As if his book of poetry Titles Ruin Everything — 160 pages of pettiness and misogyny — wasn’t enough for 2023, Drake’s accompanying album ‘For All The Dogs’ is the cherry on top of a cake liberally flavoured by toxic masculinity.
The Toronto rap star has been lagging behind in recent years — since the release of 'Scorpion' in 2018, in truth — and his response here is to wind the clock back to 2011, searching for relevance in a time when he was on the rise.
Tapping into the silky, sultry late-night R&B and neo-soul of Headlines, Amen’s gospel harmonies and IDGAF’s luxurious lounge soundtrack, complete with spaced-out jazz samples courtesy of Azimuth, almost trick you into thinking the girl’s finally tempted “the old Drake”.
But as ‘For All The Dogs’ unfolds over nearly 90 minutes you’ll wish you could claw back, Drake suffocates his new music with clumsy nostalgia as the cliches pile up, creating problematic parodies of himself from albums gone by.
His rhymes are blunt and often hinge on empty shock value — women and religion are favoured targets — while he’s frequently shown up by guests whose bites are actually stronger than their barks.
J.Cole sweeps Drake under the rug to steal the show on First Person Shooter, Teezo Touchdown’s honey-soaked gospel harmonies are transportive on Amen, and Sexyy Red and SZA turn up the heat to melt Drake’s musings during Rich Baby Daddy.
Sometimes, it hardly feels like Drake’s online at all, and ‘For All The Dogs’ is all the better for it. This is an album that reaches for infinity and beyond, but falls with style as it tries to recapture the glory days, its chief author sidelined by empty rehashing and misogynistic jibes.
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