Review: More Life Playlist

Drake finally released his More Life playlist (not an album, not sure why) on March 18th. Last year, Drake won over many with the album Views, which featured super popular singles such as "Hotline Bling" and "One Dance". Views was a so-so album as a whole in my opinion, but I can't help but give Drake credit. He has consistently found what the mainstream wants to hear and gives them a lot of it. "One Dance" currently has 1,161,723,431 plays on Spotify and at the time of this post there are 325,839,683 people in America. That is an absolutely insane number.

Of course, after such a popular mainstream album, everyone was waiting for new Drake. And he made them wait...and wait...and wait. He announced the project More Life way back in October with a possible release of December. December turned into January and soon it was March with no Drake. All of this teasing had people on edge, dying to hear this project. With a final announcement of March 18th, fans finally had some certainty with a date.

I was sure to listen to the playlist right away, you know like every other somewhat curious music fan. With an solid introduction in "Free Smoke", I felt like this project might exceed my expectations. And although it isn't without it's faults, it did. There are some very solid singles on this project and even better features. This is a pretty long playlist, clocking in at around 80 minutes of music and 22 total tracks so if you don't want to sift through the entire track list here are a few highlights I think you should check out.

1. 4422

2. Free Smoke

3. Glow (only because of Kanye)

4. Skepta Interlude

5. Gyalchester

I have been returning to all of these tracks over the past week and really enjoying them. I was extremely happy to see Sampha featured on "4422" after I placed both he and Drake on our artists to watch list. Maybe I do know a little bit about what I'm talking about! When I heard that Kanye was going to be collaborating on this project as well, I was even more excited than before. His verse wasn't all I had hoped, but he still is Kanye and still brings so much to "Glow".

Before it sounds like I love this album, let me say that Drake is a mainstream artist that seems to have some kind of formulaic method of creating music that the masses will enjoy. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but we need to understand that a lot of what is presented by Drake sounds great on the surface but doesn't provide much musical, lyrical, or emotional depth. This is a large reason why 'mainstream' seems to come with a bad connotation. The music is accessible because it sounds nice and has a good beat. But for the love of God, I can not be the only person who think Drake sounds like an absolute goofball with a forced Jamaican accent on some of these tracks. It seems slightly appropriated and I'm not sure if that's what Drake needs with all of his rumored style stealing. In addition to this, Drake recruited British rapper Giggs for multiple tracks and I don't think he could have made a worse decision. Giggs's features fall flat every time and at one point we hear him utter,

"Nutty shit like somethin' just climbed out the X-Files...

Textbook, like it's old school, like in textiles...

Lighty, lookin' healthy and she gets smiles...

Home time, grab a quick drink and she gets wild."

I don't know why but I just can't take these verses with his accent seriously. And if you listen to the track it gets pretty grimy. You'll probably cringe but that's probably what he was going for... he is a Grime rapper.

There is a good bit of fluff on this album and everything seems to stay at the same level of excitement and energy. Drake could have done away with a few unnecessary parts and trimmed some down and added onto others. I feel that it was a better project than Views but I still had issues with some aspects. It's certainly worth a listen if you have the time! Put it on in the background and you probably won't miss much, Drake doesn't make much music that need to be listened to intently.

Drake's time in the spotlight was short-lived because just last Thursday night, Kendrick Lamar dropped a surprise track, "The Heart Part 4" which sends shots at Drake as well as Big Sean. His final verse ends with a warning for everyone who thinks they can rap better prove it before April 7th... What is to come then? We can only hope that it's Kendrick's fourth studio album. Until then, I'll be listening to his entire discography and getting hyped.