Music’s biggest hitmaker is back again with a new project. This time, it’s being billed as a collection of demos, leaks, loosies, and anything else they wanted to throw in. In one sense, the explanation makes sense. There are a couple songs that had previously leaked in here, some loosies he had previously dropped on Soundcloud earlier this year, and a few songs people had never heard before. On the other hand, he’s tried to label projects differently before, to varying degrees of success. When he dropped If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late in 2015, it was billed as a commercial mixtape. Mixtapes were always considered free before this, and you had to download them on random websites. But now you can find artists all over releasing projects as mixtapes that are for sale and on streaming services. He tried in 2017 to call his More Life project a playlist, but that had the opposite effect and didn’t catch on at all. But that failure didn’t slow him down in the slightest, as he’s still one of the biggest artists in the world.
Drake only gave the world a few hours notice before releasing Dark Lane Demo Tapes on May 1st. Fans clamoured over the tracklist, which featured the long awaited Pain 1993 with Playboi Carti, as well as a song with Future and Young Thug. A shocker that came was that the project was only 14 songs, the least amount a Drake project has had since 2015. Drake had turned into a volume shooter with his projects with his last few projects. All of them have had extremely great songs, but just as many, if not more, songs that felt like filler. This was to, of course, help his streams and sales. The more songs you have on an album, the more streams you will get on that album, and that comes with more money. Maybe Drake had finally learned to not make his projects bloated, and it definitely seems like it after listening to the project.
As with all Drake projects, there are plenty different styles on this project. He starts off the project with three heavily sampled beats that showed off the traditional hip hop side of Drake. There are the gloomy relationship songs, such as Not You Too and Losses that show off Drake’s singing and more relatable content. He has the pop chart toppers on here, which include the already Billboard Top 100 #1, Toosie Slide. The next two songs in the tracklist, Desires and Time Flies, are in a similar style. Then came the hip hop bangers; Landed, D4L with Future and Young Thug, and Pain 1993 with Playboi Carti. Drake does try out a new style at the end of the project, UK drill.
UK drill, and drill in general, is becoming a big subgenre in hip hop. Chicago had started drill in the early part of the 2010s with rappers like Chief Keef and Fredo Santana. Drill normally contains violent and gritty lyrics. The bpm is often very fast, energy is always high, and often features an emotionless delivery. Many other places had taken the sound and were slowly building their own version of drill music. NYC and the UK had created their own variations of the traditional drill sound. The popularity of drill music has been coming back, thanks in a big part to Pop Smoke. Pop Smoke had a deep, dangerous sounding voice that fit in perfectly with drill music. He had many songs, including Welcome to the Party and Dior, become big hits all over the world. So much so, that he had big artists such as Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott, and Quavo wanting to work with him. Unfortunately, Pop Smoke was murdered in a home invasion in February of this year, only two weeks after his second mixtape had come out (his posthumous debut studio album is due June 12th). His future and opportunity to fully bring drill into the mainstream was taken away, which brings us back to Drake.
Drake has always been someone who has taken sounds that were trendy, and brought them to the mainstream audience that doesn’t pay attention to much music. He normally does pay homage to the people that have been popularizing the particular sound, and this is no different. On Demons, he features Fivio Foreign and Sosa Geek, two drill rappers that along with Pop Smoke, were helping to bring the sound to the mainstream. While Drake doesn’t sound bad over the heavenly beat, it feels a bit inauthentic to hear him jumping onto a bandwagon as it’s already on its way to the top. As good as he sounds on it, Pop Smoke definitely would have rocked the beat better and made it into a big hit himself. War is a lot more awkward attempt at drill, with Drake doing a fake UK accent. It ends the project on a lull, but that doesn’t take away from the many highlights this project has earlier.
When to Say When and Chicago Freestyle were released earlier this year, and they are still standouts on the full project. When to Say When is Drake doing his stream of consciousness style hip hop with the traditional bit of bragging over this beautiful sample of Song Cry by Jay Z. Chicago Freestyle also pays homage to another legendary hip hop artist, this time it’s Eminem. He uses the same flow and some of the same lyrics Eminem uses in his hit Superman, during the chorus of this song. D4L is another standout on the project. Drake, Future, and Young Thug have an insane amount of chemistry on this track. Future and Young Thug trade bars back and forth with each other effortlessly, and Drake comes in perfectly with his verse. It’s definitely going to be playing anytime people need an energy boost the rest of 2020.
There are some duds on here though. From Florida With Love has a good story about how Drake was with Lil Wayne and Kobe, and Wayne was playing Tha Carter III before it came out. But the actual song feels especially lazy, even on a demo project. Landed has a really great beat that helps carry the song, but it sounds just like any other banger Drake could’ve done, just with worse lyrics. “I bought my dawg a Rollie ‘cause he roll with it.” has to be one of the worst lines I’ve heard Drake say.
But even with all its flaws, this is still arguably Drake’s most enjoyable front to back project in years. It keeps the runtime at a minimum (at least, short for Drake). It showcases the sonic variety that Drake has, which is higher than most pop and hip hop artists. The production is super high quality all throughout, but with someone at Drake’s level, he should be able to buy and pick good beats. This feels like a good appetizer for what will hopefully be a great album this summer!
Comments