Is it worse to be self-indulgent or dishonest? "I wish I/Wasn't famous/I wish I/Was still in school /So that I could have you in my dorm room/I would put it on you crazy." What a strange thing for a presumptive rap star to say. And yet here is Drake, half-singing over a Prince-like LinnDrum on "Cece's Interlude," saying the thing you're not supposed to say to a girl who isn't there anymore. It's not the only time he does this on Thank Me Later, his first official album, but it may be the most bracing.
Santiago Felipe
He'd rather be in his dorm room.
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In fact, malapropisms—emotional, grammatical, etc.—reign on this album, but it rarely matters. Not because Aubrey Drake Graham, 23, an r&b-rap hybridist of the highest order, has been tapped as a bona fide star-in-waiting and maybe a savior at a time when hip-hop is frequently lapsing into funks that have downed lesser genres. Hip-hop is not saved by Thank Me Later. Nothing could be saved by an album this humbly arranged, this curiously composed, this quietly executed. Drake is not changing rap, because the thing Drake is worst at is rap. It's everything else that can—and probably will—change. Perspectives, tempos, the very notion of entitlement . . . they're all up for grabs.
Confidence, too, is a shifting thing. Drake is so unsure of himself at times, so neurotic about his success, so frustrated with the state of his life, that he can sound sympathetic—and also like a bit of a whiner. In a way, it's understandable. Being a rich, desired rapper does sound like a great life, but then again, it also sounds sort of terrifying and exhausting. Being 19, in your dorm room, with the girl you love, is an amazingly vivid and honest moment in a person's life. Who doesn't want to go back there? "Am I wrong for making light of my situation?" he asks on "The Resistance," mourning his success. Rap heroism is a hassle, man.
Need a sound for combating expectations and lost love? Drape it in mellow. Thank Me Later is as languorous a rap album as has ever been produced, especially on the front end. Its best songs, like the twin-killing "Karaoke" and "The Resistance," are almost all ambience. Keyboards, seemingly recorded underwater at 20,000 leagues, are gently pressed and held. Snare drums skitter and flap, but never knock. It's all very somnambulant, with Drake bemoaning his lack of sleep and the attendant music teetering toward new-age Sound Therapy.
Bait-and-switches are everywhere, too: "Show Me a Good Time," a Kanye West production, begins like a classic chipmunk soul banger and then subtly reverts to cabaret piano; "Thank Me Now," the Timbaland-produced closer, threatens to wander off into MC-burying Timbo territory, but instead stays orchestral and simple. Classy, even. There are so few hard-hitting works of instant gratification here that it can seem slight at first glance. Only "Miss Me," the not quite triumphal "Over," and the incongruous but intoxicating Swizz Beatz production "Fancy" work hard. Lots of credit for the languidity goes to Drake's partner, Noah "40" Shebib, who worked on seven of the 14 songs here and, with tinkling, throbbing songs like "Successful" and "Lust for Life," was instrumental in creating what became Drake's signature sound on his 2009 mixtape, So Far Gone. That sound was not broken, so it's not fixed here.
And, to his credit, Drake also seems to understand that he is not a transcendent MC. His rap voice, often delivered through his nose, can grate; his singing voice, often aided by technology, is better and subtler. His flow rarely moves away from A-B-AB constructions, and the guy writes a lot of groaners ("I blew myself up, I'm on some martyr shit," "I'm a star, no spangled banner," et al.). So he does what any artist with influence should: He surrounds himself with greatness. Jay-Z and T.I. and Young Jeezy are here. As is Lil Wayne, and Drake's cohort in the Young Money clique, Nicki Minaj, whom he, and many other people on this planet, would like to marry. But rather than overwhelm or outdo him with bravado, technique, and fury, they all seem to come to him. Jay modulates his flow to match Drake's on "Light Up," and even addresses him by name, a relatively rare honor. Jeezy, consistently the mightiest force in rap for the past five years, slows down and coos something about "his and her firearms." Only Wayne is inadaptable—but at least he's mindful of the moment: After a particularly crude punchline about sucking "the brown" off his dick, he groans, "Ewwww, that's nasty," in turn acknowledging that this is not that sort of album, thank you very much.
The only time Drake actually gets upstaged is when he miscalculates how good he actually is at everything else. The so-hot-it's-melting "Shut It Down" is a lesson in knowing your limitations: Paired with The-Dream, the high king of melters, Drake implores a woman to "put those fuckin' heels on and work it, girl." But Dream, his delicate falsetto like a lilac flower floating on the ocean, simply outclasses him. That they go back and forth, trading winsome romantic gestures, for seven minutes is nonetheless something special. Anything else would be uncivilized.
