


“Jorja Interlude” samples a song he released six years ago “Get It Together” mostly just refurbishes a 2010 tune from the South African producer Black Coffee with new vocals. The ostensibly humbler ambitions of More Life allow Drake to pull some moves that might draw flack on another album. He’s so aware of what everybody else is doing musically that he likes to introduce new music and new artists to the rest of the world.” The producer Nineteen85 explained to Billboard that Drake has “so many good ideas that he just wants to put out without making it a big ordeal” and that he calls More Life a playlist “because he has a bunch of people in a space, hanging out…. The focus here is on Drake as curator and kingpin, bringing together a diverse set of sounds from around the globe in tracks structured to deliver all-enveloping vibes rather than the suspense and release of pop hits. And rather than presenting itself as a comprehensive reckoning with Drake’s place in life and in his career, it’s framed as a sign of generosity, a bonus, another helping-“ more chune for your head tops” Drake says in a sample that recurs throughout these songs like a radio-station bumper tag. Its release date was announced only a day in advance it dropped on a Saturday night rather than the industry-standard music-delivery time of Friday morning there aren’t physical copies. More Life is a stealthier, less-weighted project. The album had been hyped since 2014, looming as Drake’s great forthcoming opus even while he enjoyed success from his mixtape If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, his Future team-up What a Time to Be Alive, and the one-off hit “Hotline Bling.” When Views finally arrived, its cover had Drake sitting at the top of Toronto’s CN Tower, an image fitting the sense of culmination that surrounded it. That it proved immensely popular upon its release will only serve to reinforce his misguided belief that he's the best rapper around.More Life follows 2016’s Views, a hugely popular album that earned an Album of the Year Grammy nomination after breaking chart records and producing Drake’s first No. The few choice tracks, high-profile guests, and occasional stylistic shifts aren't enough to keep More Life from being another disappointing release. They only serve to showcase his flaws and make it clear that More Life is another overly serious, musically uninteresting effort. That track and Sampha's feature ("4422"), where the singer gets deeper emotionally than Drake ever has, don't do Drake any favors. His dramatic rapping and outsized persona put Drake to shame on "Ice Melts." He's Technicolor, while Drake is various shades of gray.
How long is drake more life album free#
There are some tracks that break free of the boredom and show some kind of pulse - usually the tracks where guests drop by and add their skills to the mix. These moments are too few and far between and most of the record sits right in the center of the rut Drake has dug for himself over the years.

The bubbling "Passionfruit" is Drake at his smooth, melancholy best, showing off his skill at creating surprising melodies and entrancing atmosphere. He only really comes to life on the songs where he drops the hard façade and lets some of his emotion show through, like the lovely island-inflected groover "Get It Together," which features Jorja Smith killing it in the role often occupied by Rihanna, or the dark-night-of-the-soul ballad "Nothings into Somethings," which balances his intimate crooning with introspective rapping. Listening to track after track of molasses-slow trap featuring Drake going on about how once he was on the bottom and now is firmly cemented at the top is tiresome at best, painful at worst. The main problem is that he's a better hip-hop-inspired R&B singer than he is an R&B-inspired rapper, but he refuses to acknowledge it. Over the course of 22 songs and almost an hour and a half of music, Drake shows again why he's one of the most frustrating rappers in the world. After releasing the hugely popular but artistically underwhelming Views in 2016, Drake went back to the mixtape approach for his next release, 2017's More Life.
