This side of Stompin' Tom, has there ever been a more Canadian album title than this? “Take care” is what our cautious nation says instead of “See you later,” a pinch of worry added to “Goodbye.” This must apply at least subliminally to Drake on his second album, though he says he took care over this one (which also includes a single called Take Care) because the debut disc was rushed.
Back then, a long 17 months ago, Drake was the guy emerging from the cannon's mouth, trailing mix tapes that everyone wanted to hear, getting Grammy nominations for music that wasn't even for sale, vanishing at times into the blinding smoke that rises from the fire that lights, and sometimes consumes, the Next Big Thing.
By now, the hip-hop star from Toronto's posh Forest Hill hood has had time to see what ensues when you're careless enough to become famous, when people who don't know you read what you may have done at a party last night, and with whom. The drawbridge has ticked up a few notches – no interviews just now, thanks – though in his liner notes, Drake still wants to be our local hero. “I've tried my best to make the soundtrack to our lives in this city,” he writes, shouting out to local friends (including main producer and co-writer Noah Shebib) as well as his favourite Chinese resto. But “our lives” mostly means his and those in the charmed circle where money is no longer a problem of not enough.
Drake is feeling his position, as we hear in grandiose numbers such as Lord Knows, when he wonders whether he's “a descendent of Marvin or Hendrix;” in the swagger of Over My Dead Body (written with Chantal Kreviazuk); and in repeated references to rappers he feels are claiming a place at a table he set. He sees the distorted image in the media mirror in Headlines; in the sardonic Cameras (“look like we in love, but only on camera”); and in Lil Wayne's hilarious send-up of interviewers and their dumb, dead-end questions (HYFR), to which Weezy's recommended answer is always “Hell, yeah.”
Of course, there are also ballads and ruminations on new connections and blown relationships and on chilly echoes that arise even when the story seems to be over. Practice confidently defines all the girl's previous guys as warm-ups; Marvins Room drunk-dials a complaint about the ex's inferior new guy; and The Real Her puzzles over a quandary best summarized (again) by Lil Wayne: “Sometimes I stevie wonder about her.” Drake's verses are seldom so incisive. He also edges into the shade when Andre 3000, Rick Ross and Kendrick Lamar show up for their cameos.
Drake still has his butter-soft crooning tone, a nice contrast to the saw edge that creeps into his drawling patter. Unfortunately most of the album's tunes noodle around so aimlessly that you wish he would just give it up and rap, at least until a real melodist joins his crew. The musical interest is all in the instrumentals, which range from the slow, simmering groove that drives Cameras to the crowded-church sound of Lord Knows to the softly glowing electronics and organic drums of Marvins Room, which sounds as if someone learned a few things from the late great Lhasa.
Drake's energy seems highest in the duet with Nicki Minaj (the propulsive respect anthem, Make Me Proud); his title single with Rihanna only half engages her strength; and the title of the Stevie Wonder duet Doing It Wrong is cruelly accurate. Even when you take care, things can go south.
Take Care
- Drake
- Young Money/Cash Money/Universal Republic
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