It really felt like a case of so near yet so far, both times just as either release felt like it was about to hit its atmospheric stride, there’d be a track that punctured it and spoiled the good work – a badly-placed banger after a succession of soul-searches, or a woozy downer stopping a cocky strut dead in its tracks. Take Care’s title track, built around that fabulous Gil Scott-Heron sample, was a razor-sharp modern love song, and yet it sat on the same record as obvious club staples like “Headlines” and “H.Y.F.R.” Great from a commercial point of view, but it left the album itself – and its follow-up, 2013’s Nothing Was the Same - crying out for cohesion. That, inevitably, made him a record executive’s dream here’s a guy who can have massive singles on both sides of the coin, who can have the confrontational crackle of “Over” come off the same album as the schmaltz of “Find Your Love” – two different flavours of radio smash.Īnd the thing is, when he’s at his best, he can do either, both, in convincing fashion. His first mixtape, So Far Gone, put him amongst a new vanguard in hip hop, one where introspection, not extroversion, was paramount (see also: Kid Cudi’s superlative A Kid Named Cudi.) Drake had hardened a little by the time Thank Me Later, his debut proper, dropped – still thoughtful, but no longer afraid to brag. Is he the archetypal rapper he so clearly thinks he needs to be to keep his head above the hip hop water – the ultra-competitive alpha male who reels off details of wealth, women and status with casual arrogance? Or is he the man trying to drag the genre, kicking and screaming, in another direction entirely, one where emotional literacy is the most valuable currency? He’s been playing at both roles right from the start, and whether you view that as flexibility or indecision probably indicates the regard – or lack thereof – in which you hold his work.įor better or worse, though, that’s always been his calling card.