If anything, Jorja should’ve been given a leading role on “Get It Together” as well. Many of the playlist’s best moments are when Drake himself is notably absent: “Skepta Interlude” is a return to form for the grime emcee, a “Shutdown” redux that makes a more compelling case for the genre than the majority of Konnichiwa did “Jorja Interlude” puts the soulful British chanteuse at center-stage. Over the past year, many have lampooned and mocked creatives like YesJulz and their ilk for describing their job as “directing vibes.” With this project, Drake finds himself in executive control of a vibe and he takes his duties here very seriously.
#DRAKE MORE LIFE ALBUM RT LICENSE#
This formal noodling does double-duty in measuring expectations (how exactly does one review a mixtape?), while also giving the Canadian some much-needed artistic license and curatorial breathing room.
It’s also an uncanny business strategy - playlists were recently made eligible for the Billboard Top 100 chart, after all. Instead, More Life is a playlist, meant to soundtrack the listener’s life and times. Hell, it’s not even a mixtape, like If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.
More Life is another formal left turn in that it’s not an album. His remix of iLoveMakonnen’s “ Tuesday” gave the Atlanta croon-rapper’s career an inimitable boost his SoundCloud single-turned-James Blake remix “ 0 to 100/The Catch Up” was nominated for a Grammy and then there’s the titanic success of “Hotline Bling” a song that, despite its radio-friendliness, was largely ignored in the wake of the final nail being slammed into Meek Mill’s coffin. Creatively, it’s a bit of a mess.ĭrake is a master of the loosie. Formally, it is innovative and sprawling. As a project, More Life is all over the place: formally and sonically ambitious, schizophrenically sequenced.
It makes sense, then, that Drake would deign it appropriate to drop More Life just two days before the start of spring.