Post: Views

Views by Drake

I find hot takes quite difficult. While I consider myself to be a passionate and opinionated music listener, I am occasionally reminded of the debt I owe to tastemakers and public discourse. Maybe five years ago, I began to delve into music that was cool and good, expanding my horizons and refining my taste. In this phase of discovery, you don’t really stop to question the respected authorities on what is cool and good, and you don’t tend to look for diamonds in the rough – those widely ridiculed songs that you can’t help but enjoy. Now, when I comb through the library of music I have now built up, I notice a lack of music that I innocently, cheesily admire, independent of what Pitchfork or Fantano (who I am now cooling on) might have to say about it. This means that I don’t have many go-to songs for whom I can say “hot take: I actually like this and if you don’t agree with me you’re wrong”. This is something I am trying to rectify. In any case, there is one hot take of mine which has withstood at least of couple years of internal debate, and I would like to share it. It is that Views, Drake's massive 2016 release, can be trimmed down to a lean release that comfortably ranks as Aubrey’s best collection. My revised tracklist is as follows:

Keep The Family Close

9

Hype

Still Here

Redemption

Childs Play

Hotline Bling

Feel No Ways

Controlla

One Dance

Fire & Desire

Weston Road Flows

49 minutes of heat, its threaded songs soundtracking the icy impenetrability of a Toronto winter melting into a glorious, relaxed, global summer. Mind you, this is not what we received back in 2016, that auspicious year for rap: we instead got a bloated, misunderstood 21-track event.

I think a really central element behind Views' lukewarm reception upon release was Drake's full committal to his mean streak. Drake had always been willing to take shots in public, to be rude and to take up all the space in the room, but Views felt like the first time he presented himself as openly petty, even juvenile. Sure, Nothing Was The Same dropped its fair share of exes' names and dirty laundry, but in adopting a direct, confrontational approach to relationship drama, Drake placed himself equally in the firing line. Views just found Drake lobbing grenades from behind a translucent curtain:

“You're supposed to put your pride aside and ride for me / Guess it wasn't time / And of course you went and chose a side that wasn't mine” - Keep The Family Close

"I'm not unrealistic with none of my women / I tell them if they ain't with it then let's just forget it / Relationships slowing me down, they slow down the vision" - Redemption

"You wildin', you super childish / You go to CVS for Kotex in my Bugatti / I took the key and try to hide it, so you can't drive it... Don't make me take you back to the hood" - Childs Play

So, why then is Views actually special, and why do these bitter tracks make the excellent final cut? I think it helps to lean in to the toxicity. In 2023, the sweetness with which Drake burst onto the scene has basically eroded. He’s not making songs like ‘Best I Ever Had’ anymore, although he’s presumably still capable of a music video like that one. Drake’s identity today is more calculated and self-aggrandizing, and ‘Views’ encapsulates that identity with remarkable clarity. People talk about ‘Take Care’ as the Drake album to end all Drake albums, but I feel like the guy he presents on that album is a very 2011 edition of Drake. He was still on the come-up at that time, and the album sounds ambitious and a little rough around the edges, fundamentally quite different from his assured, occasionally directionless attitude on ‘Views’. And how better to describe the last

All of this sounds like a slight, but it really isn’t. ‘Views’ is important because it is the closest representation of Drake’s gargantuan celebrity and his stunted emotional development that we have. It has an ugliness and a rawness hidden below its polished surface that is genuinely compelling.

  • I’m pretty fascinated with Drake lore so this is definitely not the only time I will be writing on him, and for those who share the same interest I really do suggest listening to this critic’s cut of the album

  • The energy of Views in full drags for stretches that are way too long. As soon as that second verse of Hype hits, on the new version, Drake’s defeatist streak ends and he launches into a

  • Lean into the toxicity

  • Views has always contained some of Drake’s most essential material: the dancehall..