For All The Dogs by Drake, Album Review
Score 7.1/10
Written by: David Williams
Complacency is something Aubrey Graham has been fighting for seemingly five-plus years. His claim to hip-hop supremacy started around 2016 tied in around his first number 1 single on the Billboard charts “One Dance” was released. Since then he’s flooded the market with hit song after hit song competing in popularity with virtually no one. You would think with so many chart-topping songs to his name and his accompanying albums consistently debuting in the six-figure range that he also would have critical acclaim. Instead with each new release the bar of expectations has dwindled exponentially.
Each new record captures the cultural zeitgeist of the moment by chasing trends with songs specifically aimed at going viral. The albums lacked a certain authenticity to them, but since Drake is still king of the charts (1 song away from tying Michael Jackson with the most number 1 hits of all time) there has been no need to switch up the formula. His statistical output being as such along with his braggadocio of being the best to ever do it, has in turn been a curse of consistently elevated expectations where he continually lets people down musically.
Bringing us to his eighth solo studio album For All The Dogs. It’s a record that won’t break the mold. If you were a fan of his newer previous work in Scorpion, Certified Lover Boy, and Her Loss you will find moments that you can truly enjoy, but if you thought these albums over the last five years have been superfluous he does nothing here that will change your mind. He has given us enough material over these last run of records to determine he is who he is now. If you’re still waiting for him to make his version of the Blueprint or Illmatic at this stage in his career don’t hold your breath.
If you temper expectations there are some fun moments on For All The Dogs, like “First Person Shooter” featuring J. Cole which is a heavyweight championship spar-off between the two. Cole’s pen game is as sharp as ever as he simply eviscerates the beat using a bevy of double entrees and switching flows. When part two of the song kicks in Drake moves into high gear but by that time the damage has already been done with Cole scoring a knockout victory. “Rich Baby Daddy” which is a song that will probably go viral on Tik Tok. It’s a song that doesn’t take itself too seriously adding in the unhinged bars of Sexyy Red making her the life of the party.
“Slime You Out” is a battle of the sexes match between Drake and SZA who are spurned over ex-lovers directing their vitriol in ballad form. “7969 Santa” is a breakup song with one of Drake’s best melodic flows over the entire record. The production is like we are in his dreamlike state where we go inside his deepest thoughts on a failed romance. If Drake comes out with another poem book he needs to add from “Tried Our Best” in which he sings “I swear to God, you think I’m Shakespeare/That’s why you always wanna play, right?” that line is an all-timer.
Drake has a complicated relationship with women. He’s the type of guy on one end who boasts about spending 20k to pay his girlfriend’s rent then in the following line, he throws it back in her face when things go south. He dates women much younger than him and then gets upset when they don’t show the same level of maturity as himself now in his mid-30s. There are moments when he comes off as jealous, possessive, malicious, and flat-out bitter at why all these romances have turned sour. The misogyny is so overt at times that even rappers from the 90s would be offended by some of the lyrics.
The real question at play here is this Aubrey the man talking or is this Drake playing up some kind of sexist superhero character knowing that his core demographic eats up this stuff like Pacman on steroids. Either scenario is a red flag to the highest degree. The narrator over the last 5 records likes to be in a position of power with his partner with an attitude that it’s either “my way or the highway.”
Drake still can flex his rapping muscles when he stays focused like on “8am in Charlotte” he slides vocally over a smooth laid-back production from Conductor Williams. He stands on business with menacing lyrics on “Fear of Heights” and “Daylight” accentuating dominance over any and all challengers. But he still gets in his own way at times either from boredom or running out of topics, so let’s insert another tried and true tiresome Kanye/Pusha T subliminal shot in “What Would Pluto Do” which is no coincidence how similar the title is from Pusha’s song “What What Meek Do.”
When someone is in the top 1% of their profession like Drake, he needs people in his inner circle to assist in portion control. There are far too many outros that don’t add anything to the songs minus the marvelous Teezo Touchdown outro from “7969 Santa.” He bizarrely sings in Spanglish with some kind of Speedy Gonzalez-like accent on a track with Bad Bunny. If you take the album at face value there’s some good, bad, and ugly with moments of brilliance combined with cringe. In the words of Drake For All The Dogs “contains some madness and badness…combination.”
