In 1976, Marvin Gaye holed up in his Hollywood studio and began recording Here, My Dear, a brutally candid album-length dissection of his divorce from wife Anna Gordy. The soul great found beauty within the wreckage, and the album doubled as an emotional exorcism that pushed out pain, anger, regret, spite, vengeance. "Memories haunt you all the time/ I will never leave your mind," he threatens on a song called "When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You". Reviewing the album upon its release in 1978, critic Robert Christgau wrote, "Because Gaye's self-involvement is so open and unmediated... it retains unusual documentary charm."
The same could be said of Drake, whose unrepentant navel-gazing and obsession with lost love reach new levels on his second proper LP, Take Care. Running with Gaye's ghost, Drake offers a profane update of his forebear's twisted heart: "Fuck that nigga that you love so bad/ I know you still think about the times we had," he sings on the insidious hook of "Marvins Room", a song recorded in the same studio where Gaye originally exposed his own unedited thoughts more than three decades ago.
In this age of reality television, 24-hour celebrity news, and second-to-second documentation-- where behind-the-scenes sagas mix with what's on screen and on record, creating an ever-morphing, ever-more-self-aware new normal-- Drake is an apt avatar. Naturally, he knows this, too. "They take the greats from the past and compare us/ I wonder if they'd ever survive in this era," he contemplates on the album, "In a time where it's recreation/ To pull all your skeletons out the closet like Halloween decorations." We can thank Kanye West for legitimately kicking off this open-book hip-hop era, and it's increasingly apparent that Drake is the most engaging new rap star since Ye. While fame causes some to withdraw and cling to what little privacy they have left, this 25-year-old Canadian's penchant for poetic oversharing has only been emboldened by his success. When he's not making the most epic drunk-dial song in pop history with "Marvins Room", he's openly pleading with former flame Rihanna on the record's title track, or duetting with Twitter wife Nicki Minaj on "Make Me Proud" only to call out such publicity-baiting "relationships" two tracks later, where he raps, "It look like we in love, but only on camera." With its startlingly frank talk and endless heartbreak, Take Care often reads like a string of especially vulnerable-- and sometimes embarrassing-- Missed Connections.
This time around, Drake has a better grasp on his own notoriety and the mind-fucks that come with it. While he expressed wonderfully wounded trepidations about his sudden rise on Thank Me Later, he's learning to embrace it more here. "They say more money more problems, my nigga, don't believe it," he raps on closer "The Ride". "I mean, sure, there's some bills and taxes I'm still evading/ But I blew six million on myself, and I feel amazing." And on "HYFR (Hell Ya Fucking Right)", he all but gives away his hand, turning his sadness into strategy: "What have I learned since getting richer?/ I learned working with the negatives could make for better pictures." And while he claims "I think I like who I'm becoming" on "Crew Love"-- about as ringing an endorsement you'll get from a guy so bent on exposing his own disappointments-- he's still more interested in contradiction than triumph. Even when staring at a pair of unnatural breasts, he highlights the incision rather than the size: "Brand new girl and she still growing/ Brand new titties, stitches still showing/ Yeah, and she just praying that it heals good/ I'm 'bout to fuck and I'm just praying that it feels good."
Just as his thematic concerns have become richer, so has the music backing them up. Thank Me Later banked on a sonic tableau that was slow and sensual and dark-- equal parts Aaliyah and the xx-- and Take Care takes that aesthetic to an even more rewarding place, spearheaded by Drake's go-to producer Noah "40" Shebib, who gets a writing and production credit on almost every song. While the bombastic style of producer Lex Luger's work with Rick Ross and Waka Flocka Flame threatened to turn the tide on Drake and 40's moody atmospherics last summer, the pair stick to their gut here and delve further into smooth piano and muffled drums, fully committed to the idea of doing more with less. This is sensuous music that breathes heavy somewhere between UGK's deep funk, quiet-storm 90s R&B, and James Blake-inspired minimalism. (Drake reportedly had a vinyl copy of Blake's debut LP on display in the studio while recording Take Care.) Its subtlety is a direct rebuke to the rash of in-the-red Eurotrance waveforms clogging up radio dials. Even the more upbeat tracks take pains not to rely on a simple thump. "Take Care" features Rihanna and a four-four beat, but the singer shows off her little-heard whispering delivery and the instrumental comes courtesy of the xx's Jamie xx, who nimbly tailors his remix of Gil Scott-Heron's "I'll Take Care of You" for the occasion.
Drake's worked on his own technical abilities, too, and both his rapping and singing are better than ever here. Notably, he only brandishes the hashtag flow he quickly became famous (or infamous) for over the last few years, turning it into a knowing knock on copycats: "Man, all of your flows bore me/ Paint drying." And he breathlessly runs through the opening verse on the vicious "HYFR" at a speed that would likely garner respect from Busta Rhymes. And then there's "Doing It Wrong", a brilliant, barely there slow jam that borrows some lyrics from an unlikely source (Don "American Pie" McLean's twangy 1977 track "The Wrong Thing to Do") and features an unlikely guest in Stevie Wonder. Fitting the album's classy, unshowy demeanor, Wonder is tapped not to sing but play harmonica-- and uncharacteristically downcast harmonica at that-- for the track's crushing denouement. The song has Drake chronicling the conflicting emotions of a difficult breakup and giving us his finest singing to date. His words are simple, universal, true: "We live in a generation of not being in love, and not being together/ But we sure make it feel like we're together/ 'Cause we're scared to see each other with somebody else." Elsewhere, André 3000 references Adele's unimpeachable "Someone Like You" in one of the album's many well-placed guest verses; "Doing It Wrong" deserves to follow that song as pop's next Great Heartbroken Ballad.
The cover of Take Care shows its star sitting at a table, dejected and surrounded by gold, like a hip-hop Midas. Considering some of the money-doesn't-buy-you-happiness sentiments inside, the picture is apropos enough. But it's much too obvious to truly represent what Drake and his crew have done here. A better image would be the grainy, amateur photo he released with "Marvins Room" when he originally leaked it in June, which shows the rapper walking away from a group of private jets, his face obscured by a puff of smoke making its way up to an overcast sky. It lets his reality do the heavy lifting while Drake stands by, taking it all in.
