My Gut Reaction: Drake - More Life (March 18, 2017)

The word “mixtape” has a much broader definition today than it did when they were first introduced into our chosen culture. Back in my earlier days as a music snob-slash-nerd, when the world was tinted in that sepia tone you see in older photographs and walking backwards through the snow, uphill both ways of course, was merely just how one got to school, a mixtape was a literal cassette tape whose content was made up of various songs pulled from multiple sources, either mixed together by a disc jockey (the more creative of whom would soon begin blending, remixing, and otherwise altering the songs at will) or lovingly compiled by a music snob-slash-nerd at home, usually with a theme and copious notes (if it was created with a special someone in mind), both types circulating amongst friend groups, social circles, and outward. These soon evolved into DJ-curated mixes that typically included as-yet-unreleased material from some of the genre’s faves as well as exclusive content (usually freestyles over another artist’s beat, sometimes songs that couldn’t be officially released for whatever reason), so as to help the DJ stand out in an increasingly crowded field. 

This eventually paved the way for artist-led mixtapes, both with previously released material and exclusives, which were still typically mixed by a DJ, although soon they were mostly left out of the equation as well. (Obviously DJs still create mixtapes today, of course, but the vast majority of those efforts aren’t seen on as broad a spectrum as those from a rapper or singer.) These days, a “mixtape” is merely an album that isn’t marketed as such. Officially, the reasons for that could be anything: the label didn’t want to provide any marketing budget for the project; perhaps the samples contained wherein were too costly (or impossible) to clear, so giving the project away for free download circumvents publishing rights while still promoting the artist; maybe the label didn’t want the project to count against the artist’s contractual obligation. It could be anything.

My theory? If the project bombs or otherwise has very little impact on the market, the artist can walk away clean by claiming that it was never meant to be considered an official part of the catalog.

Now obviously my definition of a “mixtape” from the previous paragraphs is very oversimplified, bypassing nuance and brevity in favor of talking shit about the subject of today’s post, October’s own Aubrey “Drake” Graham. He started his rap career toiling in the mixtape district, but once Lil Wayne signed him to a major label those actions ceased… at first. After turning in his first three full-length albums, though, his discography started getting weird. The two albums he dropped in 2015, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and the Future collaboration What A Time To Be Alive, were both classified as mixtapes despite each containing all-new original material. (The circumstances surrounding If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late were especially confusing, as Internet conspiracy theorists insisted that the “mixtape” label was utilized as a way to engineer his removal from the Young Money record label, an explanation which didn’t make sense even back then.) In 2020, Aubrey did it again with Dark Lane Demo Tapes, its very title seemed implingy that the tracks collected weren’t intended to be canon before anybody even pressed ‘play’.

Today’s post is about Drake’s 2017 release, More Life. This wasn’t promoted as a mixtape or an album, however – no, Aubrey deemed it to be a “playlist”, which sounds cool until you realize that he was just avoiding the “album” moniker again. Defense shields fully raised, Drake claimed that More Life was about creating a specific vibe throughout its twenty-two tracks, “a collection of songs that become the soundtrack to your life” as he told Complex at the time, and it consisted of all-new songs culled from multiple genres, featuring guests both old and new on the microphone and behind the boards. You know, like a regular Drake album. And like a regular Drake album, More Life debuted at number one on the Billboard charts, and like a regular Drake album, the man’s online defenders refuse to hear any discussion about the project’s fallacies, such as the fact that it’s called a “playlist” and not an “album”.

That’s okay though, I’m here now.

1. FREE SMOKE
More Life kicks off with the Hiatus Kaiyote song “Building a Ladder”, and as they just so happen to not be Drake, this lends credence to the whole “More Life is a playlist and not an album” thing. Except that Aubrey quickly steps in to interrupt the proceedings, first via a snippet of one of his award show acceptance speeches, and then with the entirety of “Free Smoke”, a Boi-1da production that sounds exactly the fucking same throughout the audio track, so our host’s verses and his “hook” (repetition of the song title, naturally) flow together like one overly long verse, which is frustrating to say the least, as the listener can’t release any of the tension built up during the bars if the chorus feels like an extension of the verse. Aubrey is in full brash shit-talk mode throughout “Free Smoke” (a song title that doubles as an invitation for anybody and everybody interested in taking a shot at his throne to fucking do it already), touching briefly on his so-called “humble” beginnings, both as a child and at the beginning of his rap career (where he would “fall asleep in sororities” while on tour, which, um, seems problematic for both sides of that equation) while boasting about his success, the way he trounced Meek Mill in that beef (without naming any names), and how he has J-Lo’s (old) number saved in his phone. Drake’s confident swagger would have been more palatable for me had the music been in any way engaging, but the monotonous instrumental never catches its stride, which isn’t surprising, as it sounds paper-thin and incomplete like a demo would. Aubrey doesn’t sound bad, though, which I suppose I should mention in the interest of fairness.

2. NO LONG TALK (FEAT. GIBBS)
It’s not exactly a whiplash effect, since the transition between ”Free Smoke” and “No Long Talk” is far from instantaneous, and the two beats feel virtually identical, but Aubrey’s immediate shift into the accent, slang, general demeanor, and probable squatting in the apartment of a UK rapper that has never existed may throw listeners for a loop. (Aside from those who are aware that Drake is hip hop’s answer to Kirby, absorbing the flows and slang of any foreign collaborator that dares share studio space with him.) Over a Murda Beatz concoction that’s going to sound plenty generic to non-connoisseurs of trap music (so most of you two, I’d reckon), Drake shouts-out the guy that performs the song’s intro, his boy Baka Not Nice (a guy convicted, not accused, convicted on human trafficking charges that our host continues to hang out with for some reason – I mean, regardless of whether or not Baka did that shit for real, you’d think Aubrey would distance himself from the affiliation in order to not draw attention to his own rumored issues (*cough* he likes them young *cough*), before launching into a hilarious impression of a rapper from the UK, with all of the tropes and slang that come with the territory. Oh wait, that wasn’t Drake just taking the piss (no pun intended)? He was being serious? Well now, this is awkward. Also awkward: actual UK rapper Giggs during his guest verse, which is fine, but his comfort level with the Murda beat is immeasurably low. Thank your lucky stars “No Long Talk” walks its own walk by clocking in at less than two-and-a-half minutes.

3. PASSIONFRUIT
One of only two songs I could 4even fucking remember going into More Life for today’s write-up (the other being “Glow”), “Passionfruit” is a track I still quite like today., A mostly club-ready tropical-sounding complement to the likes of “One Dance” or “Controlla” (albeit one interrupted toward the beginning by an asinine interlude that isn’t bad, just poorly placed, since it disrupts the flow of the song and fucking drives me nuts every goddamned time), “Passionfruit” is Aubrey’s ode to trust issues inherent in any long-distance relationship, our host singing instead of rapping his thoughts, and it just works for me. British producer Nana Rogues provides an aurally pleasing instrumental that’s difficult to outright hate, while our host’s performance is soothing enough, his singing vice having improved throughout his career, although that isn’t to day he takes anything resembling a chance here, because the man isn’t stupid. The track runs a bit longer than necessary, and there are several flourishes that are included just because he’s Drake (for example, aside from the Moodymann interlude mentioned above, actress and current Catwoman Zoe Kravitz pops up to say one lone sentence for seemingly no reason, contributing nothing), but overall “Passionfruit” was as engaging today as it was five years ago. Not bad, Aubrey.

4. JORJA INTERLUDE (FEAT. JORJA SMITH)
On which Aubrey cannibalizes himself, as both he and his frequent partner in crime, producer Noah “40” Shebib, sample his own “Doing It Wrong” (off of Take Care) in order to create the instrumental for “Jorja Interlude”. The “Jorja” of the title is British R&B singer Jorja Smith, who bookends the brief audio track but isn’t given much to do, her vocals rendered through multiple filters and looped up throughout the beat, and none of this provides any insight as to why our host dedicated the interlude to her, unless he was obsessed with something else about her, nudge nudge wink wink. Aside from Smith’s inclusion, “Jorja Interlude” is a Drake one-verse wonder, one where our judgmental host grows weary of the gangsta [posturing of his peers, which is a bit nonsensical given the sonic environment, but nevertheless inspires the corny-as-fuck line, “I play my part too, like a sequel,” and that loud audible groan that you just heard coming out of your phone? That was me.

5. GET IT TOGETHER (FEAT. BLACK COFFEE & JORJA SMITH)
Confusingly, even though it would have made actual sense for Aubrey to have taken a backseat during the previous track, the one named after its guest star, instead he chooses to do so here, although at least on this track the excuse is because she’s merely covering the Black Coffee song “Superman” (which doesn’t explain how Black Coffee snagged a guest feature on a song he doesn’t appear on, but we’re long past coherent explanation at this point in the blog). Drake chimes in during the (brand new) chorus, urging his partner to “get that shit together”, but cedes the rest of the song to his invited guest, whose vocals are much slower than the Nineteen85 instrumental, which approaches “Passionfruit”-levels of club-readiness. Hell, the music seems to fucking lap her more than once throughout “Get It Together”. The instrumental is much more enjoyable than the performance deserves. An uncredited Burna Boy pops up toward the end via a sample from a song that likely inspired Aubrey to name this entire project More Life, but it was completely egregious – sometimes songs can just end when they end, kiddo.

6. MADIBA RIDDIM
Aubrey is hardly the first rapper to discuss the lack of trust he has in his friend circles ever since he blew up. However, “Madiba Riddim” isn’t about that, not really: aside from a tossed-off comment to how he’s “seen men turn fool for the money,” which is vague enough to apply to nearly any situation, “Madiba Riddim” seems to just be about Drake’s trust issues in general, full goddamned stop. Which doesn’t make this a bad listen overall, mind you. The instrumental helps: Ging, or rather the producer formerly known as Frank Dukes who was still Frank Dukes when More Life was released, provides a bouncier-than-expected tempo, one that isn’t exactly club-friendly but remains engrossing throughout, and Aubrey does Aubrey things over it. Not the greatest song in the world, especially with our host overcompensating and turning this into something a bit too relatable for hip hop, but at least “Madiba Riddim” is a song that exists now, so Drake won’t feel compelled to record it again in the future, if that makes sense.

7. BLEM
“Blem”, a slang term meaning “drunk” or “high”, is one of those words that sounds utterly ridiculous coming out of Drake’s mouth, since he recites it with the compassion of a robot trying to learn an Earth language in order to assimilate and, ultimately, euthanize. And he keeps reciting it until he thinks it sounds “natural”. SPOILER ALERT: It never does. (Curiously, the word “blem” could be swapped out for the phrase “on one”, a topic Aubrey has previously addressed on a popular DJ Khaled song, one that is leagues better than “Blem”.) Our host spends the entirety of the T-Minus instrumental questioning a fuck buddy as to why she hasn’t yet dropped her zero to get with this hero full-time (“I need you to stop running back to your ex, he’s a wasteman,” Drake says, and the word “wasteman” would only sound more foreign if, say, I started dropping it into everyday conversation), but he never offers a convincing argument for the lady to overhaul her life: whining about “How come we can never slash and stay friends?” doesn’t cut it. Not worth wasting all of these words about, to be quite honest.

8. 4422 (FEAT. SAMPHA)
Befitting of a playlist Aubrey has allegedly compiled for us, as opposed to an actual album from the guy, is “4422”, a Sampha solo effort on which Drake doesn’t make any sort of appearance at all. Although this type of shit has happened on his actual albums, too (see: Take Care’s “Buried Alive (Interlude)”, which was merely an excuse for our host to give a pre-fame Kendrick Lamar the spotlight for a couple of minutes), so. The title doesn’t imply this, but “4422” is barely a song, as most of the three minute run time focuses obsessively on creating the right vibe (a task producer FrancisGotHeat never quite pulls of). While “4422” consists of a single (repetitive) verse and some bookends, it plays more as an interlude, and Sampha puts exactly an interlude’s amount of effort into his vocals, which sound okay but noncommittal. Let’s move on, quickly.

9. GYALCHESTER
iBeatz’s “Gyalchester” instrumental sounds like Zero Sugar “Hustle Hard” to me for whatever reason, which doesn’t make much sense as the two songs sound nothing alike (let alone the fact that Drake is simply a nicer rapper than Ace Hood), but that’s my main takeaway from this song, yet another excuse for our host to trot out the boasts-n-bullshit because hip hop. On “Gyalchester”, Drake brags about his life of exclusivity and privilege while still claiming to be the best rapper in the game (“I know I said top five, but I’m top two / And I’m not two”), and the fact that he manages to say this with a straight face while spitting in a halted, awkward delivery throughout the song tracks for an artist who is delusional as to his role in our chosen culture. You see, a lot of people like Drake, the artist, but there aren’t a ton of heads out there who would ever claim that he is the greatest rapper, and you know those ghostwriting accusations knocked him down several additional pegs. This was alright, but you’ve heard better Aubrey braggadocio elsewhere.

10. SKEPTA INTERLUDE (FEAT. SKEPTA)
The other track on More Life that doesn’t feature our host is “Skepta Interlude”, which, despite its use of the word “interlude”, is an actual goddamned song. Weird. UK grime rapper Skepta delivers two verses and a hook over upbeat Nana Rogues production, and the outcome is enjoyable enough. Skepta’s boasts-n-bullshit are aided tremendously by the imagery he’s able to conjure up (“Police wish I was still in prison / Fish-eye lens on my tunnel vision”; “Died and came back as Fela Kuti”), this album placement being the largest platform he had been gifted with up to this point, and the dude doesn’t waste the opportunity. Featuring our host on here would only have served to disrupt the overall listening experience, so kudos to Drake for his show of restraint. Not bad.

11. PORTLAND (FEAT. QUAVO & TRAVIS SCOTT)
Aside from a one-off reference to the titular city from guest star-slash-crowd security martyr Travis Scott, one that could have been swapped out for literally anywhere else, why exactly is this one called “Portland”? It doesn’t really matter in the long run: all I care about is the music, which is so fucking corny that I had to stop myself from laughing out loud in public as a way to alleviate my discomfort. Producer Murda Beatz does a shit job here, folks. I’m sorry, but it is awful. This leaves all the heavy listing to Drake and his two guests, the aforementioned Travis Jenner (I know what I wrote) and Quavo from the trio Migos, and I feel like those credits are enough for you to have made up your mind about whether or not you plan on giving a shit about “Portland”. Your gut reaction would not be wrong, you two. Aubrey and Travis both sound alright, but Quavo is way the fuck out of his depth, which, obviously, means he receives the most screen time here, contributing both a verse and the hook, one where he insists that he will “never let these n----s ride [his] wave,” which, sure, whatever. Our host boasting about his success is one of his two default settings (the other one we’ll be getting to in a bit), and his subliminal disses throughout his performance are par for the course because dude is a shit-stirrer, but honestly, all of this would likely sound better over a remixed instrumental. I can’t be the only person that feels this way, right?

12. SACRIFICES (FEAT. 2 CHAINZ & YOUNG THUG)
Although T-Minus lends our host some somber piano keys, “Sacrifices” isn’t nearly as reflective as one would imagine, unless one counts Aubrey’s chorus, which is really the only time anything of sort is mentioned, and even than it’s just mere surface-level discussion. Instead, “Sacrifices” is yet another excuse for Drake to talk his shit while amongst friends, who are represented here by 2 Chainz and Young Thug. Aubrey claims the best verse on the track rather handily (even with a corny dad joke involving Seal and his hit song “Kiss From a Rose”), while Tity Boi is less amusing than usual, not because he’s switched to a more serious formula, but because his jokes fail to land: “When she bust it down I said, ‘Thanks for giving to me,’ like a pilgrim.” I mean, what the fuck are we supposed to do with that? Young Thug closes out the set with an eccentric verse that is overly reliant on repetition and gimmicks, at least toward the end, although I will say he started off surprisingly strong. The instrumental, which is mostly paper-thin trap shit with the occasional piano interlude during the hook, is far and away the best component of this.

13. NOTHINGS INTO SOMETHINGS
Oh no, Aubrey’s in another one of his moods, both upset and saddened by the news of a former flame’s upcoming nuptials on “Nothings into Somethings”. To be clear, he seems to be more upset that he wasn’t invited to the ceremony and that his ex didn’t bother sharing the news with him herself, which is a perfectly okay thing in the real world – who would want that kind of negative energy at their wedding? – but Aubrey, of course, hasn’t resided in the real world for years. Over a lo-fi hip hop beat you can study to credited to G. Ry and Wallis Lane, Drake sings two verses and a hook over an interlude’s length of time, and he manages to let his feelings out, or at least his version of the facts, none of which warrant being converted into song form in the first place. You two may enjoy the instrumental, but I couldn’t even do that: this felt so derivative of other works that I couldn’t bring myself to give a fuck. Moving on…

14. TEENAGE FEVER
Thank the deity of your choosing that “teenage Fever” was never pushed as a radio single, because it’s fucking terrible, and I wouldn’t be surprised if even Aubrey himself sidesteps its existence these days. For one thing, the mere title “Teenage Fever” will read to many people as an admission of guilt regarding Drake’s rumored predilection for women of a, well, let’s just say a younger age, so off that shit alone this song should have never made it past his handlers. Second, it’s just a poorly put together song: producer Marvin “Hagler” Thomas, who also produced our host’s “Trophies” a few years prior, makes a lame attempt at radio airplay for Aubrey to croon over, and the “hook” is entirely comprised of the chorus from the Jennifer Lopez song “If You Had My Love” (although it doesn’t exactly sound like her voice, so it’s either pitched much deeper here, or Hagler got a hold of the reference tracks). Perhaps the J-Lo stuff has something to do with his rumored relationship with her at the time, but I don’t care, it’s awful., It’s all awful. “Your heart is hard to carry after dark,” our host offers as his opening bar, which sounds like sad bastard high school poetry, before trashing his ex while simultaneously boasting about the new pussy he’s getting, and it’s all in poor taste to anybody that claims to “enjoy” “listening” to “music”. Ugh.

15. KMT (FEAT. GIGGS)
Credit where it’s due: Aubrey doesn’t over do it with the British slang and vocal inflections on “KMT”, his second Giggs collaboration of the evening. (“KMT” which apparently stands for “kissing my teeth”, which, sure buddy, whatever you say, just put the gun down and we can talk) However, that just means that it’s even fucking funnier when he does resort to his old habits. Drake just sounds silly on “KMT”, a Ness and Chef Pasquale production that was quite entertaining, so you probably won’t mind his performance even if you can’t stop yourself from laughing during it. Far better over this Sonic the Hedgehog-sampling instrumental is Giggs, who provides a similarly stilted flow as our host, but manages to pull it off with engaging boasts and threats mixed in with some inspired euphemisms for cocaine (“Whipping that white girl / Cooking that Cersei,” certainly a reference I hadn’t been expecting to hear in a rap song, well, ever). I kind of liked half of “KMT”, and Giggs proves himself to be a confident performer worthy of the showcase. Kind of wish Drake wasn’t on this one, though.

16. LOSE YOU
Aw yeah, it’s about that time. “Lose You” is another one of those songs where Drake sounds like he’s reading diary entries aloud into a strategically positioned microphone while sitting in a bubble bath surrounded by candles in a dimly lit studio space. You know what type of song I’m talking about. Anyway, “Lose You” is supposed to be about how success has inadvertently isolated our host from his loved ones, but he winds up spending most of the time trying to rationalize his choices while simultaneously boasting about his career highs. “Lose You” is the type of song where Aubrey drops a couplet such as, “I know when someone lying / I notice people standing for nothing and getting tired,” and his stans will live by that as gospel, even possibly chiseling the bar into stone tablets. (Because Tumblr isn’t really a thing anymore, you see.) That isn’t to say “Lose You” sounds bad, though. The hook was unnecessary, but I guess the guy had to recite the name of the song somewhere, right? Truth is, Drake sounded pretty good over this sparse instrumental, credited to both 40 and Stwo, and if you enjoy this particular sub-genre of Aubrey songs, you’ll likely find yourself engaged here. It isn’t for every listener, of course, but neither is Drake.

17. CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING
Almost shockingly good. Producers Jazzfeezy and Steve Samson lend our host an instrumental that closely resembles boom bap, or at least what boom bap must sound like inside of Aubrey’s head, and the guy responds accordingly with an aggressive performance that details what he’s done to get to this point in his career and what more he aspires to, even if he understands that, realistically, he “Can’t Have Everything”. The first verse is my favorite here, but his braggadocio goes beyond that stanza, especially later in the track where he says of his peers, “Damn, I must be coaching, ‘cause I’m not playing with them / Can you not see the difference? I mean, I keep the fucking lights on in the building,” which, I’ll admit, is pretty damn hard. “Can’t Have Everything” was unexpectedly enjoyable in a way that most of Drake’s output these days just cannot be. (The outro, a voicemail from our host’s mother, brings it all right back to one, however.) You both should give this one a spin, at least before moving on to the next track, which you’re definitely going to have some opinions about.

18. GLOW (FEAT. KANYE WEST)
There are some pretty good Drake and Kanye West collaborations – it just so happens that “Glow” doesn’t rank among them. So what went wrong here, aside from fucking everything? Well, for starters, the sparse instrumental (credited to both Ye and 40) has the strength to withstand a barrage of kitten whiskers and that’s it: what should have been empowering and inspirational is rendered impotent at best. The God-fearing former Kardashian also dominates the fucking track: Aubrey only chimes in with a bar or two sporadically throughout, at least before the end of the song, at which point he resorts to lines about reconciliation in a relationship, lines which have not a single goddamned thing to do with the song already in progress. Ye spends his significant amount of screen time boasting and bullshitting about his “glow-up” (“Used to work the fries, now we supersize,” the guest offers in the closest he’ll ever get to revisiting his The College Dropout self), but his flow is terribly lazy, and it’s clear to me that his performance here was a first take he refused to re-record. “Glow” then ends with an extended sound bite lifted from an Earth, Wind & Fire song that, again, doesn’t have a single goddamned thing to do with the song. I feel that his ego is the only reason Aubrey didn’t cede the track to Kanye entirely, but even if he had demanded the microphone, it wouldn’t have helped. This sucked. Deal with it.

19. SINCE WAY BACK (FEAT. PARTYNEXTDOOR)
One sec, just checking with my legal team before I type out any of my thoughts here…what’s that? We’re in the clear? Perfect. “Since Way Back” is fucking trash. If this is the type of music that’s hitting right now, then I’m glad I never decided to start a hip hop blog. Everything about this is godawful: the bland instrumental, credited to 40, G. Ry, and guest PARTYNEXTDOOR (our host’s frequent collaborator and employee), that aims to create, you guessed it, a vibe but forgets that music is also designed to be actually listened to, and the performances, during which both our host and his guest croon about wanting to reconnect with a past hook-up (are they both supposed to be pining after the same girl? Because awkward), neither artist conveying anything approximating a single emotion during their robotic verses. The guest even keeps bringing up R. K*lly, of all people, likely because “Since Way Back” made the bold (read: problematic) choice to sample his “Clipped Wings” and run the risk that some of the publishing would end up in that child rapist’s pocket. (He also says, “Thank God I’m Christian,” apropos to nothing – he can be invested in his faith as much as he wants, but what does that have to do with wanting to fuck a woman you’ve missed fucking?) Aubrey casually drops the fact that the object of his lustful desire was cheating on her husband at the time of their trysts, which is an odd tidbit to include: why put her business out there like that? I thought you liked her! “Since Way Back” is just chock full of problems spaced out among its two sprawling, distinct parts marked with different instrumentals (a track I’m shocked hasn’t been deployed on More Life until now), but the second volume isn’t any better: hell, Drake save even less there, aside from obviously longing after lost pussy. (I’m being callous with the word because that’s how Aubrey and company have been treating it throughout More Life.) Run, don’t walk, away from this exercise in toxic masculinity. Vibes aren’t everything. They can’t be. (Also, the “vibe” sucks here, as well, so don’t go using that shit as an excuse.)

20. FAKE LOVE
This was also terrible, but unlike the previous song, “Fake Love” was inexplicably used as a marketing tool intended to spark interest in a new project from Aubrey. (Read: this was the first single.) That was a compellingly bizarre choice, as the faux-dancehall instrumental, provided by Vinylz and Frank Dukes, certainly hits the same benchmarks as “One Dance” or “Controlla”, but the music here is plenty bad, much more laughable than enjoyable, and our host’s own performance is only memorable to folks that enjoy hate-listening to shit. (So, all of you two then?) There’s also a sample swiped from Ginuwine’s “Pony” whose usage throughout is so blatant that I’m not entirely sure how our host got away with not including either Ginuwine or Timbaland in the writing credits. Drake’s laser-focused on the idea of fake friends, coinv9inced that the people in his circle have been conspiring against him ever since he became even more successful, and honestly, there’s only so many fucking ways to repackage that subject matter before the audience begins to cry foul. This was entirely unnecessary.

21. ICE MELTS (FEAT. YOUNG THUG)
It was awfully kind of Aubrey to append all of the shittiest songs of the evening onto the back end of More Life. “Ice Melts” is another example of squandered potential, although to be fair, the individual components have also showed zero promise here: Supah Mario’s instrumental is radio-ready nonsense that barely qualifies as music, and guest Young Thug, making his second and final appearance on this playlist, unleashes a fucking imbecilic chorus that even he gives up on halfway through, as evidenced by how he stops saying words and starts to repeat “whoa” in their place. It is horrendous. Drake is no better here, crooning about how upset he is that a woman he’s interested in boning had such a bad experience in her last relationship that she’s closed herself off. Not because he feels bad for her, of course – no, it’s because of hos it inconveniences him and his need to fuck right now. He also manages to drop a Porsche reference here that sounds like he’s instructing this anonymous woman to conduct a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, which, damn Drake, I know you’re from Canada, but I thought we were allies and shit. You would think that someone could have convinced him to record some alternate lines there (just listen to the song, you’ll hear what I’m talking about), but you would be wrong. This sucked.

22. DO NOT DISTURB
Okay, “Do Not Disturb” doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the past few songs, as this one is actually decent. Boi-1da bookends More Life by producing this track, a typically serious Aubrey Graham one-verse wonder featuring a vast array of boasts, bullshit, and enough highly specific examples to warrant some credibility. Here he’s talking about his life, his career, and the various issues he’s encountering at the moment, and he sounds as confident as ever over his boy’s beat, which is a far cry from “Free Smoke” in that it sounds interesting, although the distorted Snoh Aalegra vocal looped throughout grows cumbersome with time. “Last verse that I gotta do is always like surgery / Always trying to let go of anything that’ll burden me,” Aubrey provides as a sort of meta commentary. So it goes.

THE LAST WORD: What more can I write about More Life that wasn’t inferred in the body of the write-up? Any criticism of its lengthiness are easily dismissed by its classification as a “playlist” – I know I certainly have many playlists that fucking sprawl, and I’m not even counting the RandoMax Radio stuff that you should all listen to immediately – so in that respect, Drake’s insistence was kind of a brilliant move. However, the overlong nature of this project is detrimental to the cause when so many of its songs sound similar, not just because of uninspired production but due to subject matter: we all know Drake has trust issues, but that doesn’t mean any of us want to hear an entire project’s worth of tracks about them. Shit, even Aubrey knows that.

As a playlist, it would have benefited from including more songs from artists that had nothing to do with Drake, but that would have betrayed our host’s intentions here, as he wouldn’t have been able to claim credit for every track that way. As an album, More Life fails because there’s no coherence throughout the run time: our host shifts from British slang to R&B to dancehall to boom bap so quickly and so sneakily that you likely won’t even realize what it is that he’s doing until halfway through the next track, which means you won’t remember what he was doing on the previous one, and if there’s anything an artist loves to hear, it’s that their work isn’t memorable. But that describes More Life to a T: unmemorable and unremarkable. It’s too much, man, and also somehow not enough at the same time.

There are aspects of More Life that I did appreciate. Pretty much every North American guest artist was bland as shit, but everyone else featured did decent-to-good work, especially Giggs and Skepta. A handful of the instrumentals even managed to break free of the trap music chains imposed upon them by our host (see: “Can’t Have Everything”). I’d throw a couple of these songs onto a Drake playlist of my own (I still enjoy “Passionfruit”). But overall, More Life is a non-starter, more of the same from an artist who is clearly capable of more, but had absolutely no motivation to do more at the time, because he’s fucking Drake, and that stagnation comes out in the work.

-Max

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