Stereogum: "Drake's new album is boring. Here's our review."
http://www.stereogum.com/1874297/pre...re-evaluation/

fuck drake.

Oh, I fucking LOVE this bit from that Stereogum review:


I didn't know he did this, and I haven't even heard the Kanye verse on that song, but when Stereogum says it in bold, italicized letters, it fucking must be at least partially on point.

I can't believe he took them off the song. What a fucking tool. Kanye went out of his way to give Drake props after "FACTS" and even gave that fake ass bitch props in the song itself! Then he old the world how helpful Drake was in bouncing ideas around for Pablo, and even gave him a writing credit!

Drake is not a Kanye imitator anymore (a Kanye imitation would be infinitely better than Drake: the real thing) but that's only because he can't imitate anything but 808's. He used to at least feign respect for Kanye. But at Ovofest he got Ye to drop by and open for his ass unannounced, turning the show into something newsworthy. Why the fuck would he dis him by taking him off a track, or talking shit about how big his pool is?

Yuck. I know Ye isn't for everyone, but I thank God for him whenever I have to think about Drake's cornball ass. He's the sloppy, autistic, mad scientist anti-Drake.

Funny you say that because I was really surprised to hear you say that you weren't expecting much from the album yourself. I forget when this was. Maybe February? But I was like, wow... cause I always thought you were pretty big on Drake, and it really shocked me to hear you say this.

But yeah, I do like If You're Reading This... not so much that I listen to it often, but enough that when I first downloaded it I played the hell out of it, and did so again when I bought the cd. I really love several of the songs, but I didn't think it was going to be a new direction because -- frankly -- I think that album WAS views, and that he scrapped it and called it a "mixtape" to lower the stakes and give himself more time to get an identity. And he did have a good year in terms of popularity in 2015, but I just think it was kind of a fluke, and that Drake himself didn't even understand why it was good or what was good about it, and expected it to be a bit of a throwaway album like WATTBA.

Shrug.

^^goddamn man. you type a lot. I stop after blah blah.

I know. I think everyone knows that I type a lot. Maybe it's part of the Severian "brand." If I was Drake, I'd have someone else type for me.

I just wonder about....nevermind! what's your life like? I wonder what everyone here's life is like. my life sucks. I try to crawl through the post into ya'lls brain but it doesn't work. I want to think and feel everything that passes through.

Re: VIEWS

Also, someone on Twitter has (rather brilliantly) proven that Drake did not actually sit on top of the tower for the cover shot. Pixel ratios are cited, and it's proven beyond any kind of doubt that he was photoshopped into that top spot. Maybe he sat on the lower landing... maybe he didn't do anything, and just wanted an easily photo-shoppable image he could plaster all over anything ... Like he did with those pics of Rihanna (where's Waldo? He's on her shoulder) and Future (on the side mirror of his car).

^^fuck Drake.

My life is really morhetfucking busy and somewhat joyless, but not overly sorrowful. I work a butt. fuck. ton. That's my life.

But I think you're trolling drunk again. You're a super weird guy, greezer.

Naw dawg!! im not super weird. just super tired like you. just remember that.

my life is mothering fucrker scehatertting like sbongs soundrtarecks too. it's just a generatinos al thang, see other dont' get or understand shit.

You're drunk though, right?

That basically sums up everything I dislike about current Drake. Kanye kept Ross on Devil in a New Dress. Kendrick kept Jay Rock on Money Trees and Rapsody on Complexion. Do I think any lesser of them? Hell no, I actually appreciate them more because it made those songs better. Drake won't let anyone steal his show. Dude tries to seem confident, but he's really insecure as hell.

I really started finding him annoying about the time WATTBA came out. It wasn't a great project musically or anything.. but Future at least came dressed to the occasion and spat some of his best, most introspective verses to date. Drake on the other hand, was trying to keep up with him by rapping about a bunch of nothingness. "I am successful, I am popular, girls like me..", yeah good for him, but it wasn't convincing; he didn't sound happy, he just came off as desperate, not to mention kinda bored.

I think I was hoping that Drake would come up with a centerpiece where he would open up and show his vulnerability, and remind me of the beauty in his persona. Like.. "look, I know I've been a douche lately, but I will prove to you why you should still love me." Kanye of course crowned this with MBDTF, and I feel like Drake successfully achieved that with Take Care. Nothing Was the Same had glimpses of it, but even then he started showing signs of running out of substance and losing his artistic merit. If You're Reading This was basically as dull as the cover art suggested, an entire mixtape about pretty much nothing; but it worked because Drake's writers helped him develop a new persona for the project, where his brag lines were witty, sharp and reminiscent of Black Album-era Jay. But after a while I realized that the dude is done. Drake has nothing more to offer, at least in my opinion.

I think the cover art of Views actually fits the project very well. Yes Drake is currently sitting on top of the rap game, popularity-wise, but he's looking lost and confused; as if he's searching for an identity, and no one really knows what the hell he's doing there. The fact he was Photoshopped on it is symbolic too, because his come up doesn't come off as natural, it's very calculated and wouldn't've been done without the help of other people.

So it's happening..

Wait, what?

Chance 3?!

YES! Sometime in the next few weeks, possibly days.

OH WOW!

Also, new AMAZING video for "The Seasons / Carry Me" and "The Waters":
https://itunes.apple.com/us/post/ids...6-08ec90d6e701

CHANCE 3!! WHOO!!

Kanye, Kendrick AND Chance all on one year? Pure insanity! If King Push ends up dropping, that's pretty much everyone I care deeply about in modern hip-hop. This is Fucking awesome!

Not sure why it's "Chance 3" ... Surf wasn't a Chance album. So... I really don't get the title. Whatever though. This is great news!

I heard Chance got a "co-sign" from Ye and, like, flipped shit about it. I wonder if that means an actual co-sign, or just a kind word in his favor. It would be interesting to see Chance release an actual album on GOOD. But it's not like I'm gonna be disappointed if he sticks to mixtapes.

He had a tape titled "10 Day" before "Acid Rap", so this is basically his 3rd project.

Oh. Wow.

I had no idea. Is it good?

Yeah it's nice. Acid Rap is better though.

Acid Rap is a classic, one of the best hip hop projects of the decade, hands down.

I expect "Chance 3" to be more mature. He has a daughter now and doesn't do acid anymore. But I don't want it to be overtly serious because of that reason. Acid Rap had the perfect balance of introspection, conscious rap and pure fun.

Yeah. I have to admit I played it out in 2013, but it's back in rotation now, thanks in no small part to "Ultra Light Beam." It really is a grade A project for a mixtape. It's so sharp and smart. I like Surf a lot too, but I don't listen to it as much.

I don't think Chance 3 will be super serious. I think it will probably have a more mature vibe, but if his verse on ULB is any indication, he's only gotten better, sharper and smarter in the time since Acid Rap.

True I expect it to be better.

LOL at that Drake pic. Dude be on his own dick. By the way, a lot of reference tracks are leaking right now, which expose Drake for not writing a lot of his verses, on Views, If You're Reading This and possibly Nothing Was the Same too.

Yeah, well, it has an absurdly high revue average in iTunes. But scrolling through the reviews I found that many of the 5-star ratings were submitted multiple times by the same people/person. Probably Drake.

Also, Spin's all over his dick, and so is pitchfork. Inexplicably. The only really crappy review I found in SPIN's impulsive reviews was by Sheldon Pearce, who freelances with Pitchfork. But if anyone other than him does the album review, it's going to be a "Best New Album," easily.

P-fork even did a feature the night it dropped titled "5 things you need to know" before it even went on sale. It's like they already knew they were going to hype the shit out of it, which is troubling. Not even Kanye or Radiohead get that kind of hype from Pitchfork. I feel like there must be some kind of behind the scenes Palm-greasing going on between media outlets to make this album seem good, when really it's incredible mediocre. I've heard it now, and I don't even believe that it could appeal to anyone with any kind of ear for sophisticated music. Not with artists like Kendrick out there, raising the bar both lyrically and thematically for all hip-hop. It just doesn't make sense. The album sounds like a very basic Drake record. It's like Take Care on Ambien. Too much singing, not enough rapping, and just more of the same lyrical content.

How in the world could this thing have 10,000 5-star iTunes reviews? How could it have possibly outsold Lemonade... IN A DAY? What the fuck is going on?!

It's not the worst thing I've ever heard, but you'd have to be an idiot to think it's great. Seriously. It's so goddamn boring!

The only thing Pitchfork said that isn't absolute praise a guy whose career they once wrote a Fucking EULOGY for (after the free throw incident, and the lint roller thing) was at the very end, saying "Drake appears to be following Kanye's lead with the album-by-committee approach.

If I know Drake (which I don't, but I can guarantee he's a tool) that last sentence is going to stick in his asshole like a tampon soaked in grain alcohol, making him drunk with irritation and immune to any praise that might be heaped upon him.

Taking Kanye and Jay off of VIEWS revealed way more about Drake's personality than anything he's done before, and he's a fucking child with little brother syndrome.

The world will look back on him and laugh. How could they not? Just look at his face! And his face has only grown more punchable in the 10 years that it's been in the public eye. I want to END it with my fists!!!

"Started from the bottom" my. Skinny. Old. White. Hemorrhoidal. Fucking. Ass.

I'm starting to hate Drake almost as much as I love Kanye. Which should tell you something. I fear I'm at a higher risk for heart attack every second he's alive and successful.

I think Pitchfork will give him BNM but the overall metacritic score won't be 80+ again. Just like Eminem, Drake will never have a critically acclaimed album to his name.

Drake has turned into the hip hop version of Rihanna. He's just a pop artist who's mainly about commercial success and breaking records, he performs demos that his artists send to him instead of writing his own songs.

I like Rihanna. I think ANTI is a pretty good record. Not brilliant, but solid. Kanye helped. And she absolutely RULES on "Famous." But that's neither here nor there.

I have to disagree about critical acclaim. Metacritic aside -- as far as I know they have a pretty limited range of sources from which they aggregate their scores -- I believe Pitchfork is the true maker / breaker of modern music media. As long as your album gets a good score on Pitchfork, it's considered a good album by the industry. That's sad, but it's true. Also, Drake's second and third albums and IYRTITL all got glowing pitchfork scores, and were all up for Grammys. So I think he's got critical acclaim. What he doesn't have is a true "classic" album. He has no Blueprint, no College Dropout, not even a Slim Shady or Marshall Mathers LP. His take on MBDTF is pretty basic comparatively, and IYRTITL was "not an album" (eyeroll.) He simply isn't poising himself to go down in history. He'll be a fixture of future "I love the 2010's" specials on vh1 because he has yet to make any kind of definitive statement, and that's something even the critics who love him seem to be able to acknowledge.

Also, he's screwed over a lot of his "co-signs." Poor ILoveMakkonen (don't really care for him, but he deserves better than the shitty treatment he got from OVO) had to bounce labels just to keep releasing EPs. And who the hell else is on OVO? Nobody.

The Weeknd will bypass Drake just like Drake bypassed Wayne, and that's the circle of life for forgettable artists.

I miss Danny Brown. When the hell are we gonna hear from him again? If he were to drop an album this would be the best year for hip hop since 2013.

Cranked Old the other day after hearing some songs from that dope ass album featured on Silicon Valley. Those songs were insane. They weren't "old school" Danny Brown, of course, but that whole album kinda helped ease the pain of losing Lil Wayne (RIP Weezy's talent... RIP).

Anyway, I would love to hear a new Danny B. album drop this year. I'd also kill to hear Rocky clap back with something, as I've been reconsidering ALLA a bit, and I still think "Excuse Me" was one of the best songs of 2015... but I'd love to hear him clear his head of that magical mystery tour shit and get back to dropping dark purple trap with SpaceGhostPurrp, AraabMuzik and Clams. Or whatever he wants to do.

We just need more strong hip hop albums from big names who are determined to stick around.

Word, Danny is one of the few who might have a shot at competing with Kendrick. I know Kendrick himself is a fan.

I actually like The Weeknd more than Drake. Not that I see him as an outstanding artist anymore but he has his moments, something I can't say about Views.

I'd also like to see Andre 3000, Nas, Q-Tip, Mos Def and DOOM putting out music again.. but that's probably too much to ask. :(

Am interested in the next JAY Z album as well, mainly to hear how he reacts to Lemonade.. I want the story from his perspective.

YG, where art thou? Is he still working on the modern day Doggystyle?