Album Review: “More Life” by Drake

The last thing anyone wanted from Drake in 2017 was more anything (except for maybe more pics of his dad), especially after his underwhelming, days-long 2016 effort, Views.

Crawling to that album’s 81st and final minute was a test of endurance. Not even Jay Z and Kanye West hung around for it.

More Life, Drake’s latest, is a full 27 seconds longer than Views. He doesn’t want us to call it an album. It’s not a mixtape either, which may as well be Latin for “without singles”. Mixtapes are also usually free, so maybe that’s why Drake’s christened More Life a “playlist” instead; evading the pressure of a proper album launch, and still paving a way to the top of the charts.

From a business perspective, 81-minute albums make a lot of sense. (More songs. More streams.) From a fan’s perspective, it’s gruelling. We like Drake and we appreciate his generosity. But after being bombarded with three straight hours of the weakest material of his career, fatigue has well and truly set in. Take a break, Aubrey. In six months, you’ve produced more music than there is in Hamilton.

In the meantime, let’s strip the More Life carcass for the meat that hasn’t yet turned. Fact is, you could cut this down to a hugely enjoyable 40-minute experience (and there’s almost no way to do that with the baroque, oft-angry Views; a criticism Drake pretty much admits to here).

There’s “Portland”, the unlikely, recorder-driven collaboration with Quavo and Travis Scott. There’s the ghost-in-the-machine groove of “Glow”, which features Kanye’s first major appearance since last year’s unpleasantness (though it was produced beforehand).  And there’s “Fake Love”, the cheap yet irresistible “Hotline Bling” rework that peaked with the rise of “Fake News”, strangely enough.

Third track “Passionfruit”, driven by what sounds like a calypso Theremin, is an early, hypnotic highlight, interrupting the introductory trap music that opens More Life, and dispelling the initial terror that this “playlist” might just secretly be Future’s third album of the month.

It’s followed by the gender-flipped “One Dance” sequel “Get It Together”, on which British teenager Jorja Smith croons over twinkling piano, only allowing Drake to duet on the beat-heavy chorus.

Of course, it’s here that Drake’s old, ethically-dubious habits return. Effectively covering “Superman” by Black Coffee, Drake stretches the boundary of what a sample is and can be, just as he did on “Take Care” and “Hotline Bling”. When Meek Mill suggested Drake’s songs were all ghost-written, he wound up taking one of the biggest, most sustained L’s in hip-hop history. You wonder how Meek would have fared if he lobbed the ‘copycat’ tag at him instead.

Drake would likely argue he’s more of a curator (something the “playlist” designation probably helps him get away with). Having identified the global success of “One Dance” and “Child’s Play”, not to mention his 2015 juggernaut “Hotline Bling”, Drake and long-time producer Noah “40” Shebib stick to the reggae dancehall playbook, extending the international flavour to the U.K.’s grime scene too.

(He complements this hands-across-the-world approach with some incredibly questionable English and Jamaican accents. It’s… discomfiting.)

The booming “Can’t Have Everything” even ends with a voicemail from Drake’s mum, Sandi Graham, suggesting that he’s borrowing from Frank Ocean’s answering machine now.

If you don’t think he’s that canny, you don’t know Drake. That canniness makes his recent flirtation with Jennifer Lopez seem suspicious, especially today, as it reaches its juicy climax: with the sampling of “If I Had Your Love” on More Life’s sultry centrepiece “Teenage Fever”.

Was this all part of the promotional roll-out, like Drake and RiRi’s maybe-romance in ‘16, or his fawning over Nicki Minaj, the ex to his nemesis Meek Mill, in ‘15? Does this thing go all the way to the top? (I’m thinking Drake’s dad. There’s surely a reason why he made the cover, moustache aside.)

Is Drake a curator or a copycat? A pop culture temperature-taker or lazy profiteer? Is this project more fun because it cribs more heavily from the dancehall playbook, or just more craven?

Loving Drake, Canada’s parent-friendly rap prince, was never meant to be this complicated. Now we really know what it feels like to be in a relationship with him.

3.5/5

More Life is now available.

Photo: Young Money