Drake’s album “For All the Dogs” was released October 6 last year after being postponed to give the artist time to focus on his tour. The album features guest artists including Yeat, SZA, Bad Bunny, Lil Yachty and a few others. Even with the excessive hype from existing Drake fans and the big expectations for the previously high-achieving artist, the album came out to be rather disappointing. Be it the general inconsistency within the songs – like the varying quality of the writing and how some of the tracks feel like two songs glued together – or the fact that the result of the much awaited album was so underwhelming, the album came across tremendously unremarkable for such a popular rapper.
The album cover is a crudely drawn dog on a black background with lopsided red eyes, the coloring so sporadic one might wonder if a child drew it. That’s because Drake’s five-year old son, Adonis, drew it himself.
The name of the album is speculated to have a deeper meaning as well. The term “for all the dogs” could be Drake’s way of devoting his album to his friends, the word “dog” being one that’s often used between close friends. However, the word dog could also be referring to the disloyal lovers in Drake’s life, making the album a way for him to affront an ex or exes. Either way, the message that he’s trying to convey about rising above and thriving in life wasn’t commonly discernible through his choice of lyrics.
The first track on the album, “Virginia Beach,” starts us off with a decent beat. The next few songs are also respectable, like “Amen,” which has some interesting use of piano in it, and “First Person Shooter,” in which the lyrics flow nicely. After the first few tracks is Drake’s best song that was sorrowfully wasted on this album. “IDGAF,” featuring Yeat, starts out with a melodic and dream-like introduction that gets cut off around the one minute mark with a beat drop that then kicks around into chorus. The song is without a doubt one of the most popular on the album, being played on the radio and social media more than any of the others, and for good reason. The beat is spectacular, the bass boosted component isn’t overdone but still adds power to the song, and Yeat’s vocals contrast with Drake’s rather well when they switch off singing. Progressing through the rest of the album are songs like “What Would Pluto Do” and “Tried Our Best” that have an upbeat and faster rhythm to them and “8am in Charlotte” that has a calmer mood to it that I actually quite enjoyed.
In all, there are 23 tracks on the album and 29 on the “Scary Hours Edition,” which is an unreasonable amount of songs for a single album, especially when the songs aren’t very remarkable. Besides “IDGAF,” none of them stand out all that much. A majority of the background music isn’t that catchy or doesn’t sound good together and the vocals are not very exciting or attention-grabbing. There are a lot of different styles of music on the album and you can tell that Drake was experimenting, which can be difficult. What he needed was a better writer or editor to help him condense the album down to some of its better content and fix some of the weaker points pointed out.
