After being announced in Aug. of this year, Drake has been hard at work creating his new project “For All The Dogs.” With 23 tracks, this album runs a long one hour and 24 minutes. Drake has some of the hottest artists to feature on his album like Yeast, Bad Bunny, Sexyy Red and SZA. With all of the features on this album, it sometimes feels like these songs could be their own songs instead of Drake’s. It doesn’t mean that these tracks are bad, it just felt like some tracks didn’t even focus on Drake and his vocals. However, Drake has a decent amount of tracks on the album where he does shine and show growth from previous projects like “Honestly, Nevermind” and “Certified Lover Boy.” But with all of his growth it doesn’t really matter what Drake will come out with because listeners will still come back for more because he’s one of the top artists in the world. The problem that arises from this is that Drake can produce bloated albums and still gain a lot from that, this can be applied to “For all the Dogs” too, but Drake has also clearly grown from previous albums.
Every track on this album has a great moment that you could cut, pull out and listen to again, but there also seems to be a part that will either come off as corny or lackluster too. There aren’t a lot of these lackluster moments on the first quarter of the album, but the farther you go into this album the worse it gets. A great example of this is on the track “Fear of Heights,” where in the beginning of the track, Drake talks about how he’s caught up with one of his ex’s new guys. The lyrics in this part of the track don’t really show much and some of the lines are just bad. For example, “I’m in time, auntie … Okay, I’m auntie like your daddy sister, Auntie Like a family Picture and I had way badder bitches than you, TBH.” Then Drake stops and says, “let me spit” and changes the beat to an intense track where he’s tearing this person apart. He says they can’t keep up with him and they’re not good enough to have even been with him. This track does a good job at subverting the listeners idea of the track and shock the crowd with this tuff flow.
Another thing that Drake loves to do is tell the listener how high up he is and how much better he is compared to other rappers, which is usually really condescending and doesn’t look good on Drake’s part. But in the song “First Person Shooter (feat, J. Cole),” it’s a well deserved moment showing the listener that Drake has come a long way and he deserves the fame he has earned in his growth. Cole and Drake do a great job at telling the viewer that the big three (Drake, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar) produce heat and they gain the fame and viewers, just like it’s the Super Bowl. “Big as the Super Bowl, But the difference it’s just two guys playin’ shit that they did in the studio.” The vocals and baseline are perfect on this track and there aren’t many moments to pick out of this track that would be necessarily bad. Halfway through this track Drake switches up to a more hostile and heated beat, which is an interesting change for Drake because before this album Drake wasn’t really known for his heated and beat ‘em up beats. He was known more for his RNB side and at this point in the album Drake has already done a few beats like this.
A song that does bring Drake back to his R&B roots is “Tried Our Best,” which sounds like something from “Scorpion” or “More Life.” This song shows off Drake’s amazing vocals and has a nice guitar riff and piano chord, this is paired with Drake telling the listener that he’s done with the person he was with. This makes you think about who Drake is talking about, but this person has been talked about before in the album. In a previous track, “Calling For You,” there is a girl who’s complaining about a trip she presumably went on with Drake and how she wasn’t treated the best and the trip wasn’t up to her standards. Later, on the track “Bahamas Promises,” Drake raps about how a girl (probably the one talked about in “Calling For You”) ruined his Bahamas trip. So in this song Drake is trying to tell this person that he has to have a break from her because he doesn’t like being around her and how her friends do cock and it stresses him out. But Drake still tried to treat her right in the end.
One of the most anticipated tracks on this album was “Gently (featuring Bad Bunny)” but this song isn’t perfect. Bad Bunny’s verse on this track is really good and is paired with a great base line and a tight snare, which compliments his vocals on this track, but the problem with this is Drake. The track starts off with Drake doing a poor impression and not really saying much in his lyrics and making the beat strange “Baby, my wrist is from Casablanco … I live like Sopranos, Italianos.” Tying back to the problem with the features on some of these tracks — it feels like it could be the artists own songs and Drake is the feature on his own album. It feels like Drake should have done a better job on this track because Bad Bunny really carries this one.
One song that doesn’t really have much to say is “Away From Home.” There is no feature on this song and this isn’t a good song for Drake. At this point, Drake is trying to close off the album but this is one of the songs that is just a filler and doesn’t have anything to really offer. It’s another song that is telling us for the hundredth time that Drake has made something of himself and he has made it out of the trenches. But the song “First Person Shooter” is already like this, which had a good flow and had Drake really in the zone.
For a Drake album this is really nothing special, but Drake does change up from his past R&B roots, which does make for some insertion tracks but ultimately doesn’t really pick up for the lackluster second half of the album.
“For All The Dogs”: ★★★☆☆
