The baby is back with More Life, fusing old-school sad-boy, banger-oriented Drake with his newer Grime and South African influences. Following VIEWS was an easy feat, it being less of a cohesive album and more of a drawn-out diary entry. The popularity of the song “One Dance” and the mediocre album as a whole has solidified the notion that we will take whatever Drake gives, and we will like it. We will pretend that Drake understands us. We will memeify and idolize Drake until he is no longer a man, but a (6)God, granting the humble plebeians with his voice and devilish good looks. This is why I didn’t expect much from More Life.
To my surprise, the album read as a polished continuation of VIEWS. Drake did his homework on this one instead of blindly throwing out Caribbean references and sounds. More Life is filled with club jams while still upholding his classic emotional transparency. The mix is somewhat clustered which grants its appeal to the single-hungry rap game. His inclusion of phone calls from his mother and anonymous women screams old Drake, but the freedom from the rejection of a typical album in favor of a playlist-model exposed a (relatively) carefree Drake that we haven’t since If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.
To my surprise, the album read as a polished continuation of VIEWS. Drake did his homework on this one instead of blindly throwing out Caribbean references and sounds. More Life is filled with club jams while still upholding his classic emotional transparency. The mix is somewhat clustered which grants its appeal to the single-hungry rap game. His inclusion of phone calls from his mother and anonymous women screams old Drake, but the freedom from the rejection of a typical album in favor of a playlist-model exposed a (relatively) carefree Drake that we haven’t since If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.
With More Life, Drake cultivates a more collaborative practice, using this album to highlight insanely deserving, albeit lesser known talent like young British artist Jorja Smith, South African House producer Black Coffee, London rapper Giggs, Grime-god Skepta, and soulful Sampha. Kanye West takes the reigns on “Glow”, and Young Thug does the same with “Ice Melts”. Skepta, Giggs, and Black Coffee’s features certainly help with Drake’s credibility in producing Grime and South African House-inspired tunes. That being said, using these talented artists in the hopes of legitimizing himself is kind of like saying “guys I’m not racist, my best friend is black”. More thoughtless slang and cultural references span from Dubai to the Caribbean. But at this point, his feigned accent and dialect seems more like a nervous tick than intended cultural appropriation.
Drake writes lyrics that are simultaneously self-aware and clueless. I couldn’t help but laugh at “I don’t take naps. Me and the money are way too attached to go and do that” in the song “Gyalchester”, which I might add is a nickname for Manchester, Jamaica, where I’m sure Drake visited twice and just ‘fell in love with the energy’. Other self-unaware lyrics include boasting over his bodyguard’s arrest in “No Long Talk”, and who could forget “taller in person, you’ll see when we meet” in “KMT”.
The subject matter on this album is good old-fashioned Drake if I’ve ever heard it. We seem to forget that he’s been instilling this image of himself from the beginning as an Applebee’s-regular-turned-mink-wearing-icon. Each album is more impressed with itself than the former. From “Under Ground Kings” to “Started From The Bottom” and now with “Free Smoke”, Drake won’t let us forget his roots. But with no musical proof of said roots, the question of its validity arises. At roughly an hour and a half, More Life is hard to get through in one sitting. But given our typically sporadic consumption of music and media, this was a wise move. Drake gave us a medley of slow jams and upbeat pregame music, and for that, we thank him.