Drake has many aliases, from his well-known role as “Jimmy” in the TV series Degrassi to his real life identity as Aubrey Drake Graham, the biracial Canadian born to a Jewish upper class family. His newest identity is the rapper apprentice to Lil Wayne, another popular artist infamous for his many tattoos and shockingly explicit songs.
Released just two weeks ago, Drake’s Take Care has 18 songs, with titles like “Shot for Me,” “Make Me Proud,” and “Over my Dead Body,” to name a few.
Upon its debut, the album’s title song reached #1 on Billboard’s 200. The song featured Rihanna, Drake’s Bajan friend and ex-girlfriend.
Zoe Himmel ’14 said, “I like [Drake’s] sound, and I like that he’s not only a rapper. He sings too, and he’s very creative.” However, after listening to his album, I beg to differ. Drake’s presence is easy to locate in his songs; he’s the rapper with the nasily-autotuned voice, adding unnecessary profanity to display a little attitude.
In the first song on the album, “Over My Dead Body,” Drake begins by talking about the multitude of sexual encounters he’s had with a ranging group of women, among other offensive references. The other songs in the album tend to follow suit, with the occasional song like “The Real Her,” an autotuned disaster that never mentions anything about a girl.
Another song on the album called “Make Me Proud” describes a girl who is a good bed partner (and all that other stuff, added as an unimportant side note). I thought that featuring Nicki Minaj to represent the song’s subject was a nice touch, until Nicki started spilling out words that were completely incoherent with the theme that Drake was attempting to convey.
In fact, most of the rapping that Drake does in his album wouldn’t be called rapping; he’s half singing and half speaking the phrases with the help of autotune and distracting background music.
Drake’s Take Care should go back to the drawing board; the actor-turned-rapper should create lyrics that mean something, invest in Rapping 101 courses, and stop trying so hard to live up to the standards of rappers who actually experienced hardships in order to achieve their current positions.