With a weighty rollout including endearing videos for "God's Plan" and "Nice For What" and the less-favoured single "I'm Upset," Drake aims to come out stronger, more focused and more righteous than ever.
Although this album lacks a world-conquering pop hit like One Dance or Hotline Bling, and your interest wanes on side two, Scorpion is the album of the summer.
In the long run, a few duds in 90 minutes of material doesn't seem too high a sin, especially considering the same concession could easily be made for a release like the Beatles' White Album. Thus, with Scorpion, Drake makes a cohesive argument for broadening our attention spans and enjoying life's music, regardless of runtime.
Now that we’ve got a distinction between Rapper and Singer, it’s safe to say R&B Drake remains undefeated while Rapper Drake is still nursing battle wounds.
Scorpion solidifies his universal relatability while yet again supplying fans with an overload of tracks to willingly keep or ditch.
Absorbing ‘Scorpion’s 90-minute run time in one sitting is a big ask, but the ratio of good to bad here is impressively in Drake’s favour.
There isn’t an incompetent song to be found here – it’s more consistent than the genre-hopping More Life – and every last one has its moments. This is a masterclass in pop-focused execution and an exercise in inoffensive ambition swirling into itself.
It’s a satisfying listen, if you're in the car or whatever, and assuming you can hear past Drake's wounded pride and unseemly self-obsession.
This is a record in limbo, a behemoth crippled by a well-timed shot to the leg.
Veering from swaggering soul to eerie electronica, this new mega-album is bloated, rambling – yet frequently gorgeous and funny.
Despite its extensive length, nothing on Scorpion feels particularly adventurous.
For all the hype and drama that led up to Scorpion's release and for want of a better cliche: it really doesn’t have much of a sting in its tail.
Scorpion feels like Drake is banking on the lack of editorial process being lauded as ambition. There are still tight rhymes, bombs being hurled at the haters. Drake is consistent as always, but needs to push himself harder and reach a little deeper if he wants to hold your attention for nearly 90 minutes.
More Life featured a coterie of rising stars and rap heavyweights to create a largely jovial and party-like atmosphere, but Scorpion — Drake’s loneliest-sounding album since 2013’s ruminative Nothing Was the Same — is pure and uncut ego, cranking his hardest-to-like personality traits up to 11.
Unsurprisingly, his charm has worn thin. What’s left without it is a body of work that is self-indulgent, largely evasive, and frankly boring when the beat is not quite strong enough to steady the ship.
Scorpion might be the most frustrating Drake album to date, because it seems like Drake taking two steps back when he had a chance to lunge forward ... But given another chance to make himself as outstanding an artist he claims to be, Drake seems perfectly content to stay in his carefully-crafted comfort zone.
There are good tracks here, about 35 minutes’ worth, and the plus side of streaming is it’s easier to isolate the songs you like. But between the sprawl of Scorpion and the concision of Daytona, it’s clear Pusha T’s won the battle and the war.
Scorpion is little more than a monotonous response to his detractors, offering none of the wit, energy or emotion that make Drake the superstar we love.
Scorpion continues Drake's streak of projects that have been padded out to oblivion.
Scorpion doesn't even come close to being one of his best; instead, it's a one-trick record stretched out into 25 endless tracks by an artist who's so deep into the self-obsessed, self-pitying rut he created for himself that he can't see daylight anymore.
Scorpion is not the product of a man undergoing any meaningful personal change; it is the standard, biannual output of the cultural entity that is Drake, with two or three tracks tacked on to give it a sense of time and place, one that necessarily but reluctantly includes its creator’s catastrophic return to Earth.
A Side:
1. filler
2. filler
3. filler
4. filler
5. God's Plan
6. filler
7. filler
8. Mob Ties
9. filler
10. filler
11. filler
12. filler
B Side:
1. filler
2. filler
3. filler
4. Nice for What
5. filler
6. filler
7. filler
8. filler
9. filler
10. filler
11. filler
12. filler
13. filler
favourite tracks: filler, filler, filler
least favourite track: filler
If You’re Reading This It’s Terrible
Listening to Scorpion is like overheating in a desert, walking from one sparkling song oasis to another, eventually dehydrating, dying from lack of quality, engagement & importance.
Not to say there aren’t some really great songs on here, but overall, even VIEWS is more memorable. I sometimes want to retreat to literally any other album of his. It sounds like God’s Plan blew up, and Drake said welp, gotta make 24 more songs real ... read more
Not fan draak, his music is very quick sore face and skull brain. Make me sick. Sorry maybe he nice man but maybe not for me
First things first, this album is overhated.
It may have some skips, and it shouldn't be a movie long album, but the highs on this album are high.
FAV TRACKS: AFTER DARK, IN MY FEELINGS, DONT MATTER TO ME, GODS PLAN, NICE FOR WHAT, JADED, EMOTIONLESS, ELEVATE, SURVIVAL, NONSTOP, MOB TIES, SANDRAS ROSE
WORST TRACK: I'M UPSET
The fact that there's over 100 writers on this monster should tell you all you need to know.
Bloated and boring as fuck.
1 | Survival 2:16 | 62 |
2 | Nonstop 3:58 | 65 |
3 | Elevate 3:04 | 59 |
4 | Emotionless 5:02 | 66 |
5 | God's Plan 3:18 | 75 |
6 | I'm Upset 3:34 | 44 |
7 | 8 Out Of 10 3:15 | 65 |
8 | Mob Ties 3:25 | 67 |
9 | Can't Take a Joke 2:43 | 61 |
10 | Sandra's Rose 3:36 | 68 |
11 | Talk Up 3:43 feat. JAY-Z | 61 |
12 | Is There More 3:46 | 50 |
1 | Peak 3:26 | 44 |
2 | Summer Games 4:07 | 52 |
3 | Jaded 4:22 | 52 |
4 | Nice For What 3:30 | 83 |
5 | Finesse 3:02 | 48 |
6 | Ratchet Happy Birthday 3:27 | 32 |
7 | That's How You Feel 2:37 | 49 |
8 | Blue Tint 2:42 | 59 |
9 | In My Feelings 3:37 | 62 |
10 | Don't Matter To Me 4:05 with Michael Jackson | 53 |
11 | After Dark 4:49 feat. Static Major, Ty Dolla $ign | 54 |
12 | Final Fantasy 3:39 | 46 |
13 | March 14 5:09 | 52 |
#3 | / | People |
#4 | / | The New York Times: Jon Caramanica |
#6 | / | Yahoo Music |
#10 | / | Rolling Stone |
#13 | / | Clash |
#15 | / | Billboard |
#34 | / | Complex |
#43 | / | Uproxx |
#49 | / | DJBooth (Hip Hop / R&B) |
/ | Gothamist |