![]() ![]() ![]() This album is selling like absolute hotcakes (to the tune of one million which is increasingly unheard of) and has been streamed into near oblivion. ![]() But as a whole, it does not even slightly live up to what many thought it would.Įven the reviewers who gave it bad reviews seem to be looking past their own critiques, picking out the occasional strong points and using that to hail the album a massive success. There are some absolutely stellar moments throughout it, moments where you can see the superstar we want him to be. Hell, I honestly found more entertainment and gratification in DJ Khaled’s I Changed A Lot. ![]() It’s merely ‘ok’ or ‘half-decent’, certainly not continuing his upward trajectory or cementing his status in the top tier of 21 st century hip-hop artists with Kendrick, Kanye or The Weeknd. I don’t even know if it’s better than Future’s EVOL. Granted these are both symptoms of the kind of depression and introspection Drake’s music has become synonymous with, but it lacks the underlying hunger and the electricity and the innovation of Nothing Was The Same to set it apart from any of the middling rap releases we’ve seen already in 2016. More than anything, Views just sounds tired. There’s thought-provoking self-examination and there’s shameless self-absorption and the line between them is muddy as hell on Views and more often than not feels like the latter. Where rappers like Kendrick Lamar or Talib Kweli frame their music and the personal struggles they explore within it around universal issues to captivate and speak to the masses, Drake’s self-indulgence now feels more alienating than charming. I applaud Drake’s effort in making an album and having it clock in at 20 tracks and over 80 minutes long in an age where a lot of people’s patience and appreciation of longform art is at an all-time low, but maybe make sure the songs you are including are going to keep the listener engaged for that long? When half of those tracks could have been cut and your album still would have had filler in it then it becomes less a thrilling rollercoaster of an album experience and more like sitting through the last interminable Fast And The Furious movie (with an autotuned and miserable Vin Diesel commentary track over the top). So did the actual physical manifestation of all that hype in the final (Apple Music exclusively) released product of Views match its lofty expectations? It was perhaps the biggest pop hit of 2015 at any rate and absolutely changed the conversations we have surrounding the release and promotion of singles in the digital era. A transcendent track that went from being the single most infectious song about being a creepy possessive dickbag this side of Every Breath You Take to the kind of constantly respawning and regenerating catch-all meme that doesn’t even need context anymore. Surely it would not so much clear but vaporise the bar set by its 2013 predecessor Nothing Was The Same?Ĭompounding all of this was the atom bomb of Hotline Bling as its first single. Sure, that’s markedly a whole lot less clusterfuck-y than some of the utter nonsense and pretentious crap surrounding Pablo’s eventual release, but it was enough to have most of the world ready for a game-changer. Perhaps only second in pre-release hype and hysteria to The Life Of Pablo as far as hip-hop albums of 2016 have gone, it went through name changes (he pruned the original title suffix From The 6), had visual trailers for it and even Views-themed pop-up stores out there in the world because reasons. Unless you’ve been frozen in carbonite under a boulder with your fingers in your ears you are probably aware that Drake released his long-awaited fourth studio effort Views just a couple of weeks ago. ![]()
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