Throughout, Drake’s appetite for the music of other cultures remains ravenous. Sampha bleeds his gorgeous hurt over the entirety of “4422,” with no one else in sight, and Skepta claims an entire track, boasting that he “died and came back as Fela Kuti.” Young Thug steals not one but two songs, spitting a dense verse with no vocal filter on “Sacrifices” and yelping along with the roots-reggae horns of “Ice Melts.” It is as confident, relaxed, and appealing as he’s sounded in a couple of years.ĭrake steps back and lets the dusky-voiced 19-year-old British singer Jorja Smith soar over a sinuous club track from the rising South African house producer Black Coffee on the gorgeous “ Get It Together.” Black Coffee and Jorja comprise at least 80 percent of the song Drake is mostly relegated to mumbling or doubling the hook. The more voices he lets into the frame, the fuller and richer the results, and More Life bursts with energy and lush sounds-more guests, more genres, more producers, more life.
Dialing back on his self-pity allows all his skills that have kept him on top to float back to the surface: his ear for melodies, his sophisticated tastes, his curation skills. He doesn’t exactly drop the attitude, but he does play the background on More Life, implicitly acknowledging that he is often the least appealing element of his massively successful art. “That attitude will just hold you back in this life, and you’re going to continue to feel alienated,” she advises. On More Life’s closing track “Do Not Disturb,” he acknowledges the bleak spot he was in: “I was an angry youth while I was writing VIEWS/Saw a side of myself that I just never knew.” He even lets his mother pipe in with a voice message two-thirds of the way through the record on “Can’t Have Everything” as she admonishes her son for the hostile, suspicious streak he was nurturing. His solution is a “Playlist” (not a big old serious Album, the implication goes, nor one of those little “mixtapes” other rappers bother with) that forces Drake out into the sunlight again, where he can once again mingle with the people. He seems to be tacitly admitting to this stagnation throughout the warm, pulsing, and generous More Life.
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