Welp, he’s back. Kinda.
Coming off of an embarrassing defeat in one of the most public rap feuds in history, Toronto rapper Drake needed something to reestablish himself as one of the titans in the hip-hop landscape. When he revealed his next album would be a collaborative project with frequent associate and R&B artist PARTYNEXTDOOR, some fans were not encouraged he would be able to.
Drake’s last several albums have been plagued by bloated tracklists, needlessly long runtimes and lackluster stretches of sleepy melodic rapping. After his loss to Kendrick Lamar, his next moves needed to be as strategic as possible.
Instead, he made every wrong decision.
Releasing the album less than a week after Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance was a choice. The collaboration with PARTYNEXTDOOR all but confirmed it would be much of the same low-energy, derivative music that has become a staple of Drake projects over the last seven years. Then the tracklist came out, revealing the album’s 75-minute runtime, and the nails might as well have already been in the coffin.
Mercifully, the album is not without its good moments. The intro, “CN TOWER,” is a spacey, mellow lead into the record, complete with an interesting melodic progression and a constantly evolving beat that keeps the track interesting.
“GIMME A HUG” is a departure from the R&B focus of the record into a more high energy rap performance. He reflects on the beef with lyrics like, “F— a rap beef, I’m tryna get the party lit.”
Four songs later, “NOKIA” employs a creative sample to provide another more traditional hip-hop track.
Unfortunately, the high points end there.
It’s frankly difficult to pull specific tracks out of this mess to explain just how boring the record is, because the chief disappointment of “$ome $exy $ongs 4 U” is just how sheerly uninteresting and similar every track is. So many songs just blend together, and once you’ve heard one, you’ve basically heard them all.
But there are a few offerings that transcend the monotony in the worst way possible.
“GLORIOUS” sees Drake on a drill-adjacent beat with some of the most lackluster delivery of his career. He sounds entirely disinterested throughout the track. Of course, he can’t help himself from slipping into a faux British accent at multiple points throughout.
As bad as most of the record is, there is no greater atrocity than “MEET YOUR PADRE.” Drake once again employs an accent, rapping in both English and Spanish over a beat clearly supposed to emulate Latin hip-hop.
The whole track is a cheap imitation, made worse with lines from Drake like, “I want your phone número, por favor.” There are truly no words to describe how lazy and, frankly, offensive this song is. It feels like some kind of auditory hate crime.
“$ome $exy $ongs 4 U” is one of the worst albums in Drake’s catalog, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. In perhaps the most interesting moment of Drake’s career, he released his most uninspired and uninteresting record since his rise to superstardom.
This latest release is a massive missed opportunity, and the killshot of one of the most decisive losses to a rap beef ever.
If Drake returns once more, he’ll need to bring with him an undeniably great album. Otherwise, the years of Drizzy dominating the rap game will quickly become a thing of the past.
