For All The Dogs: underrated or underwhelming?

By Olivia Garrett

Image provided by Creative Commons License

Aubrey “Drake” Graham’'s 8th studio album “For All The Dogs” is yet another confused jumble of hip hop and rap influences to add to his lengthy discography. Its all too familiar with repetitive synth beats layered over redundant lyrics that amount to a monotonous and predictable record. With a staggering 23-song tracklist, the album's bloated run through Drake’s experiences with fame, women and wealth is in need of serious revision.

Beginning the album with a sample from Frank Ocean’s song “Wiseman,” Drake falls into his usual dilemma: being overshadowed by features and excerpts from other artists. With features from popular artists such as 21 Savage, J. Cole and SZA, Drake's own voice is lost in a sea of outward creative input. The features feel exciting and new, providing a sense of refreshment amongst Drake’s stale performance. With this album, Drake’s usual monotone and flat voice seems to have run its course with audiences, and it effectively gives the piece an outdated feeling in the new and ever-changing culture of rap.

With an hour-and-a-half runtime of unvarying music, the record is anything but concise. As Drake navigates his usual thoughts on heartbreak, promiscuity and his own reputation, he drives himself to redundancy. Drake's musical appeal used to be his genuine and relatable storytelling on common themes of today's culture; however, Drake has since strayed from these roots, lyrically and sonically. 

With this album, his once relatively consistent lyrical prowess has shown to have taken a serious decline. With lyrics such as “Your two best friends are some savages” and “Too plussed up, ayy bussin off pill,” the verses feel dissociated from reality. Having worked alongside a handful of other writers, the album feels out of touch with the personal and powerful previous work Drake’s audience held so dearly. 

Relying on debauched and crass subject matter the storytelling on this record feels overused and often cheap. Track three, “Calling For You,” is perhaps the most blatant use of this crutch. Various vulgar and obscene lyrics layered on top of sporadic electronic beats amount to a surface-level, superficial feeling song. 

While the use of profanity in his work is nothing new and can be a skillful tool in the art of song-making, the overuse of obscenities often leaves a bad taste in the audience's mouth. Several other tracks, such as “Rich Baby Daddy” and “Slime You Out,” rely on this same vice. The precarious use of profanity can be seen as an obvious dependency in these songs, with Drake being unable to get a single line out without it being flooded with the same expletives over and over again.

In its repetitive nature, the album altogether feels unnecessary and unasked for. Drake sings some lazily written lyrics over a mediocre beat, and it all just starts to feel like he’s done the same thing yet better before. He's neither expanding on any ideas nor adding anything significant to his discography. The drawn-out record lacks any real direction or goal, causing there to be no meaningful overarching themes or messages. 

Drake’s current career approach has seemed to be pushing out songs in masses and seeing which ones stick; however, this style of song-making hasn’t resonated with audiences. With such widespread indifference to the record, Drake will have to find change or likely be slowly pushed into retirement. While the album is not without its high points (tracks such as “Virginia Beach” and “First Person Shooter” both respectively having well-made and catchy melodies), the record overall falls flat in comparison to both Drake’s earlier work and the modern music scene today.