More Life [Mixtape]

Though Drake’s globetrotting is seeping into American pop (hi, Katy) More Life still stands apart. Its closest recent antecedent is probably Drake’s own Take Care, itself a kaleidoscopic masterpiece that pulled horizontally and vertically from across music.

Other than the Yeezy collab “Glow” being a bit lackluster, primarily for being slow and sonically off-putting, More Life has very few stumbles and a plethora of exciting moments that will ensure this project’s shelf life.

Drake’s consistent use of global beats and international artists carry the bulk of the weight throughout More Life. Elements of grime and British street culture, along with trap, Caribbean dancehall and Afrobeat give a warmth and freshness that keeps the mood brisk.

More Life is light, often weightless. Despite its playlist tag, it is unmistakably a Drake album--it even has a Blueprint highball closer like each of its predecessors--and as an album, it is probably Drake’s worst. But as a collection of totally atomized songs and ideas, it’s up there with anything he’s released.

Thankfully, More Life is Drizzy’s homecoming, a vocalization of the heart in his heartless world, and a veritable return to form for it. Welcome back to the Firm.

While fans and critics argue over whether or not he’s one of the greatest MCs of his generation, let alone among the greatest of all-time, Drake continues to prove his worth as an elite talent with More Life, another blockbuster from rap’s golden child with the midas touch.

This is the strongest project Drake since 2013’s ‘Nothing Was The Same’, and one that owes itself to sounds across the globe.

More Life is his finest longform collection in years, cheerfully indulgent at 22 tracks and 82 minutes, a masterful tour of all the grooves in his head, from U.K. grime ("No Long Talk") to Caribbean dancehall ("Blem") to South African house ("Get It Together") to Earth, Wind & Fire ("Glow"). Yet the more expansive he gets, the more himself he sounds--and the further he roams around the globe, the deeper he taps into the heart of Drakeness.

Pleasingly, two of the best [guests] are British, Sampha capping “4422” with an emotive outburst, and Skepta getting an entire “Skepta Interlude” to himself to muse about how he “died and came back as Fela Kuti”. Elsewhere, the likes of Giggs, Young Thug and 2 Chainz add furtive but menacing sketches of thug life to tracks like “No Long Talk” and “Sacrifices”, the latter offering Drake’s most elegant mea culpa for past transgressions.

Lyrically, Drake embraces some of his pet topics on More Life. ... Yet Drake is also flashing signs of emotional growth--glimmers he might feel more confident displaying on a happily jumbled playlist than working into a cohesive album-length statement with its own internal logic.

Excluding its minor gaffes, More Life cements a place for genres long-overlooked by mainstream media; dancehall, grime, Afrobeat, house, trap and, of course, rap, and takes Toronto on a world tour to celebrate life--More life.

He allows the various sounds, guest features and flavours of the production, which he and his crew adopted from all over the world, to steal the show.

Terminology aside, it’s a sprawling, star-studded release, and an impressive achievement--one that signals a new level of ambition for Drake.

Even if the album lacks the humor of the Views songs 9 or Childs Play--no line here bests “Why you gotta fight with me at Cheesecake / You know I love to go there”--the breadth of styles recalls his 2012-2015 Soundcloud that found space for both Fetty Wap and James Blake remixes.

A nuanced collection of 22 new songs that recall various stages of Drake’s own development, as well as a tour of other styles and artists that he’s partial to. It is both craven and elegant.

The more voices he lets into the frame, the fuller and richer the results, and More Life bursts with energy and lush sounds--more guests, more genres, more producers, more life. It is as confident, relaxed, and appealing as he’s sounded in a couple of years.

The variety makes for a better listen, to say nothing of the care taken into sequencing the playlist. ... The filler is merely soporific.

Ultimately, More Life does a terrific job creating a mood with its dancehall-flecked, atmospheric production (handled most impressively by the likes of Nineteen85 and Frank Dukes), and it certainly points to a fascinating fork in the road moment for the world’s biggest rapper.

None of these songs are terrible, but with the exception of Mr. West none of them are a creative force to be reckoned with on Mr. Graham's level.

Beneath their gilded surface, everything here has been explored numerous times by the man himself before, far more memorably.

Though More Life has its faults, Drake clearly worked hard on it. If the first thing you notice about More Life is its monolithic runtime, the second is how obvious it is that Drizzy is doing his damnedest to get your cosign.