Artist: Drake

Drake

Bio

There are two artists with this name. 1. Aubrey “Drake” Graham (born October 24, 1986 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Grammy award nominated Canadian actor, rapper and singer signed to Young Money/Universal Motown. Drake shot to global fame upon the release of his critically acclaimed 2009 mixtape So Far Gone and Best I Ever Had, a single from the mixtape which peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Drake's music career began in 2006 with the release of his debut mixtape Room For Improvement. The tape featured collaborations with Trey Songz, Lupe Fiasco and Nikelus F and marked the beginning of a long-time partnership with Canadian producer boi-1da. The mixtape sold 6,000 physical copies in the year of its release. Comeback Season, Drake's second official mixtape, was released in 2007 and featured the single Replacement Girl. The track featured vocals from Trey Songz and received heavy rotation on MTV and BET television networks. Robin Thicke, Clipse and Rich Boy featured on the mixtape, however it was Man of the Year - a track recorded with future mentor Lil Wayne - which signified the start of a close affiliation between Drake and Lil' Wayne's recording label Young Money Entertainment. In 2009, Drake released his highly anticipated third mixtape So Far Gone to critical acclaim and commercial success. Its lead single, Best I Ever Had, peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has since been certified double platinum by the RIAA. The success of the track lead to a highly publicised bidding war between several record labels to sign Drake. The rapper eventually signed a deal with Young Money Entertainment in the summer of 2009 and released an official EP version of the mixtape soon after; eventually receiving Gold status for shipments of 500,000 units. This astronomical rise to success continued into 2010 with the release of his major label debut album Thank Me Later. After several setbacks from its original October 2009 release date, the album was released on June 15th 2010 preceded by lead single Over, which peaked at #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at #1 on the Hot Rap Songs chart. The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard Album Chart and has since been certified Platinum by the RIAA for sales of approximately 1,100,000 copies in the US to date. It produced three furt
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05

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24

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Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center

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25

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27

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News

Drake - "Over My Dead Body (Star Slinger Jetlag Edit)" - Pitchfork (Track reviews)

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We've all had a little bit of time to digest Drake's very excellent sophomore album, Take Care-- including UK beatmaker and remix hound Star Slinger, who dropped his own "Jetlag Edit" of Take Care's opening track, "Over My Dead Body", over the weekend. (via Star Slinger's Twitter)

MP3: Drake: "Over My Dead Body (Star Slinger Jetlag Edit)"

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Album Review: Drake - 'Take Care' - NME (Reviews)

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An affecting masterpiece easily on par with his debut



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Drake, 'Take Care' (Young Money/Cash Money/Universal Republic) - Spin (reviews)

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Perhaps "Headlines" had you thinking Take Care would be Drake's humble moment. On that relatively upbeat single, he raps, "I might be too strung out on compliments, overdosed on confidence," and, later, expresses appreciation for the fans who told him he "fell off" between his hit 2009 mixtape So Far Gone and his star-packed 2010 debut Thank Me Later. And even though "Headlines" is pretty much a rewrite of a previous hit — the "6 Foot 7 Foot" to "Over" 's "A Milli" — that hardly matters because Drake is consciously lapping himself, returning to the same topic and style with another year of experience, making his conflicted approach to being richer than you just a little more lived-in.

An appropriately absurd cover depicting a despondent Drizzy, five o'clock shadow-sad, looking like a decadent Baba Booey, also foreshadowed a hard, if melodramatic, look in the mirror. Plus, he titled this new one Take Care — so much sweeter than Thank Me Later, right? But on "Over My Dead Body," Take Care's first track, our favorite confused Canadian calculates last year's earnings plus how much he paid in taxes, and chalks the latter up to "you lose some, you win some." All right, look, man, the cash lopped off the end of my paycheck blows too, but the whole idea behind taxes is that by paying them, we all, in the long run, "win some"!

Turns out he didn't mean "take care" in the open-hearted Big Star sense, but as just one more sly, passive-aggressive way of saying, "Fuck you, I'm famous." Drake's got a special gift for figuring out the most unsympathetic thing to say at any moment, damn near daring listeners to hate him. "Niggas with no money act like money isn't everything," coming from a former child star on Thank Me Later's "Up All Night," really smarted. But then, just when you want to throw up your hands, he admits that he's just as in-over-his-head as you are, and suddenly we're implicated in, and captivated by, this gauche complainer's rarefied struggle.

Consider Take Care's subtle stand-out "Look What You've Done," which finds Drake caught up in a bitter argument with what sounds like a painkiller-popping party girl — his version of Danny Brown's "Party All The Time." Turns out he's narrating an intense argument with his sick mother and the song's about the fact that fame provided him with the money to pay for her surgery. "Look What You've Done" ends with a crackling, answering-machine message from his grandmother, reminiscent of the angry, drunken phone call with an ex on "Marvin's Room." Freudian!

The best moments here are strange and inspired like that. "Practice" takes Juvenile's "Back That Azz Up" and Weeknd-izes it into a depressed boner-kill dirge about dumb dude discomfort with the fact that, indeed, your girlfriend has fucked other people besides you. But you know what, they don't matter like you because "all those other men were practice." Who else but Drake would think to do this? And who else could make it work?

The only time the almost 80-minute Take Care doesn't work is when it indulges something resembling conventional hip-hop. Lil Wayne and OutKast's André 3000 are off-kilter enough to fit, but a yammering interlude from Kendrick Lamar called "Buried Alive" has no place on a record this patient; the same for Nicki Minaj's typically fervid verse on "Make Me Proud." Surrounded by almost ambient production from Noah "40" Shebib, the Weeknd's Doc McKinney and Illangelo, Jamie xx, and Chase N. Cashe, the rap-gospel banger "Lord Knows," featuring Just Blaze's baroque production and Rick Ross bragging that he's the "only fat nigga in the sauna with Jews," comes off like two delusional fools gassed up on a beat that ain't half as grand as it's supposed to be.

See, Drake's whole deal is how he's perpetually apprehensive about all this fame shit, so blustery event-album concessions don't serve him well. He's at his best mixing nice-guy vulnerability with wounded narcissism — the line "looking for the right way to do the wrong things" from "Lord Knows" should be his epitaph. Throughout Take Care, Drake finds ways turn the douche chills he elicits into a large part of his appeal. The solemn Stevie Wonder harmonica solo on "Doing It Wrong" also helps — so does the album's glowing production, which makes you wanna gobble Vicodin like they're Sweet Tarts. But he's been working hard and thinking even harder, stumbling upon new ways to own his smarmy charm.

On "Doing It Wrong," Drake mutters dorky Dr. Phil-isms, like, "We live in a generation of not being in love" over a sustained synth tone, and somehow makes that sound moving, instead of, well, mad corny. Go back to Thank Me Later after listening to this one and it feels like a bunch of rough demos. With Take Care, Drake has his accelerated Kanye West moment — when a little too much ambition and all the asshole feelings he's got inside coalesce into an insular, indulgent, sad-sack hip-hop epic.

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Drake - Take Care - Exclaim! (Reviews)

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Drake - Take Care

No matter what you think about Drake, there's no doubt that this former child actor is one very talented individual. In the few years since he dropped highly acclaimed mixtape So Far Gone, he's been on a meteoric rise to the top of the pop, rap and R&B charts, all the while repping Canada and, more specifically, his hometown of Toronto. With the release of his second studio album, Take Care, Drake shows absolutely no signs of slowing down, strengthening his grip on the current state of pop music while simultaneously sewing up the lane he created and popularized with his...Read More

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Music Review: Drake - Take Care - blog critics

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The rap star expertly side-steps the sophomore jinx

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Take Care by Drake - ArtistDirect

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11/15/2011
$15.99

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Drake - Take Care - Pitchfork (New Albums)

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Drake is the perfect avatar for the era of reality television and 24-hour celebrity news, and his new album finds him putting his talent to use on his strongest set of songs so far. While Thank Me Later banked on a sonic tableau that was slow, sensual, and dark-- equal parts Aaliyah and the xx-- Take Care moves that aesthetic to an even more rewarding place, spearheaded by Drake's go-to producer Noah "40" Shebib, who gets a writing and production credit on almost every song.

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Drake - "Lord Knows" [ft. Rick Ross] - Pitchfork (New Tracks)

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In the last couple of years, no mainstream rap figures have enjoyed the steady ascent of Drake and Rick Ross. On the triumphant "Lord Knows", their collaboration on Drake's newly leaked Take Care, they sound like they're meeting at the mountaintop for a deserved high-five. Just Blaze more than rises to the challenge, offering up a huge, gospel-choired beat that rivals the grandiosity of his contributions to The Blueprint era. And then there are the quotables. From Drake, whose flow here is flashier than his style typically requires: "Bought a white Ghost, now shit is getting spooky/ Very, very scary like shit you see in the movies/ In this bitch all drinks on the house, like Snoopy/ That's why all the real soldiers salute me". He still can't top Rozay, though, who'll probably earn a spot on more than a few IM statuses with the line, "Only fat nigga in the sauna with Jews." But the most exciting part? Ross alluding to Y.O.L.O-- You Only Live Once-- the title of the mixtape these two are working on together, which hopefully this track is offering a little taste of.

[from Take Care; out 11/15/11 via Young Money]

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Drake - "The Motto" [ft. Lil Wayne] - Pitchfork (Track reviews)

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At this rate, Drake's going to leak the entirety of Take Care before its November 15 release date. Over on his October's Very Own blog, he's posted a track with Lil Wayne called "The Motto", which is reported to be the closing track on the upcoming album (see the full tracklist here). Stream and download the new song below.

MP3: Drake: "The Motto [ft. Lil Wayne]"

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Drake - "The Real Her" [ft. Lil Wayne] - Pitchfork (Track reviews)

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The Smoking Section points to a new song from Drake and Lil Wayne, "The Real Her", that finds Drake in singing mode amidst a suitably warped beat. Check it out here; no word if this'll appear on Drake's forthcoming sophomore effort, Take Care.

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DOWNLOAD: Drake - Club Paradise - RCRD LBL

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Drake has promised to lay off the R&B on his sophomore album Take Care, but in the meantime the Young Money rapper continues to release soul-baring slow jams that chronicle the emotional ups-and-downs of his fame. "Club Paradise” is one of the latest in a series that included “Marvin’s Room” and “Trust Issues” early in the summer. The melancholy track, with its minimalist beat from producer Noah “40” Shebib, finds the Toronto native disillusioned with the distance between himself and his hometown. We also learn that other side effects of rap star fame include knowing strippers by name and having too many girls for mom to keep up with. Hey, it's rough out there.

 

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Drake - "Club Paradise" / "Free Spirit" [ft. Rick Ross] - Pitchfork (Track reviews)

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This past Saturday night, Drake took to his blog and dropped three new tracks: "Club Paradise", produced by 40, "Free ...

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Video: Drake: "Marvin's Room" - Pitchfork - News

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A very literal video for a shortened, slightly slowed (in parts) edit of Drake's drunk-dial lament "Marvin's Room" has hit Drizzy's October's Very Own blog. Plenty of darkly lit barfly hedonism and shots of city streets in this one. No word if the hoodie Drake is wearing is the Triple Five Soul hoodie that Spinner Mason coveted from Drake's character, Jimmy Brooks, on "Degrassi: the Next Generation". Check it below.

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Drake: "Marvin's Room" - Pitchfork (Upcoming releases)

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A very literal video for a shortened, slightly slowed (in parts) edit of Drake's drunk-dial lament "Marvin's Room" has hit Drizzy's October's Very Own blog. Plenty of darkly lit barfly hedonism and shots of city streets in this one. No word if the hoodie Drake is wearing is the Triple Five Soul hoodie that Spinner Mason stole from Drake's character, Jimmy Brooks, on "Degrassi: the Next Generation".

 

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Drake: "Trust Issues" - Pitchfork (Upcoming releases)

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On his October's Very Own blog this morning, Drake posted a new track, the slow and depressive "Trust Issues". The track tweaks Drake's own chorus for "I'm on One", his collaboration with DJ Khaled, Rick Ross, and Lil Wayne. It's just the latest in a recent string of tracks that Drake has thrown out to the internet with zero fanfare, coming right on the heels of "Marvin's Room". Listen to "Trust Issues" here.

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Drake - "Marvin's Room" - Pitchfork (Track reviews)

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Two mid-tempo tracks in two weeks: this is how Drake eases his way back into the 2011 conversation. Most rappers abhor an attention vacuum and will kick the door down with guns blazing to announce their return. Drake clears his throat.

It's a shrewd reminder of what sets Aubrey Drake Graham apart. Drake is a master insinuator, and these two songs carry a muted, creeping unease no one else in hip-hop is currently quite equipped to provide. "Dreams Money Can Buy", the first leak, gestured vaguely at swagger, but it mostly managed to make boasting about recently acquired wealth sound as lonely as it must feel. "Marvin's Room" dials back even further; frequent collaborator Noah "40" Shabib's production has grown so muted it sounds like the fumes from music that's already evaporated-- a wisp of keyboard, a single watery thud of bass drum. Over it, Drake slips out of a packed club and calls The One Woman He Can't Have.

What follows is a messy and self-justifying drunk dial disguised as a cooing R&B ballad. "I had sex four times this week, let me explain/ Having a hard time adjusting to fame," he croons feebly. (The woman's deadpan response: "Are you drunk right now?") At one point, he raps, "I don't think I'm conscious of makin' monsters of the women that I sponsor until it all goes bad," and the statement is so riddled with qualifiers that it just sits there, impossible to parse, a tangle of sex and need and ego and guilt. No one moves as fluidly between pillow talk and a couch session as Drake.

MP3: Drake: "Marvin's Room"

[self-released]

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Drake - "Dreams Money Can Buy" - Pitchfork (New Tracks)

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Drake gave you plenty of ammunition on Thank Me Later, flaunting a charm most accurately described by our Jayson Greene as "Clintonian," weirdly admirable in its unrepentant seduction. But lost in that discussion was that a lot of its best moments were Drake simply talking shit, and what's scary about "Dreams Money Can Buy" is that his success has taken him from "slowly embracing" hate as he claimed on "Fireworks" to giving it a full-on bear hug. Sure, it's another example of Drake as an early adopter, flipping the suddenly hot Jai Paul track "BTSTU" ("don't fuck with me") into one of his typically lush but unobtrusive productions. But lyrically, this is a vulgar display of power along the lines of Jay-Z's "U Don't Know", Clipse's "Dirty Money", or Gordon Gekko before he got soft. He boils it down to three points: he's rich, he's going to steal your woman, and you certainly deserve to feel like shit about it. This isn't a celebration of wealth so much as the idea that it can buy happiness, or at least buy your misery as an equivalent. Drake still reps Cash Money and Young Money here, but "Dreams" is "fuck you money" personified.

MP3: Drake: "Dreams Money Can Buy"

[self-released]

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Drake: "Dreams Money Can Buy" - Pitchfork (Upcoming releases)

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Photo by Graeme Flegenheimer

Blockbuster rapper Drake posted a new song, "Dreams Money Can Buy", to his October's Very Own blog this morning. The song samples Jai Paul's recent BNT "BTSTU". In the blog post, Drizzy noted that the song isn't an official single, rather it's "just a piece of my story. Hear me out though..."

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Live Review: Drake - NME (Reviews)

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Hammersmith Apollo, London, January 7



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Drake - "Fireworks (Deadboy Slo Mo House Edit)" [ft. Alicia Keys] - Pitchfork (New Tracks)

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It's difficult to take a piece of music, turn it around, and make it your own. In most cases, remixes are meant to flatter the source material in one way or another, but Southeast Londoner and UK bass producer Deadboy's edit of Drake's "Fireworks" feels like a sucker punch. Deadboy sneaks off with juiciest, more vital pieces of the original track-- hell, Drake only gets a total of three words in the whole time ("Money just changed"). Working primarily with the piano section and turning it into an aching centerpiece, Drake's "Fireworks" feels like it's on loan from the cold desolation of dubstep's lonely epicenter, and not the other way around.

That's not so surprising, considering that "Fireworks" was originally an emotionally rich song, largely in part thanks to Alicia Keys (chipmunk'd here, in an eerily pretty fashion) and the delicateness of that piano. Beyond that, Deadboy stays out of the way for the most part, putting down a light bass pulse and some drum ticks, all while fluidly dipping his mix in and out of a soft muffle, as if it's bobbing beneath the waves. Stealing a play from Burial's book, Deadboy is able to make this familiar track sound like something new. Where Burial's obscuring of vocal fragments affords his music an air of haunted naturalism, Deadboy's hands are tied. He's working with the opening to one of the biggest debuts of the year and stretching its key elements to their emotional extreme.

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Drake: "Fireworks (Deadboy Slo Mo House Edit)" [ft. Alicia Keys] - Pitchfork (Upcoming releases)

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This four-on-the-floor rework of Drake and Alicia Keys' Thank Me Later cut "Fireworks", from London producer Deadboy, has been around for a minute now, but it's still well worth a listen. (via Fader)

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Drake - St. Louis Riverfront Times (Event)

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Tue., October 12, 7:30pm - Aubrey “Drake” Graham is anything but your conventional rap star. The Canadian-born entertainer got his break on the TV series DeGrassi: The Next Generation before catching the attention of rap impresario Lil Wayne, who took the up-and-comer under his wing in 2008. Drake has since r...

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Drake, 'Thank Me Later' (Aspire/Cash Money/Young Money) - Spin (reviews)

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Due to his unorthodox pedigree—half-Jewish Canadian kid from a comfortable neighborhood who played a wheelchair-bound hoops star on Degrassi: The Next Generation—Drake has enjoyed a level of rap stardom (engineered by Lil Wayne) that often feels like an elaborate hoax. But vulnerabilities become strengths on this cagily self-aware debut album: He's an emotionally fragile guy who relishes fame and fortune while second-guessing every smile from a new chum or overly friendly woman. Beside Alicia Keys on "Fireworks," he yearns to find the love his divorced parents never had; on the title track, he ponders whether former girlfriends discuss him over "double-pump lattes and low-fat muffins." Drake's personal anecdotes lack the bravado of bullet-wound boasts, but they're intimate and lyrically detailed enough to draw blood.

A reformed backpack rapper with enough brains to move beyond regressive '90s-worship, Drake unspools his usually clever witticisms over airy, wide-open production (Boi-1da, 40, Kanye West, many others) that's more suggestive of contemporary R&B: "Toodles to you bitches / And if you dolled up, I got the voodoo for you bitches," he quips atop the menacing strings of "Up All Night." The abundance of spacey synths and clattering, reverbed percussion makes Thank Me Later feel like ideal cruising music for a ramshackle UFO, but it also incorporates dynamics like few other hip-hop albums before it. Drums disappear, phasers distort everything, and Drake comes in crooning about one stripper or another.

It's a testament to the album's weird cohesion that the menagerie of guests—Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, The-Dream, et al.—doesn't overwhelm the host and turn the entire operation into an unseemly, DJ Khaled-esque bukkake party. Ultimately, Thank Me Later's revelry concludes with emotional disgorgement, but no messy hangover.

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DOWNLOAD: Drake - 9AM Freestyle - RCRD LBL

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Drake is nothing if not self-aware. As Pitchfork pointed out, the word "I" is used 410 times during his debut, Thank Me Later. Immediately one gets the feeling that there isn't much the 23-year-old money tree takes lightly, especially the hyperbolic expectations set for his success. On "9AM Freestyle" Drake details his dilemma, "scared for the first time everything has clicked, what if I don’t really do the numbers they predict, considering the fact that I’m the one that they just picked, to write a chapter in history this shit has got me sick." Big numbers or no, Drake's made his case for the greats by challenging other emcees to be as transparent to their audience and hard on themselves as he is. You can thank him later.

 

Drake - 9AM Freestyle

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Drake - Thank Me Later - Exclaim! (Reviews)

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"My 15 minutes started an hour ago," Drake opines on "Fireworks," the lead track from arguably the most eagerly awaited rap record of 2010. Thank Me Later is the culmination of the unprecedented rise of one Aubrey Drake Graham. In a relatively shor...

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Thank Me Later by Drake - ArtistDirect

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06/15/2010
$12.99

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Drake - Thank - Pitchfork (Album reviews)

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Inspired by rap and R&B in equal measure, Drake becomes the first of the post-Kanye, emo-y rappers to fully deliver on his debut LP. [Ryan Dombal]

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Video: Drake: "Over" - Pitchfork - News

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The video for ascendant rap star Drake's BNM'ed single "Over" mostly consists of Drake sitting alone in a hotel room, or standing by himself, rapping. But it's not boring, largely because director Anthony Mandler apparently decided that he had to use every last effect available in his video-editing software.

Ryan Dombal, my esteemed Pitchfork News colleague, swears that all these effects actually mean something: "The girls in the video are a mirage-- he's not actually in the same room as them, or in a club or whatever. They're, like, in his mind." Sure!

Drake tells MTV that Thank Me Later, his official debut album, is coming June 15.

Watch the video below, via Vulture.

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Drake: "Shut It Down" [ft. The-Dream] - Pitchfork (Upcoming releases)

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Earlier this month, Toronto MC Drake dropped a tune from his new album over on his blog"Over", a track from his debut LP, Thank Me Later, due out on Lil Wayne's Young Money imprint later this year. Now we've got a second, slightly less official leak, in the form of The-Dream-featuring "Shut It Down", a dramatic slow jam that builds on pitch-shifted vocals and piano. (via 2DopeBoyz)

MP3/Stream:> Drake: "Shut It Down" [ft. The-Dream]

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Drake - "Over" - Pitchfork (New Tracks)

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When your debut album is called Thank Me Later, the first single better be some sort of spectacular. And Drake's "Over" does not back down. The track introduces itself with a royal fanfare-- strings, horns, the works. It's an emperor's welcome, and his duds are intact. "I can teach you how to speak my language/ Rosetta Stone," he offers, and some may need a decoder ring to suss out this formerly wheelchair-bound "Degrassi" star's rapid hip-hop ascension. Drake is a new type of major label rap star, one who grew up in the (Toronto) suburbs and is primarily informed by the mirror-borne self-consciousness of Kanye West rather than any sort of street corner-bred notion of masculine invincibility.

Though Drake is signed to Lil Wayne's Young Money imprint, he's more of a foil than a direct descendant of his currently incarcerated boss. While Wayne's talent is famously spontaneous and volatile, Drake is deliberate; Wayne thinks his rhymes in bursts, Drake writes his rhymes down. And this considered style translates to an utterly readable flow-- punchlines like "I really can't complain, everything's kosher/ Two thumbs up, Ebert and Roeper" may not be terribly complex, but Drake's laser-guided delivery turns them into automatic catch-phrases. Another thing that puts "Over" over is its fully-formed internal conflict. Impressively, Drake uses his limited-but-effective singing voice on the hook to express jumbled emotions on instant fame, from anxious confusion ("Who the fuck are y'all?") to self-fulfilled contentment ("I'm doin' me"). "They treat me like a legend, am I really this cold?" he asks near the end of "Over". It's an exalting mission statement that can't help but question its own triumph.

MP3: Drake: "Over"

[from Thank Me Later; expected spring 2010 on Young Money/Universal Motown]

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Drake Shares Thank Me Later Single - Pitchfork - News

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After last year's game-changing So Far Gone mixtape, Toronto MC Drake is looking to cement his Next Kanye spot with his debut LP, Thank Me Later, due out on Lil Wayne's Young Money imprint. The record's first single, "Over", dropped on his blog last night-- listen here. Big tune.

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Drake: "Over" - Pitchfork (Upcoming releases)

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After last year's game-changing So Far Gone mixtape, Toronto MC Drake is looking to cement his Next Kanye spot with his debut LP, Thank Me Later, due out on Lil Wayne's Young Money imprint. The record's first single, "Over", dropped on his blog last night. It's a pretty huge track, with a insatiable beat from Boi-1da and Al Khaaliq that ping-poings between the military snares of the verse and some sweeping strings on the chorus.

 

MP3:> Drake: "Over"

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Drake - So Far Gone - Exclaim! (Reviews)

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Drake's 2008 massive free-mix-tape, So Far Gone, created such a buzz for the singer/MC that he opted to release physical copies as an LP. Seven songs deep, half of the release consists of tracks from the original tape and half are new floater track...

Read | Go To Exclaim.ca | Digg This

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