Drake "Views" Album Review

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Views from the 6 is the first Drake album that I don’t like as a complete album. Of his four studio albums released, and even if you wanna include his mixtape/retail release, “If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late,” this is hands down, in my opinion, Drake’s worst album. As I’ve listened to this album over and over again this past weekend, I can’t help but feel like something is missing. Which is disappointing because I was kind of excited to hear this new release.

While Drake’s closest of peers in the industry (Kendrick Lamar, Wale, Big Sean, Big Krit, and J. Cole) are improving lyrically with every release, Drake took a big step back here. Let’s be clear, lyrically, Drake to me has always been better than the Young Thugs, Rich Homie Quan’s and Tyga’s of the world, but on Views, at times, he is on equal footing as those guys. The best way for me to explain it is, he sounds like he’s bored throughout this project. His bars throughout the entire project just aren’t hitting their mark with me here as they have on previous projects.

Upon finishing up my first spin of the album, I said to myself, “That wasn’t very good.” But I thought maybe I needed to hear it again so the album could grow on me. While a few songs did grow on me, I feel like those songs, such as, “ Feel No Ways, Weston Road Flows, With You, and 9,” only grew on me because of the melodies of the beat. I’m willing to give Drake credit for his singing throughout the project, because throughout the entire album, that was one aspect of his vocals that I thoroughly enjoyed. Drake has improved his singing greatly with each album, and I wouldn’t mind if at some point, he just goes and does a full-fledged R&B record. I think that would really be a nice change of pace for him, and be very successful as well. The songs that have more of an R&B vibe on this album are in my opinion, the best songs on the album. So much so, that even his rapping is improved on those songs. The best pure rapping song on the album is Weston Road Flows.

Getting back to the rapping on this project, I must say, Still Here, is quite possibly the ABSOLUTE WORST Drake song that I’ve heard over the span of his career. I am shocked that this song is on the album. It sounds like Drake went into the studio, and was warming up his vocal cords to record REAL songs, and he just kind of mumbled this song to prepare himself. But then, for some reason, he decided to put this on the album. I really don’t understand why he or anyone else involved in making this album thought that this was song was a good idea. It’s horrible! You’re supposed to be number one among the new school rappers that I spoke of earlier, and you drop this song? This song alone, drops Drake to number four to me.

And speaking of that list, I feel like every one of those other guys (Kendrick, Cole, Big Sean, Wale, Big Krit) dropped either classics, or 4-star albums since Drake’s last official album, “Nothing Was the Same.” Your peers are out making high quality music and you hype up your next album from like, two years, and then you drop this album? I’m offended as a fan!

But let me say this. This album isn’t bad compared to a lot of other hip hop and rap projects releasing these days, but in comparison to his own career, and to the recent work of his closest competition, Views is really no good. But it’s no good only as a complete album. There’s plenty of skippable songs to be found here, but there are also a handful of good songs. But with 20 songs here for your listening pleasure, a handful of good songs isn’t gonna cut it. Feel free to listen if you’d like, but this is far from Drake’s best work. I’m giving this album a 2.5/5.