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The dominant preoccupation of the hip-hop internet in recent days has been the matter of what Drake \u2014 who remains, at 36, the most popular English-speaking rapper on the planet \u2014 should rap about.<\/p>\n
It is a curious preoccupation but not a new one: Since the beginning of his career a decade and a half ago, Drake has been confounding conventional expectations for rap success. What\u2019s different now is that he is positioned resolutely at the center of the genre, not outside it, and the collective distress about his modes feels like a referendum on an elected leader no one can quite figure out how to unseat.<\/p>\n
On \u201cFor All the Dogs,\u201d<\/a> his eighth solo studio album, Drake shows that, in some ways, he, too, is wondering what remains of life at the top. So much so, in fact, that he revisits some of his oldest and most familiar tactics. \u201cFor All the Dogs\u201d is an album full of caustic songs about heartbreak, which have added tension now that Drake is a world-beating pop star \u2014 there is incredulity cutting through the sadness. These 23 songs are less generally wounded than the early ones that marked him as a signature figure in hip-hop, as fluent in vulnerability as bombast, but they\u2019re scarred nonetheless.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The peak of that approach, \u201cTried Our Best,\u201d is a surprisingly gentle and soothing catalog of frustration: \u201cI swear that there\u2019s a list of places that I been with you, I want to go without you\/Just so I can know what it\u2019s like to be there without having to argue.\u201d Time and again on this album, Drake describes offering trust, only to have it violated (\u201cBahamas Promises,\u201d \u201c7969 Santa\u201d) \u2014 it is, in that way, a return to classic form.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Every so often, he delivers a line so packed with unexpected syllables \u2014 \u201cChinchilla ushanka, we skiin\u2019 out in Courchevel\u201d \u2014 that he reinforces the fact that he\u2019s a devilishly nimble rapper when he chooses to be. He doesn\u2019t choose that often on this album, though. \u201cFor All the Dogs\u201d includes some of his least ambitious rapping, and whereas on prior albums, he sometimes balances out his complexity with melody, that\u2019s rarely the case here.<\/p>\n In places he\u2019s being deliberate about these choices \u2014 where most rappers aim for the gasp, Drake sometimes pointedly goes for the groan: \u201cFeel like I\u2019m bi \u2019cause you\u2019re one of the guys, girl\u201d (\u201cMembers Only\u201d);\u201cWhipped and chained you like American slaves\u201d (\u201cSlime You Out\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And as is Drake\u2019s wont, there are also a handful of deeply modern, innovative and unexpected production choices \u2014 few rappers are as sonically flexible. \u201cRich Baby Daddy,\u201d which features Sexyy Red and SZA, recalls the Atlanta bass music of INOJ and Ghost Town DJs. \u201cAnother Late Night,\u201d a collaboration with Lil Yachty, is full of off-kilter bleeps that feel wobbly, while on \u201c8 a.m. in Charlotte,\u201d he raps over the smoky, soul-drenched minimalism of Conductor Williams, known for his work with the boom-bap revivalist Griselda collective.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This is also standard Drake technique \u2014 taking in the whole of hip-hop, from oddballs to traditionalists, and hearing himself in it. Last year he released two albums: the dance-music quasi-experiment \u201cHonestly, Nevermind,\u201d<\/a> and the 21 Savage collaboration album, \u201cHer Loss.\u201d<\/a> Implicit in those vastly differing releases was a proposition \u2014 perhaps no Drake album had to be an omnibus anymore; instead, he could pursue genre or style experiments to their creative conclusions, pick up a few months later and do so again.<\/p>\n \u201cFor All the Dogs\u201d is less focused than either of those albums. It is not an essential Drake album, but it is also possible that the essential Drake cultural contributions are no longer albums, or at least albums of this length and variance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Or perhaps, the signature Drake innovations may no longer be musical at all \u2014 they may be delineating what a musician, a rapper, a pop star does with his scale of success.<\/p>\n Much of what Drake has been engaged in this summer suggests the malaise of boredom, musical or otherwise. He released a book of poetry, or perhaps \u201cpoetry\u201d \u2014 \u201cTitles Ruin Everything,\u201d written with Kenza Samir \u2014 really just an inventory of Instagram captions, some funny. Much funnier, if far stranger, was the interview he conducted with Bobbi Althoff, a kind of method actress\/comedian who deploys her ignorance of her subjects (feigned or otherwise) as a weapon. Drake treated the interview like a chess match, seemingly gleeful at the opportunity for a new kind of banter.<\/p>\n There is some of that exuberance in his recent takedown of the social media personality Joe Budden<\/a>, too. Budden is a onetime rapper who has remade himself as a wildly popular, often acidic commentator. After some unkind comments about the new album, Drake wrote a strikingly long and strikingly mean response<\/a> online, largely noting how unsuccessful Budden had been as a rapper. But the lengths to which Drake went in order to, in essence, punch down were notable, perhaps the mark of someone who has run out of worthwhile nemeses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There are enemies on this album, too \u2014 he seemingly taunts YoungBoy Never Broke Again<\/a>, the rare time he takes aim at a younger star. But he also pointedly puts women in his cross hairs: \u201cFear of Heights,\u201d a song that appears to reference Rihanna, a rumored ex; and offhand and silly shots at the jazz star Esperanza Spalding<\/a>, who bested Drake for the best new artist Grammy Award in 2011. (Yes, 2011.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For Drake, as ever, the top is a fraught place. But there is plenty of joy there, too. That much was clear during Drake\u2019s It\u2019s All a Blur Tour this summer, his first since the pandemic. At its Brooklyn stop, in July, he entered the arena walking through the crowd like a boxer preparing for a championship fight, creating a corridor of adulation.<\/p>\n Onstage, he was as energized as he\u2019s been at any point in his career, whether performing early-career lo-fi classics or pop-peak thumpers. He wasn\u2019t a salesman hawking his wares, but an orchestra conductor \u2014 the show had the feeling of a fait accompli.<\/p>\n In between songs, he recalled some New York-specific stories from early in his career \u2014 an eventful night at the Spotted Pig<\/a>, a since closed gastro pub, and the 2010 show at the South Street Seaport that turned into a riot<\/a> before he ever took the stage. Even back then, 13 years ago, the loyalists were shouting down the doubters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n