ELIEZER SANTIAGO — Staff Writer
Cup filled. Candle lit. Jewelry on and gold everywhere. The life of the rich and famous can be so alluring. The glitz, the glamour, the money, the drugs, the cars, the clothes, the girls.
It all looks so good on the TV screen.
Is it really what it seems? Look again at the album cover. Where’s the women? Where’s the crew? Where’s the smile?
Drake; the epitome of the glamour life, the ladies man, the one everyone loves is sitting at a table alone?
With fame comes a price.
In “Crew Love” you hear the confidence of a young rapper making sure his people come up with him on his ride to fame, but in “Look What You’ve Done,” you get a personal view of the same rapper that alienates him from his peers.
Drake has to fight between being the one everyone loves and being the one no one loves. With the fame comes a lack of clarity. Women claiming they love and boys sticking around, who’s real and who’s attracted by the money?
This introspective view that Drake gives us into his life is where “Take Care” shines.
Glimpses into his love life, his struggles with family, and his fight to stay on top show a side that not many rappers reveal.
Drake has an uncanny ability to express in words what a lot of people feel, and this ability is what sets him apart from the rest of the people making music.
Being able to listen to one of his songs and hear exactly what you’re feeling is a hard thing to describe and it’s a hard thing for an artist to achieve that effect.
This alone is why Drake is loved and admired by many. Often, he’s criticized for being “soft” because he seems to cry about his relations with women too much, but as Drake puts it in “Lord Knows,” “I’m hearing all of the jokes.
I know that they’re trying to push me. I know that showing emotion don’t ever mean I’m a p*ssy. Know that I don’t make music for niggas who don’t get p*ssy, so those are the ones that I count on to diss me or overlook me.”
On his second album we get to hear a more mature and confident Drake rapping lyrics like “They take the greats from the past and compare us. I wonder if they’d ever survive in this era.
In a time where it’s recreation to pull all your skeletons out the closet like Halloween decorations.” This confidence oozes all over the album with clever word play, a great selection of instrumentals, and a relaxed delivery that makes Drake sound like he could do this in his sleep. On “Over My Dead Body,” Drake raps so smooth, nonchalantly blowing off naysayers and skeptics by rapping “Are these people really discussing my career again? Asking if I’ll be going platinum in a year again. Don’t I got the sh*t the world wanna hear again? Don’t Michael Jordan still got his hoop earring in? Man all of your flows bore me, paint drying.”
On the next track, “Shot For Me,” Drake sings to an ex-lover about how she missed her chance with him but he still in turn misses her.
This duality between these two different sides that Drake allows us to see where on one track he’s bragging and boasting about his lifestyle and on the next he’s singing about past loves or personal issues is what brings “Take Care” together.
If this is your first time listening to Drake you could believe it’s two different people on this album because these two styles are so different, but because Drake shows us these different sides of him we can get a better picture of who he is.
He’s just a young guy trying to make it in life. We tend to forget that since he is a celebrity. That’s why he’s sitting at that table alone. He’s still a human that has his ups and downs.
And although “Take Care” is a definite up, after listening you can tell he had to go through some downs to get here.
Overall: 4.5 out 5 Owls.
