Early in his career, Drake would launch into poetic navel-gazing mode like it was his superpower. Moody confessions spilled out and rubbed up against hyper-luxurious rants, like the softer musings from Take Care that border on pathetic, or the way he tried and failed to coat his emotions in a steely iciness on Nothing Was the Same. Even as mafioso talk took hold on Views and What a Time to Be Alive, romantic melodrama seemed to be the default setting. It gave Drake’s writing a defining (albeit sometimes ridiculous) weight, one that felt rooted in the way a real, flawed human might actually feel.
Lately, Drake’s music has been marked by a desire to hide any wounds, flattening his writing and style. Being on the receiving end of two of the most high-profile rap beefs of all time, and the endless speculation on who he’s with and what he’s doing, turned his bars and songs into stock images of a tough guy hoarding wealth and women like precious metals. The topics have been the same for a while; what’s been missing is an injection of vulnerability to counterbalance his worst tendencies. That trend fueled the beleaguered ICEMAN, the headliner of a three-album comeback bill; scarred 2025’s vapid collaboration album with PARTYNEXTDOOR, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U; and bogged down Her Loss and For All the Dogs with uninspired stretches that traded rich emotional detail for tired bitterness. On the surface, HABIBTI represents an aesthetic course correction amid a massive data dump; its 11 tracks are crawling with morose R&B melodies that feel beamed from Take Care’s deleted scenes, almost capturing the fun multi-regional slant of 2020’s Dark Lane Demo Tapes. But Drake’s writing still feels smoothed over and starved of evocative detail. His ideas oscillate between half-baked and colorful, saved by a few spurts of inspiration.
The most magnetic parts of HABIBTI are refreshingly loose, fueled by Drake’s appetite for regional styles sometimes sheltered from the mainstream. Opener “Rusty Intro” shines with guitar strums mutated by Broward, Florida producer DJFrisco954, turning Drake’s mechanical thoughts on masculinity and romance into delirious fast music vocal stims. A track later, there’s a sliver of tenderness on the intro of “WNBA,” where his voice warbles and strains through lyrics about long-distance communication issues, catching a serene pocket of moodiness before the beat switches. Despite the tendency for shoehorned wordplay (“They so pressed about the beef, it’s panini” is egregious, while the neat The Simpsons puns elicit chuckles), he’ll still get locked into a fun mode, like the sing-songy cadence on “High Fives” where he shouts out his drink of choice, a “peach bellini.” The interplay between Drake and Loe Shimmy on the standout “I’m Spent” feels increasingly rare: The piano scales tinkle as if they’re soundtracking a bedtime story from Shimmy’s Nardy World, adorning the Florida rapper’s falsetto before giving way to Drake’s Jekyll/Hyde performance, bouncing between a baritone Barry White impression and his own crooning melodies. The sparse production would feel empty if not for the vocal manipulation, making it feel as though his emotional paranoia is echoing off the walls of a vacant mansion.
But it’s the middle-of-the-road songs that bring down HABIBTI. “Hurr Nor Thurr” should be exciting, but its ghostly hums and drums sound as if they’re covered in molasses, and Drake and Sexyy Red are just trudging through them. “Classic” feels more like window dressing than a full idea, ceding half the track to a pitched-up Jus’ Cauze sample that’s bait for crate-digging R&B nostalgia hounds. Drake’s more reserved style on the downtempo tracks puts his aphorisms about modern life and its contradictions under a microscope, which feel less charming than they did 15 years ago. “Fightin’ with me, tryna fire me up/That’s not gonna work, I’m a passive guy,” he raps on “Gen 5,” before turning his interlocutor’s domestic abuse situation into a wordplay punchline.
Drake’s music has always shone brightest when he focuses on the heartbroken figure at its center, and dimmed when the lens turns outward. The whiplash between the two modes—brief musings on isolation and the sense that time is running out, boring stretches about keeping score and who’s fucking who—makes HABIBTI feel unbalanced. He moves past the early clunkiness on “Gen 5” with an enthralling second verse, launching into an echoing, morose melody: “I don’t think you love me, but I could be wrong/Sitting at this table and I don’t belong,” he sings, letting doubt creep in. For a moment, “Slap the City” revs up, and London singer Qendresa breathes life into the track with her Aaliyah-like vocal runs on the hook. Drake starts by romancing, questioning why his Toronto mansion feels so empty—so far so good—but then bitterness takes hold, and he’s talking about why his body count doesn’t count as a double standard. It all rings a bit hollow, even if it sounds hypnotic.
At its core, Drake’s heroic trio of releases is an attempt to show that he’s still got “it” in different forms: With ICEMAN, he’s still in fighting shape (not really); with MAID OF HONOUR, he can still make hits (yes); with HABIBTI, is he still sensitive? Even when a lot of the small details feel empty—like making fun of girls’ trips to Scottsdale or how there are too many Pilates studios in Dubai—their inclusion makes the world he’s rapping about feel more lived-in than the rigid set design he’s constructed since Scorpion. It’s the closest thing to personalization—the crux of his appeal for much of his career—that Drake has offered in some time. “I love you so much, I cannot lose you so,” he raps on “White Bone,” yearning for soulmates after admitting that he should show more emotion. He punctuates the opening verse with a refrain: “I’ve never gotten this close/I’m so close,” he whispers. You’re able to picture him muttering that phrase long after he’s left the booth.
