Drake’s ‘More Life’: 8 tracks from his ‘playlist’
Drake’s More Life, which premiered Saturday night on his OVO Sound Radio on Apple Music, boasts the exact same runtime — 1 hour and 22 minutes — as Views, his sprawling studio album from last April.
Consistency is a lot to ask for a 22-track collection, and like
Views, More Life is too packed with ideas to make for a unified aesthetic. But perhaps the difference between the poorly reviewed Views and More Life, which Twitter welcomed as a return to form for the rapper, has as much to do with its framing as with its songs.
Drake deliberately labeled his latest project a “playlist,” and while the difference may be in name only, More Life makes way more sense as the artist’s sonic Pinterest board as it does a proper album. Of course a Drake mixtape would include his frequent collaborators and favorite influencers, with his verses often taking a back seat to contributions by Kanye West, Young Thug, Travis Scott, Quavo, 2 Chainz, Skepta and PARTYNEXTDOOR.
More Life leapfrogs from dancehall and grime to moody R&B and beats built from elementary school recorders. And why wouldn’t it, if his mixtape is surveying his musical headspace of the moment?
When seen as a collage of inspiration, More Life and its peaks and valleys, including a killer run of summertime-ready dance tracks that precedes the album’s
less-impressive second half, don’t seem as distracting as they would on a Drake studio album, which have the heightened responsibility of meeting the standards set by his previous critically acclaimed projects Take Care and Nothing Was the Same.
But the bar shouldn’t be set any lower for More Life because it’s a mixtape, and thankfully for Drake fans, it’s better than Views, injecting some life into the midtempo beats that dominate both releases.
However listeners want to categorize More Life, its proof of quality isn’t in its concept, it’s in its songs, and these were the tracks that stood out.
‘PASSIONFRUIT’
After two opening songs that see Drake returning to the shots-fired paranoia that helped sink Views,
Passionfruit bursts with color, a track that nods to the ’80s-referencing earnestness of his hit Hold
On, We’re Going Home, and the first in a string of Caribbeaninspired tracks that show the rapper isn’t finished with his successful formula from past hits One
Dance and Controlla.
‘GET IT TOGETHER’ FEATURING BLACK COFFEE, JORJA SMITH
Drake’s rumored paramour Jennifer Lopez immediately establishes a presence on the album, thanks to his allusion to drunk- texting her seconds into More
Life’s first track. But on their supposed collaboration Get It
Together, J. Lo’s vocals are replaced by the rising U.K. singer Jorja Smith. It’s hard to imagine how the track could be any better with Lopez’s addition, as Smith and Drake trade verses over a gentle house beat that’s one of
More Life’s best.
‘MADIBA RIDDIM’
Drake returns to complaining about the famous-people problems he spent much of Views questioning. But sung over one of More
Life’s most colorful samples, listening to him mull over his trust issues finally sounds fun again.
‘4422’ FEATURING SAMPHA
Drake doesn’t just let Sampha — the British artist he collaborated with on Nothing Was the
Same highlight Too Much — take center stage here. He hands over the whole woozy track to the singer’s extremely capable falsetto, which lends 4422 an emotional heft rarely felt on the rest of More Life.
‘PORTLAND’ FEATURING TRAVIS SCOTT AND QUAVO
The track’s flute-heavy production probably hoped to copy the ominous-sounding wind instruments on Future’s hit Mask Off but ends up sounding more like the goofy recorder on D.R.A.M.’s Broccoli. Thankfully, Drake’s jokey lyrics (“My side girl got a 5S with the screen cracked, still hit me back right away”) and welcome appearances from Travis Scott and Quavo keep Portland from sounding too self-serious.
‘SACRIFICES’ FEATURING 2 CHAINZ AND YOUNG THUG
Congratulations are in order for 2 Chainz, who walks away from Sacrifices with one of the best feature verses of the project. Meanwhile, Young Thug is near-unrecognizable here, with the rapper faring better on his second More Life feature, the swaggering reggae of Ice Melts.
‘LOSE YOU’
There’s no fake-Jamaican patois, gloomy tales of fame or any other
Views- era Drake gimmicks on this track, one of his few new tracks that could feasibly fit at home on any of his previous releases. He resurrects a fast-paced flow fans will relievedly recognize, delivering a mea culpa to his longtime followers, asking, “Did I lose you, did I?” ‘GLOW’ FEATURING KANYE WEST A lot has changed for Kanye and Drake since they teamed up in 2009 for the one-off single Forev
er. But Glow features the same vintage-sounding iteration of both rappers as Drake earnestly sings the track’s refrain (“Watch out for me, I’m about to glow”) in between Yeezy’s straightforward verses over an Earth, Wind & Fire sample. While the star rappers’ collaboration isn’t quite the sum of their talented parts, it offers a nostalgic look back.