DRAKE’S PROGRESS

The Canadian R&B star’s digital powerplay, a hefty 22 songs and a cadre of guest performers, leaves Andy Gill impressed

Drake, More Life: A Playlist By October Firm

★★★★☆ Download this: Passionfruit; Madiba Riddim; Sacrifices; Glow

With the music biz still pondering the implications of the blanket Sheeran-isation of the singles chart through the incorporation of streaming, the whole issue threatens to get further out of hand with the appearance of Drake’s latest release, which in commercial terms has summarily swept wee Ed aside with a haughty shrug of its digital shoulders. Where Sheeran’s Divide accumulated a mere 56.7 million Spotify streams on the day of its release, Drake’s More Life racked up 61.3 million; and that’s not counting Apple Music, where Drake’s single-day tally of almost 90 million streams bested Ed’s by some 30 million.

I have no idea how this translates into earnings, but I suppose there must still be a few pence kicking around even after the servers have served themselves. What it does confirm, however, is the extraordinary popularity of the Canadian R&B star – especially given that More Life isn’t actually considered an album, but a “playlist” intended to “bridge the gap between major releases”, according to Drake. In other words, something more akin to a mix album, with plenty of guests dropping by to chip in a verse or a rap, over 80 minutes’ worth of grooves and beats sculpted by a veritable army of producers. Pleasingly, two of the best are British, Sampha capping “4422” with an emotive outburst, and Skepta getting an entire “Skepta Interlude” to himself to muse about how he “died and came back as Fela Kuti”.

Elsewhere, the likes of Giggs, Young Thug and 2 Chainz add furtive but menacing sketches of thug life to tracks like “No Long Talk” and “Sacrifices”, the latter offering Drake’s most elegant mea culpa for past transgressions: “I made sacrifices, I been ballin’ ever since/I did some wrong, I had no choice, in my defence/Someone watching over, I’m convinced/So shout goes out to Him”. But Drake’s forte is seduction, smoothly negotiated here in the duet “Get It Together” and urgent “Teenage Fever” (“I ain’t scared, and she ain’t, either”), although his best efforts with the slinky boudoir croon of “Passionfruit” prove less successful in preventing his lover leaving, as the backing track dissolves at various points, like sink-hole lacunae of despair. Though as he claims in the infectious “Madiba Riddim”, “my heart is way too frozen to get broken”.

He’s still not happy, though. Of course, it wouldn’t be an R&B/hip-hop album without a few grumpy reflections on envy and ambition, so it’s no surprise to find the 22 tracks bookended by digs at haters – “I am a reflection of all your insecurities”, etc – while on “Fake Love” he comes across like R&B’s Donald Trump, all-powerful yet still paranoid and reproachful. Maybe he should heed the advice of his mother, who delivers a morale-boosting call on “Can’t Have Everything”, recommending that “when others go low, we go high”. Mom knows best, clearly.