Album Review: Drake-More Life

Ever since Drake's new project More Life was announced last October, my mind has been flooded with questions about it. Is this project's existence simply an excuse for Drake to further line his pockets with buckets of money from Apple Music, his record label and radio stations across the world? What the hell is a "playlist"? Is his father's majestic mustache the ghostwriter behind his music? On the evening of March 18th, these earth-shattering questions were answered and to my delight, More Life ended up being one of Drake's most infectious releases to-date.

While the classification doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a project that's being sold on every major digital music platform, the "playlist" tag attached to More Life is one of the best creative decisions Drake has made recently. Being free from the confines of a traditional studio album gives him the freedom to explore the different sides of his sound (R&B, trap, pop, dancehall, conscious hip-hop, etc.) without having the burden of being fully committed to any of them for the duration of the project. The looser structure clearly had a liberating effect on him as he turns in his most spirited, fluid rapping/singing performance since at least Nothing Was the Same here. Certain audiences are going to write-off More Life as a cheap, directionless cash grab, but it's clear that Drake fully bought into creating a spontaneous-feeling release and at the end of the day, the authenticity behind and execution of that vision allows it to be more than just a throw-together collection of stylistically-different songs.
  
Drake has been quoted as saying he wanted this release to be a "soundtrack to your life" and for the most part, he achieves that goal. The 22 tracks on this record could serve as the musical accompaniment for anything from a romantic, candle-lit dinner ("Teenage Fever", "Passionfruit") to a rowdy Friday/Saturday night pregame ("Free Smoke", the Quavo and Travi$ Scott-assisted "Portland") to a full-blown dance party ("Blem", "Get It Together"). There might not be anything on More Life that's far removed from Drake's typical pop rap/R&B arsenal, but it was refreshing to see him the utilize the full scope of his sound after he suffocated his audience with sadness on last year's Views.

More Life doesn't avoid the pitfalls that every Drake release seems to have (bouts of inconsistency, overlong, underwhelming guest spots) but when the material is as catchy, fun and generally well-executed as this, those defining flaws are a lot easier to overlook. Even with these nagging issues present, an artist of Drake's magnitude putting out a release that's as passion-filled as this at a point in his career where he could easily just coast off of his past success deserves to be viewed as a victory. If the energy and free-form vibe of this "stopgap" project carries over to his next full-length studio album, Drake has a legitimate chance of returning to the glory days of the Take Care/Nothing Was the Same era.      

3.5/5 Stars
Standout Tracks
1.Passionfruit
2.Blem
3.Free Smoke