the world. He loves his family, his friends, women, his feelings and his town. Every song is breaks down as "I'm the best to ever do it" "my city is insane" "please don't leave me" "how dare you talk to anyone else"
That's where it's weird, for a dude that's so free with his emotions he's got a skewed vision of women. On one track he says "I mass text my exes and tell them they belong to me" but on the next he's mad that a girl is dating other people. Now the dream is to have mad bitches, that's what raps about. But if those bitches don't have their own niggas to keep themselves occupied when you're not around that's patriarchal as fuck.
That's my biggest beef with this album, there's no progression in Drakes thinking, it's like he got successful so he could fuck all the hot girls who curved him when he was just a run of the mill TV star. And now that he's slept with all these women, he wants to...keep sleeping with more women, AND these women. Like he went from being the nice guy in high school who lost to all the girls to the jocks, and then he got rich and in shape so he could be one of the jocks. Like he didn't learn anything from his experience, he never strived to be better, just strived to be THEM.
Plus I'm really not a fan of Jamaican Drake, he sounds less like he's been hanging out with Yardies and more like he's been hanging out with the cool pool cleaners at his Sandals Resort.
But with all this said, a Drake album will always have hits. They might be vapid, they might be shallow, but when I need to snapchat girls lyrics when I'm drunk, Drizzy always holds me down.
I give this album 7.5 Awkward Aaliyah Tattoos out of 10.