Kelly, and Usher, but from the opposite side of the singer-rapper divide, with uncommon vulnerability and passive aggression. Lauryn Hill, certainly Nelly, maybe, I guess? So when Drake tenderly crooned, “Bitch, I’m the man/ Don’t you forget it,” he was stepping into a long lineage of guys like Bobby Brown, R. Only once does he revert to the “hashtag-rap” flow he’d ridden to fame, and only to make a pointedly meta joke about his own improvement as a lyricist: “Man, all of your flows bore me/ Paint dryin’.” It is difficult to believe him when he insists, “I just been playin’, I ain’t even notice I was winnin’.” “Shot For Me”īy the time Drake blew up, there was a robust two-decade history of R&B singers carrying themselves like rappers, but rarely had a rapper come off so much like an R&B singer. The first words out of his mouth: “I think I killed everybody in the game last year/ Man, fuck it, I was on, though.”įrom there Drake surveys his kingdom with a now-familiar mix of ill-advised strip-club romance, humblebrags (and regular brags), wordplay both clever and groan-inducing, faux-wisdom that occasionally stumbles upon inspiration, and the airing of petty grievances, his rapping sliding now and then into little bursts of melody.

Drake was well aware of his vaunted position, and he wasted no time letting us know he’d taken the throne as prophesied on that summer’s “I’m On One” - as if the album cover photograph of him somberly holding court with his goblet and his candle and his solid-gold owl did not sufficiently convey the point. With his second proper album Take Care, released 10 years ago today, he completed his ascendancy to the top of the mainstream rap food chain at a time when his status as a half-Jewish Canadian teen soap opera actor still felt novel. It sounds immaculate.Īubrey Drake Graham had gone supernova more or less overnight by making softer, prettier music than your average rapper. Crafted by Kreviazuk and a young sonic visionary named Noah “40” Shebib, it’s a softer, prettier intro than you’d expect from a blockbuster rap album before 2011.

Then comes Chantal Kreviazuk’s voice, sighing yet casually impassioned, painting streaks of neon on the music as she professes her irrational devotion. A sparse beat kicks up in the background, skipping and thudding as if we’re hearing it through the wall.

Every piano chord is a shimmering pool, glassy on the surface, deep enough to get lost in.

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