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mambasaid · 6 years
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Scorpion Review (Side A)
Before I get into this review, I’d like to start off by giving you a synopsis of my history with Drake and his music.  
Like a lot of Drake fans, I was introduced to Drake’s music when So Far Gone was released early in 2009.  I may have heard a few of his songs with Lil Wayne prior to that, but I binge watched a lot of Family Guy and South Park around that time so my memory for most of 2008-2010 is pretty spotty.  I really just remember chicken fights and singing pieces of shit (no, I’m not talking about Chris Brown) with random songs sprinkled throughout.  Anyway, my point is that if I did hear anything by Drake prior to So Far Gone I didn’t find it compelling enough to skim through the rest of his discography, but So Far Gone was a different beast entirely.  The production was incredible; a lot of the beats made me feel as if I was in a dream.  Drake’s lyrics were also noteworthy; as a rapper Drake has his flaws, but he has always been a technically proficient rapper who was not afraid to come across as vulnerable, and I have always respected that.  That combination is rare today, but it was nearly unheard of back in 2009; at least in the realm of mainstream hip hop.  So here we had a lyricist with a great ear for production who was even able to sing pretty well on occasion; I was all in.  I went back and downloaded Drake’s two prior mixtapes, Comeback Season, which is still great, and Room For Improvement, which is an interesting listen, but not really all that good, and played both of them dozens of times.  For a few months in 2009 I was a full-fledged Drake stan.  
However, Drake had slowly started to fall out of my good graces by the time his debut album, Thank Me Later, came out in 2010.  In hindsight, I don’t really remember why.  Maybe it was the fact that he was singing too much for my taste.  I was a stereotypical hip hop head back then.  All I wanted were complex punchlines and rhyme schemes over a gritty or soulful beat and I was satisfied.  Drake definitely had his fair share of “lyrical miracle” songs, but he also started to venture into R&B territory a bit too much for my liking.  For whatever reason, I thought that his music was too “soft” and self-indulgent.  I grew up in the suburbs, so I really have no right to call anybody soft, but that’s how I felt at the time.  I definitely liked quite a few of the song that Drake was putting out, but I just didn’t view him as the guy who was going to bring “real hip hop” back to the mainstream anymore.  On Take Care, which is still probably his best album, Wheelchair Jimmy Champagne Papi The light-skinned Keith Sweat  Drake continued to toe the line between rapper and singer, and I was such a hip hop elitist that I dismissed damn near ⅓ of the album because Drake was singing too much.  I’ll save my final thoughts on that album for another day, but I certainly didn’t give that album it’s due at the time.  
As Drake continued to dominate the radio with inescapable songs, he became harder to hate on.  Eventually, I accepted the fact that Drake was no longer
Survival
This is fine for an intro, but it’s a bit underwhelming when compared to Drake’s past introductions.  He even says that he doesn’t want to get ahead of himself because this is “Just the intro” when on prior opening tracks he has rapped much longer, sometimes for what felt like an eternity, and used the intro to catch us up to speed on what has been going in his life since his last album dropped.  Here he mostly treads water, bringing up the Meek Mill and Diddy beefs he was involved in over 3 years ago, although he does seem to take a few shots at Kanye.  Anyway, this was pretty good, just not as epic as I was expecting.  “My Mount Rushmore is me with four different expressions” is an all-time great Drake line, though.
Nonstop
I hate this song.  The beat is fine, but this is probably the most annoying flow and cadence that Drake has ever used.  In the second verse he starts doing this weird thing where he mumble whispers (?) the first half of each bar, then raps the second half in his regular voice, and it’s just terrible.  On top of that, the song title isn’t even accurate because I stopped this track at least six times to make sure that this was actually a song by Drake and not something from Lil Overdose’s new album.  This might be Drake’s worst song ever.
Elevate
There was literally no way this song could have been worse than Nonstop, so at least it already had that going for it.  This song still isn’t anything special, though.  I like this beat a lot, its celebratory and ominous at the same time, I imagine this is the beat Thanos heard once he got all six soul stones and snapped his finger.  Unfortunately, Drake didn’t snap on here, so we get a lot of very forgettable lines.  Girls seem to love that line about God playing favorites, though.
Emotionless
After giving Drake a pretty mundane beat for Survival, No I.D completely redeems himself here by giving Drake one of the best beats of his career; it’s so soulful.  Drake uses the first verse to take more shots at Kanye and Pusha T, and uses the second verse to make excuses about why we didn’t know he had a son until Pusha played detective.  Props to him for calling out the people who take dozens of pictures when they go on vacation for 2 days then post those pictures a month later so they can flex like they’re still vacationing, but what the hell does that have to do with us knowing you have a kid?  Your son barely even knows that you exist, so how do you expect him to know about the lives of people on social media?  The kid won’t be old enough to even understand what is on a phone for several years.  It’s a good line, but it is also really dumb, but this is hip hop, not a thesis defense, so I’ll let it slide.  Finally, a song I want to listen to again.
God’s Plan
Originally released as part of Drake’s Scary Hours EP, along with another way better song called Diplomatic Immunity,  God’s Plan quickly rocketed up the charts and became one of Drake’s most successful songs ever.  I like it, I just don’t understand why it was so popular.  Drake has released a lot of other singles that I felt were destined to be chart toppers in the past, but for whatever reason this one was way more successful.
I’m Upset
This song came out a day after Drake’s Duppy Freestyle, a track that became a bit of a footnote after Pusha T sonned him on The Story of Adidon, but still a good diss in its own right.  Duppy got a pretty warm reception when it first dropped, and I think I’m Upset initially suffered because of that.  There is a pretty stark contrast between the two songs.  Duppy has more of a classic hip hop feel, with more of an old school beat and Drake adopting a quicker flow with a lot of slick punchlines.  I’m Upset is very clearly a modern hip hop song, Drake raps over a much slower beat and gives us a lot of lines that are easy to digest and remember, the type of lines you would see under a picture on Instagram, but that isn’t such a bad thing.  While this isn’t one of Drake’s best songs by any measure, I do think it’s better than people initially gave it credit for.  Ironically, Pusha’s diss track that dropped a few days later makes this song sound better, as a lot of the first verse is clearly about his baby’s mother.
8 out of 10
Drake mentions that he likes to take things from an 8 to a 10, which sounded nice until I remembered that he once rapped about going from 0 to 100 real quick.  Now I’m left wondering if he has slowed down and abandoned his more reckless ways now that he has a baby to care for.  Anyway, upon first hearing Scorpion, this was one of my favorite songs.  However, after listening to Joe Budden’s excellent breakdown of the meaning behind a lot of these lines, I’m beginning to realize that, even though I liked this song, I didn’t really appreciate it as much as I should have.  Drake utilizes Boi 1da’s beat to take more shots at Kanye and Pusha T, but a lot of the lines are so subtle that they might fly over your head, and I mean that as a compliment.  When he wants to be, Drake really is a lyricist, and he puts that on full display in this song.  Listen to Budden’s analysis of the bridge for this song and tell me this man doesn’t care about what he writes.  This is my favorite song on this album by a pretty wide margin at this point in time.  
Mob Ties
Aside from maybe Chance the Rapper, Drake is pretty much the least threatening rapper to have ever lived.  Not only does he spend like 40% of his discography crooning or crying to women, but even his public persona is that of an unabashedly a corny guy.  He is like the opposite of Doggystyle era Snoop Dogg and that’s completely fine, people love him for it, so why does he always have these random songs in which he transforms into Only Built for Cuban Linx era Raekwon and pretends to be some kind of mob boss?  We know you’re not putting hits out on people dude, just chill.  Granted, a lot of rap is built on people building up fake personas, but at least they stick to them.  Yeah Rick Ross is a liar, but the guy has always stuck to his character.  We know so much about Drake’s personal life that it’s hard for me to take any threats that he makes seriously.  Anyway, I didn’t mean to rant for so long, this song is ok.  I like this beat, but I just don’t think it was well suited for Drake, it seems more like something Migos would have picked.  
Can’t Take a Joke
Lmaooooooooooo what is this flow?  Maybe this song really is a joke because this weird sing/rap flow actually made me laugh the first time I heard it.  Aside from Nonstop, this is pretty easily my least favorite song on the A side.  I’ll be skipping this one.
Sandra’s Rose
Drake finally got a beat from the legendary DJ Premier and the collaboration doesn’t disappoint, I do wish Preemo had scratched on the hook, though.  This isn’t an all-time great Premier beat, but it does the job, and so does Drake.  While there are a few pretty weak bars in here, most of the punchlines are on point, so much so that a few of them went over my head on my first listen, and Drake rides the beat well.  I wish Drake would rap over beats like these more often, my 3 favorite songs on this side have all featured soulful vocal samples.  
Talk It Up
Drake and Jay-Z seem to have thrown subliminal shots at each other several times in their careers, yet Jay seems to be one of Drake’s favorite collaborators (he has appeared on 3 Drake albums, as many as Lil Wayne).  Drake has a cute little double entendre about lump sums, but aside from that his verse is pretty forgettable.  Jay fairs a little bit better, but not really. It seems like 2010 Jay usually only raps about being a boss or his past as a drug dealer, and on this track he chooses the latter.  Jay’s verse is ok, but this pretty easily the weakest of their 3 collaborations, which is a pretty impressive feat given that Jay spent his second verse on Pound Cake interpolating a Rihanna song.  This was kind of a waste of a great DJ Paul beat.
Is There More?
Drake asks the same question that I have been asking for the vast majority of this album.  I would have sworn that this was a 40 beat, but it was produced by Wallis Lane.  This is one of Drake’s better lyrical performances on the album, arguably his best.  Drake presents himself as someone who has finally made it, but is now left wondering what else there is to accomplish.  However, Drake spends a lot of this song bragging about how successful he is rather than talking about how becoming successful has left him feeling empty, so I wonder what his goal was with this song.  The title and the beat suggest that the song would be more introspective, and a few lines in the first verse are, but most of this sounds more like Drake asserting his dominance over the rap game again.  Even if the subject matter is a bit confusing, this is not a bad way to end this side.
Side B
Trash, this whole side sounds like a bootleg Jon B album.  Maybe that’s why he called it side B.
I’m just kidding!  I’ll give my thoughts on Side B soon, but that’s a lot more to write and a lot more for you guys to read, so for now I’ll stop here and give you my thoughts on Side A.  This isn’t a bad album, but it’s pretty bland.  There are a few highlights, most of which feature soul beats, but Drake sounds very uninspired on the majority of this album.  He switches up his flow every now and then, but it’s usually to his detriment, and a lot of the punchlines on here are bad or non-existent.  Drake has always had an excellent ear for production, and that remains true on this album; there isn’t a bad beat on here, I just think Drake used them wrong or wasn’t suited for them.
Swishes:  Emotionless, 8 out of 10, Sandra’s Rose
Bricks: Nonstop, Can’t Take a Joke
Overall, I’d give Side A a 6/10
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