Make Me Proud... Or Not

The publicity is starting to pile up for mister Drizzy Drake as the release date for his second album gets closer. I'm told it has a November 15th release date, which of course is subject to change since no one releases their album the day they say they're going to. The current situation between Drake's music and I is an interesting one. I heard Drake for the first time back in 2009 on Forever, a track I listened to solely because it was a Weezy/Eminem collaboration. I was quite surprised when Drake came on and started killing shit. He had me at "Like a sprained ankle boy, I ain't nothin' to play with". I bootlegged So Far Gone and was simply amazed. Not since Kanye West had I heard such emotional hip-hop but most importantly, it was something I could relate to while keeping my manhood in tact. Thank Me Later came out and while it didn't pack quite the impact So Far Gone did it was still an amazing record. Hell, I jammed to it yesterday during a long car ride. Drake basically dropped off the map after the album release except for a few features here and there. As I started to hear talk of a Take Care album in the works the features became more frequent. I began to get excited. Drake was killing the features, on the All Of The Lights remix he does laps around every rapper in the game with an intensity that would make Eminem back up a bit. Really, I'm sure Wayne legitimately considered retirement after Drake bodied him on the track. I was stoked. I ran around telling everyone they shouldn't sleep on this album because Drake is going to show up and change the game again. Then I started hearing tracks from the album. The first album cut I heard was Headlines. The Boi-1da beat sounds exactly like everything else going on in rap right now. Drake skips around over the rushing pizz strings delivering they occasional sick one liner and a ridiculously boring, sung, unlyrical chorus. I'm thinking 2.5 out of 5, maybe. Then I hear Marvin's Room. Going in I can tell I'm going to bored off my ass. 40's fucking underwater drums beneath a muffled, dragged out synthesizer and Drake's boring singing. His singing is okay every now and then but for the most part it's a little weak, sometimes flat, and always boring. The song has a decent concept but is vastly underproduced. Drake, I realize this guy is your best friend and he has some kind of fatal disease, but that does not mean he can make good beats. Let the big boys handle the production. He delivers a decent verse and the song rides out as would be expected. This morning I wake up and my twitter feed is filled with posts about a Drake/Nicki collab from Take Care called Make Me Proud. I hit iTunes and preview the track to see if I would like to purchase it and I'm not so shocked to hear something right out of the Headlines family tree with pretty predictable everything. Drake does Drake and Nicki does the same shit she does, every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year, and so on. Really, at one time I thought this girl was so sick, then she released more material and guess what, everything she does is the fucking same. Different friends have showed me different cuts on youtube that I'm told will be a part of Take Care and it all sounds like more of the same. I love Drake but my expectations for this album or lower than my standards for sex. I would love to see the Canadian hip-hop Jesus pull a classic out and surprise me but I really just not expecting it. Will I buy the album? Almost definitely. Will the fact that I paid hard earned money for it skew my point of view and make me more likely to write good things about it? Quite possibly. Watch The Throne was solid and Tha Carter IV is a nice listen, so maybe Drizzy will continue the trend of quality rap albums in the latter quarter of 2011. Only time will tell.