For all intents and purposes, the Drake of Views is the same one we got on If You’re Reading This and What a Time, but if his previous proper album ( Nothing Was the Same) foretold anything, it’s that the man peering down from CN Tower sees things differently than the rest of us. On Woah, Lil Baby steps in as his own hype man, flexing his newfound. He isn’t too much for the world, though, ruminating on his position as one of music’s biggest names-and those who’d rather he wasn’t-on songs like “Still Here,” “Hype,” and “Grammys.” Maybe the the most affecting acknowledgment to this end is the fact that “Hotline Bling,” a strong contender for 2015 song of the summer, was such an afterthought by the time Views was released that it appears here as a bonus track. Oozing charisma and raw talent, the best Lil Baby songs reveal why the rapid.

There are references here to specific people (“Redemption”), places (“Weston Road Flows”), and experiences (“Views”), along with nods to the influence of the city’s Caribbean population on “With You,” “Controlla,” and “Too Good” (which just happens to feature Rihanna).

“I made a decision last night that I would die for it,” Drake raps on “9.” “Just to show the city what it takes to be alive for it.” Drake’s presence eclipsed Toronto just about as soon as So Far Gone dropped, but the city-and what it thinks of him-was never far from his mind. The buzz surrounding Nickis mixtapes stirred up a bidding war to sign her. Drake is the starry-eyed rapper who’s finally talking tough and Hov is the OG who gives Drizzy advice that later became very fruitful. The self-generated hype came when she was an unsigned artist on the mixtape circuit. Drakes Certified Lover Boy is a perfectly fine, if far from fat-free, album thats like a playlist of his most well-trod formulas.

Views, which followed two wildly successful projects in 2015 that he’d branded as mixtapes- If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and the Future collab What a Time to Be Alive-would confirm him as both, his penchant for immaculate songwriting still fully intact and the pressures of existing as the most popular voice in rap, as well as his hometown’s most successful export, weighing heavy on his mind. Before it dropped, Drake called this song with JAY-Z the second part to ‘Forever’ and while the star power of the collaboration is up there, ‘Light Up’ stands on its own two legs. He looks less like the superhero he’d made himself into over the course of a roughly six-year rise as singer-songwriter extraordinaire and more like a troubled monarch. On the cover of his fourth studio album Views, Drake looks down from atop Toronto’s CN Tower, paying homage to the city’s notoriously frigid winter temperatures in a heavyweight shearling coat and high-cut boots.

Drake hype songs