“Underground Kings” and “HYFR” find Drake experimenting with new cadences while spitting faster than he did on Thank Me Later, while Boi-1da and 40’s “Headlines” is both harder and hookier than any of the other singles on the album. While the production on Take Care’s other hard-hitting numbers, most of which come courtesy of T-Minus, don’t live up to Just Blaze’s high standard, they do give Drake a pretext for showing off his immeasurably improved flow. A line like “I know that showin’ emotion don’t ever mean I’m a pussy” could read as overly defensive, but Drake delivers it like a battle cry. The track also contains a number of Take Care’s best lines, with Drake joking about drinks being on the house “like Snoopy” and shooting back at his tough-guy detractors. There, Just Blaze replicates the massive, speaker-blowing soul that he brought to Jay Electronica’s “Exhibit C,” but ups the volume a few more notches for an instant classic, soon to be heard blasting from an Escalade near you. Just Blaze’s track on “Lord Knows” just might be the best one on the album, and it’s certainly not going to be confused with one of 40’s productions. Even the guys who claim they only bought Thank Me Later for their girlfriend will find the bangers on Take Care a lot harder to write off. If that style remains Drake’s forte, he’s nonetheless come a long way in his ability to carry a harder-hitting rap track. Meanwhile, 40’s production positively aches and Stevie Wonder cuts in for a heartfelt harmonica solo.Ĭertainly, the ladies love them some Drake, and that’s not liable to change anytime soon given how artfully he and 40 approach their trademarked, minimalist slow jams.
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Instead, it’s a ruminative breakup ballad where Drake invites his ex to “cry if you want to, but I can’t stay to watch you, that’s the wrong thing to do,” unsure of how to comfort her without giving her false hope. “Doing It Wrong,” for example, is every bit as powerful as “Marvin’s Room,” but it doesn’t contain a single line about adjusting to stardom. Take Care’s thematic bent is less monological, with its slower numbers exploring loneliness, heartbreak, and mistrust in a register that’s infinitely harder to dismiss now that Drake seems to have given up on thinking that those problems would all just disappear if he gave up his money and fame. As evidenced by the drunk-dial anthem-turned-sleeper-hit “Marvin’s Room,” he’s yet to totally get a handle on his fame, though he’s certainly less liable to wring his hand over the matter than he was on Thank Me Later. In many ways, the Drake of Take Care is still the same Drake, embodying narcissism and sensitivity in equal measure. Anyone who wants to explain that album’s success in terms of its music has to build their argument on what? Passable rapping, barely passable singing, and a batch of tracks that flirt with a distinctive identity for all of four or five songs before capitulating into moodier variations on sounds that its high-priced producers had long driven into the ground? The truth is, Thank Me Later was a fairly average rap album that worked because it doubled as a truly effective character study, one that introduced a likeable protagonist before plunging the listener into Drake’s deeply conflicted psyche, flush with confidence on one track and absorbed in self-pity on the next, shouting out his overachieving lady friends on “Fancy” before getting friendly with the pole dancers on “Miss Me.” By far the most salient feature of Drake’s persona is his superabundant, almost gushing sincerity, which combines with his total self-absorption to make him a veritable icon for Generation Overshare (or “a time where its recreation to pull all your skeletons out the closet like Halloween decorations,” as he puts it on “Lord Knows”). Has there ever been a rapper as charismatic as Drake? In some sense, the phenomenal success of his platinum debut, Thank Me Later, is just one more testament to how much people like the guy.
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