Dominant hip-hop artist Drake dropped his newest album, “For All The Dogs,” on October 6. Although the 23-track album is filled to the brim with features from many prominent artists, his songs are more bad than good overall.
Compared to his latest release, his prior album, “Her Loss,” contained only 16 songs, which also lacked variety in lyrics, and creativity in music. Even though most of both albums contained mediocre songs, “Her Loss” outranks “For All The Dogs” as it contains more upbeat, dance worthy, rap-like songs such as “Rich Flex” and “CircoLoco.”
With features from artists ranging from Yeat to SZA, there was no commonality or flow between tracks, and the moods constantly changed from song to song. Notably, the album jumps from J. Cole, who sings majestically in “First Person Shooter” to Yeat’s raps and bass drops in “IDGAF,” making the album difficult to listen through chronologically.
Additionally, a common theme among his solo songs in the album was their similar beats and lyrics concerning love and betrayal in a relationship. Songs like “Virginia Beach,” “Bahamas Promises,” “Tried our Best,” and “7696 Santa,” all contained the same auto-tuned Drake sound.
However, the songs that I thoroughly enjoyed individually were “First Person Shooter” ft. J. Cole, “Slime You Out” ft. SZA and “IDGAF” ft. Yeat. The song, “First Person Shooter,” with J. Cole, sang wonderfully and the chorus constantly switched between Drake and J. Cole with perfect timing. “Slime You Out” was a great song solely due to SZA’s solo, as Drake’s performance on this song is ordinary, due to its redundant tune. “IDGAF” started off with a great opening drop, as Drake dropped his iconic, and now viral, bar “money for fun.”
Other honorable mentions from his album are “Daylight” and “Screw the World.” “Daylight,” the fifth song of the album, sounded very similar to “Sky” by Playboi Carti. In this song, Drake’s son, Adonis Graham, had his first feature, closing out the song and adding some uniqueness. The second mention, “Screw the World” is an interlude, leading to a more relaxing and simple song with a more RNB type of vibe.
Unlike Drake’s past albums, only three songs from “For all the Dogs” actually made it into my personal playlist. As someone who is a fairly new Drake listener, this album did not meet my expectations and had very few successful songs in my opinion.
Overall, Drake’s music as an entity is becoming stale, with his last two albums, “Her Loss” and “Certified Lover Boy,” having the same sound, similar lyrics and themes, and only having a few acceptable songs each album. This album felt as if Drake has lost his touch in creating sensations on his own, and has begun to rely on features from other artists making his albums great. I hope on his next album he releases, we get the old Drake back, with more of his uniqueness, and creativity.
