Score 7.1/10
Written by: David Williams
Complacency is something Aubrey Graham has been fighting for seemingly five-plus years. His claim to hip-hop supremacy started around 2016, when his first #1 single on the Billboard charts, “One Dance,” was released. Since then, he’s flooded the market with hit song after hit song, competing in popularity with virtually no one. With so many chart-topping songs to his name and accompanying albums consistently debuting in the six-figure range, you would think that he also would have critical acclaim. Instead, each new release has lowered the bar exponentially, his one spotless critical reputation dwindling with each half-hearted attempt at another hit.
While Drake albums still capture the cultural zeitgeist of the moment, they chase trends instead of setting them with songs made to go viral. The recent efforts lack the authenticity fans came to expect as the vulnerable declarations of heartbreak slowly morphed into petty grievances about Bahamas trips that are hard to empathize with. However, since Drake is still king of the charts (1 song away from tying Michael Jackson with the most number 1 hits of all time), there has been no need to switch up the formula. His statistical output, paired with his braggadocio of being the best to ever do it, has, in turn, been a curse of consistently elevating cultural expectations while the musical bar gets lower and lower.
Bringing us to his eighth solo studio album, For All The Dogs. It’s a record that won’t break the mold. Suppose you were a fan of his newer previous work in Scorpion, Certified Lover Boy, and Her Loss. In that case, you will find moments you can truly enjoy, but if you thought these albums have been superfluous over the last five years, he does nothing here that will change your mind. He has given us enough material over these last run of records to determine he is who he is now. If you’re still waiting for him to make his version of the Blueprint or Illmatic at this stage in his career, don’t hold your breath.
If you temper expectations, there are some fun moments on For All The Dogs, like “First Person Shooter” featuring J. Cole, a heavyweight championship spar-off between the two. Cole’s pen game is as sharp as ever as he eviscerates the beat using a bevy of double entrees and switching flows. When part two of the song kicks in, Drake moves into high gear, but by that time, the damage has already been done, with Cole scoring a knockout victory. “Rich Baby Daddy” is a song that will probably go viral on TikTok. It’s a track that doesn’t take itself too seriously, adding in the unhinged bars of Sexyy Red, making her the life of the party.
“Slime You Out” is a battle of the sexes match between Drake and SZA, who are scorned over ex-lovers directing their vitriol in ballad form. “7969 Santa” is a breakup song with one of Drake’s best melodic flows over the entire record. The production is like we are in his dreamlike state, where we go inside his most profound thoughts on a failed romance. If Drake comes out with another poem book, he needs to add from “Tried Our Best,” in which he sings, “I swear to God, you think I’m Shakespeare/That’s why you always wanna play, right?” that line is an all-timer.
Drake has a complicated relationship with women. He’s the type of guy on one end who boasts about spending 20k to pay his girlfriend’s rent. Then in the following line, he throws it back in her face when things go south. Drake shares his escapes of dating women much younger and less accomplished than him and yet gets upset when they don’t show the same level of maturity as him, a global superstar in his mid-30s. There are moments when he comes off as jealous, possessive, malicious, and flat-out bitter at why all these romances have turned sour. While rap has always struggled with misogyny, Drake’s approach is so resentful and lacking in self-awareness that even rappers from the 90s would be turned off.
The real question is whether Aubrey Graham, the man, is letting out his real feelings or is this Drake, the artist, playing up some toxic alpha-male persona, knowing that his core demographic eats up this stuff like Pacman on steroids. Either scenario is a red flag to the highest degree. Over the last 5 records, he’s narrated these condescending romantic gripes from a position of power, giving his partner an attitude that it’s either “my way or the highway.”
Drake still can flex his rapping muscles when he stays focused like on “8am in Charlotte,” he slides vocally over a smooth, laid-back production from Conductor Williams. He stands on business with menacing lyrics on “Fear of Heights” and “Daylight,” accentuating dominance over any and all challengers. But he still gets in his own way at times, either from boredom or running out of topics, so let’s insert another tried and true tiresome Kanye/Pusha T subliminal shot in “What Would Pluto Do,” which is no coincidence how similar the title is from Pusha’s song “What What Meek Do.”
When someone is in the top 1% of their profession, like Drake, he needs people in his inner circle to assist in portion control. Far too many outros add nothing to the songs, minus the marvelous Teezo Touchdown outro from “7969 Santa.” He bizarrely sings in Spanglish with some Speedy Gonzalez-like accent on a track with Bad Bunny. If you take the album at face value, there are some good, bad, and ugly moments of brilliance combined with cringe. In the words of Drake For All The Dogs “contains some madness and badness…combination.”