Review Summary: Woof
One of the funniest things things that I have ever seen was a thead posted to r/hiphopheads on September 28, 2013 entitled “We should start a Militia to Protect Kanye West” -the grammar and capitalization of certain letters are doing a lot of heavy lifting to show where username The_Smooth_Mexican’s priorities were. In it, our concerned citizen worried that the controversial rapper’s negative perception with the public had reached a fever pitch so as to be in actual, literal danger from the paparazzi and society at large and that a ragtag group of volunteers should be conjured to “protect Kanye at all costs. We cannot lose a creative genius to these despicable people.” This post has aged like the finest of wines as 2013’s controversies were of Confederate images adorning tour merchandise and getting into public fights with fashion brands and the same thing is now happening a decade later, only with a heaping helping of literal Nazism. The militia now is The Proud Boys. While not the first of its kind, this call-to-arms is a nice place to earmark on the Long Scroll of History to where we completely lost the plot. A point where being the fan of an individual rapper was held up with the same tribalism and furiocity as a sports team or political ideology. For all the misplaced devotion of a complicated, troubled, and pretty evil individual in Kanye West, at least the music itself was good enough to where you could at least understand the fervor and passion back then and the earp-lugging mantra of “He made Graduation He made Graduation He made Graduation” now.
Men used to go to war to defend their country, now they just pre-order multiple bundles of Travis Scott’s
Utopia.
Bafflingly, in the decade since that ill-conceived post, Drake has inspired the same idolatry and enthusiasm, having legions of white suburbanites who talk to their fellow salesmen about life being too short for the under gambling line on tonight’s game call him The Boy in online forums while wiping their hands like a mosquito as the post “Big Things Coming” with an eye emoji on a blank instagram story at 2 AM as way to make their ex who hasn’t followed them back for months jealous. Many of these legionnaires will point to Aubrey’s dominant streaming numbers as a sign of his music being good, so that they can claim to be a part of the winning side against dwindling metacritic scores and an even smaller cultural cachet to females* who didn’t ask. Is The Cure Male Loneliness A Billboard Chart?
*their word, not mine
So when these people say his album sucks, it must really suck. And r/Drizzy says it sucks.
For All the Dogs is a herculean monument to mediocrity, a silhouette of a La Croix in audio form. It’s twenty-three songs(!!) and eighty-four minutes (!!) long -does that sound like a good time to
anyone? The tracklist and runtime is obviously the result of marketing research to maximize streams and continue the Sprite Spokesman’s hold of streaming services with each song ascribing to a different vibes so that any listener can take what they like and it add it to either the gym playlist or the one they made for The One entitled “Us.” A strategy that has undoubtedly worked for nearly the last decade to get Drake to the throne of Michael Jackson, in numeric terms.
And credit where credit is due: there is some fun to be had here. Lead single “Slime You Out” is a compelling enough track to make you think that Drake is actually willing to take enough time away from being an hebophile to put the effort into his music that he once did to make him a star. It’s a catchy duet with SZA, who absolutely floats over a woozy beat with enough pathos to trick you into joining in with the internet weirdos in sending those “he’s back” texts. “Virginia Beach” continues the established history of Drake making one hell of an impression with his opening tracks with some genuinely inspired production, sampling Frank Ocean of all people. Drake sounds hungry, weary of all the social climbers who have snuck into his entourage, and the beat sounds positively haunting, conjuring images of literal ghosts to match the figurative ones in his cell phone. “Another Late Night” continues Lil Yachty’s heel turn as an actually-good artist with a mesmerizing vibe track over a self-checkout type beat to remind us that Drake used to be able effortlessly pump out tracks that were actually as good as the boasting within implied. “Rich Baby Daddy” sounds, surprisingly, like it would be at home on George Clanton’s latest album with its Water Level vibes and playful energy where it sounds like it's in on the joke. The song’s success is due, in no small part, once again to its guest SZA, this time accompanied by Sexxy Red. Red comes through with a hook that toes the line perfectly on the catchy-annoying ratio. SZA operates, once again, in an ancillary role that adds just enough angelic seasoning to the sauce to make a shockingly good track.
It’s not a coincidence that “Rich Baby Daddy” is one of the best songs on offer and hardly contains any Drake, but he makes up for his brevity with one of the most ill-advised and embarrassing gimmicks of his career: interpolating Florence and The Machine’s “The Dog Days Are Over.” Ostensibly, this is to assure the listener that our dear protagonist is in on all the jokes and the memes that have and will continue to be levied at him, but there’s no amount of winking or nudging that can cape for the sheer audacity of the action. One can only imagine the excitement Mr. Graham had when the lightbulb went off with this moment’s conception and if it matched his enthusiasm for the day that Millie Bobbie Bobby Brown turned eighteen.
To match that brilliance, Snoop Dogg makes an appearance on an interlude to say the listener is enjoying B-A-R-K radio. It cobbles together a ruff narrative throughline for the album about men being dogs and women being cats, for obvious and stupid reasons. But also, like, his friends are
dawgs, you see. And Aubrey is too rich and famous and powerful for a blue
collar job. It really makes you think and we live in a society. Or, at least it would if there was any attempt at resolution to
For All the Dogs’ fortune-cookie posturing.
Of the album’s twenty-three songs, probably nineteen are the equivalent of him saying the word “struggle” then resting his chin at the intersection of the L that his outstretched index finger and thumb make while making a Zoolander face. There’s a Bad Bunny appearance with a reggaeton beat, that’s good for streams. J Cole shows up like a Marvel crossover so that Drake can drop a line about the Spiderman meme. There’s a point in time where Drake stretches out the word “business” to be three syllables: bid-uh-ness. It sucks. To go into any more detail than that would be an exercise in futility because there is none. These are Drake tracks that Dall-E could make if it were capable of sound.
Though the last hundred or so songs that he has churned may suggest otherwise, Drake is still rich and sad and has sex and looks for love and can’t find it. I find some strange comfort that it’s just as pathetic to witness a multi-millionaire soundoff on this for the millionth time as it is for any 36 year old dad who refuses to hunker down and take responsibility. If Drake is a dawg, then someone get him a shock collar. It’s time to put this career to sleep.
Woof.
