Drake Is in His Reputation Era

Careers don’t end anymore. The offending parties either ease off the gas, like Haliey Welch did after a pivot from hawking harmless Tuah to dodgy meme coins, or they throttle. Last year, Drake received one of the worst drubbings in hip-hop history. Alongside his continued follow-through, it will be remembered as an unforced international embarrassment. But he hasn’t made himself scarce over the loss. You could watch Drake tripping over words in right-wing streamer Adin Ross’s Christmas giveaway special while reading a fan letter that insulted Kendrick, or rocking a hoodie riddled with smoking bullet holes on a recent Australian mini-tour, looking more like Netflix’s Carhartted Luke Cage than the available real-world parallels.

Beef doesn’t work the same way it used to. Before the contrarian ‘20s, it was possible to ruin a reputation via embarrassment. But fan allegiances are nigh-impenetrable now. Yeezy still having the juice to pull a Super Bowl swastika merch bait-and-switch routine says no offense ever totally vaporizes anyone’s standing. “Not Like Us” couldn’t end Drake in a world where guys go to bat for Diddy. However, it did bounce him expediently back to square one. His latest full-length, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, a collaboration with singer-songwriter and producer PARTYNEXTDOOR, hugged the post-halftime new release Friday — not just to weaponize the public’s interest but to tickle the nostalgia of the OVO Valentine’s Day release. Timing implied a return to the dulcet tones and pillow talk of February drops like 2009’s So Far Gone and 2015’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, bookends for an effete “Heartbreak Drake” era teasing an R&B album we never quite got.

$$$4U’s stated premise is simple: “It’s an album to fuck to, not sit down and analyze my guy,” Party posted on Instagram. But the new OVO Valentine’s Day A$$acre doesn’t always hit the spot. It steeps itself in aqueous trap, Screwston funk, and plaintive R&B, sonic hallmarks of the yearning pre-beef star finding his footing. Much of the production is overseen by longtime engineer Noel Cadastre. The sound is conscientiously re-establishing an idea of the label’s aesthetic, lightening up by gesturing to the sample-heavy slipperiness of So Far Gone, the southern rap fixations of Take Care and Nothing Was the Same, and the global citizenhood of More Life. The squad understands what makes the base pop and pitches almost two dozen tracks into old comfort zones that rarely upstage the melodicism of past Drake and Party team-ups like More Life’s “Since Way Back,” PARTYNEXTDOOR 3’s “Come and See Me,” or PARTYMOBILE’s “Loyal.” Noah “40” Shebib, who co-produced all three songs and many more for the camp, is a relative non-presence here. The recipe is off, but there’s a method. Guest instead spots go to underexposed artists and producers, like Houston singer-songwriter Pim. It’s the first Drake project not to call on another major-label rapper, though you suspect no one’s around because he hates too many of them now.

In spite of obvious parallels in the OVO stars’ individual and shared bodies of work, the album $$$4U’s mindset most resembles is Taylor Swift’s Reputation, the cloistered R&B pivot released after lashing out at the erstwhile Kardashian-Wests backfired. Swift wore a shift in public perception on her sleeve, reveling annoyingly in the camp of “Look What You Made Me Do” and “Don’t Blame Me,” but the vexed writing exercise also yielded the tired, stately “King of My Heart” and “Delicate”: “My reputation’s never been worse, so / You must like me for me.” $$$4U is often sifting through similar wreckage, laying out its frustrated stakes in detail.

“Moth Balls” admits to leaning on alcohol, Adderall, and hookups to rebound from a breakup in the shadow of bad press: “I got the worst reputation in our town / I been seen with all the baddest hoes around.” It comes up a few times that Drake beefed up security after a shooting and break-in attempts at his home last year. Every few songs, there’s a reminder that he’s been wronged by people in lower tax brackets. “Small Town Fame” seems to chop at Dillon Brooks, the Houston Rockets player dating Drake associate Mirna “Baby M” Habib: “You somewhere on house arrest pretending you in love / Exfoliate that nigga that you with, he a scrub.” It’s tiresome that Drake still writes lyrics treating women like tools of revenge. It’s also worth noting that he roasted Kendrick for being friends with Swift only to take the same beeline to passive aggressive R&B that she did. “Gimme a Hug” is a flurry of subliminals for rappers who’ve crossed Drake, whose lone moment of spite targets Melyssa Ford (and really only to complain that the veteran Toronto video actress is a fixture on his frenemy Joe Budden’s podcast now). As on Reputation, the most interesting songs are the ones that treat the beef like background noise or ugly wallpaper to pout about.

$$$4U’s strengths rest not in the settling of scores but in the songs where the label boss is rearranging pieces of his shattered public perception and crafting self-referential music with trusted associates. “Die Trying” is an acoustic funk-pop jam from Majid Jordan’s Jordan Ullman where Drake struggles to shake awful feelings in descending melodies in the verses. Party rings in the next track howling “I know there’s somebody… who really loves me, and that’s all I need,” hinting at being worn down before thundering into a textbook male R&B duet about acquaintances thirsting after the same woman. The album could’ve used more of this but takes stranger swings: “Meet Your Padre” flips Greek dance-pop into makeshift flamenco, nodding to Atlanta’s “Drake’s Mexican” scene with a self-deprecating, absurd Latin accent that screams “La Isla Bonita” or “Alejandro” until he trots island patois out. “Nokia” turns a phone jingle into an electro appreciation saluting rap, R&B, and Latin pop anthems where a guy tries to name as many women as he can. The silliness is a welcome change of pace when it’s not applied too liberally, leaving the feeling that Drake’s fishing for a new meme.

$$$4U can’t decide how seriously to take itself but gets that the Boy with more slaps than the Beatles has been painted as a real “Nowhere Man.” It refuses to choose between establishing a geographical sense of place and having fun with the complaint that Drake tries on intercontinental genres and speech habits like Fortnite skins. Party offers a lack of baggage, a deeper vocal flexibility, and a boon of harmonies, pushing a wider palette of sounds and ideas where possible. You can tell he really wants the album to be a DJ Screw’s Late Night Fuckin Yo Bitch affair, a utilitarian gift of songs for future newborns to be conceived to. But his partner-in-slime has too many contradictory agendas to address.

It’s not enough that Drake is now thinking on his toes more. The UMG lawsuit likening “Not Like Us” to a Pizzagate saga suggested he’d had a moment of reflection about modern misinformation and the dangers of a rumor. But he should hurry up and evolve into the guy the paperwork sketches out. That’s not who he is now. He called Megan Thee Stallion a liar after she was shot, and he circles popular conservative rap and gambling influencers with loose relationships to facts. Drake should not have DJ Akademiks sharing dispatches on his behalf, as he sometimes did last year. He should’ve also checked recent news about R&B veteran Aaron Hall — who has been accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting an underaged girl with Diddy — before dropping “I Miss You” in the beat change during the beef epilogue “Gimme a Hug.” A rapper who filed a pre-action discovery petition last year announcing an intent to pursue RICO charges about a diss track should tremor at dedicating a song to Brian Steel, the lawyer who defended YSL through their trial. You can’t be anti-RICO until you stumble onto a scenario where the practice suddenly suits you. Your interest in truth must extend beyond the edge of your face and property or else it is only a preoccupation with marshalling your own perception, masquerading as act of nobility. $$$4U says we’ve successfully tempted the old Drake back outside. Will he stop the wolf within from baying for blood?

Related

• Kendrick Lamar Is Not Your Savior