If You're Reading This It's Too Late
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CRITIC REVIEWS
85
IYRTITL is the work of a perfectionist curator, a restless star, a man who has reached the top and now looks over the precipice in a double-effort to repel competition and contemplate his hard-earned, often-perilous position.
83
On If You’re Reading This, all of this chest beating is delivered over the most darkly hypnotic beats Drake’s graced since So Far Gone.
83
With If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, Drake is giving a voice to the voiceless, spearheading Toronto as a mecca for creativity that will rival that of Atlanta and Los Angeles.
83
With no clear bangers on the landscape, Late feels more like the platonic ideal of a Drake album: a woozy, wordy stream-of-consciousness whose stylistic shifts are subtle on a molecular level.
83
If You’re Reading concentrates the anger pocketed within NWTS’ moodiness. The result is more thrilling.
80
With If You’re Reading This, there is union between his effort to “mythologically aggrandize” himself and to relieve creative pressure by half-redundantly (and “meaningfully”) delivering what people what: Drake content, Drake lyrics, Drake beats… a Drake album.
80
Drake's shock new album is a jumping off spot for anyone interested in rap’s future.
80
Drake's sounding more confident than ever on a series of somewhat minimal, dark, moody, trap-inspired pop rap beats with contemporary R&B change-ups.
80
If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late finds Drake continuing to move away from the tenderness and sentimentality of 2011’s Take Care and toward a dense-and-hard lyrical direction with slow, low-end heavy beats that bounce up and down in the mix, swirl around and dissolve into amorphous sub-bass.
80
Intimate, intense, wistful, endlessly questioning, open-hearted Drake, backed by pristine machine beats, with aching chord sequences and lovely synth codas – longtime Drake fans will find much to appreciate here.
80
For perhaps the first time in his career, Drake has reached a synergy between beats and rhymes that feels cohesive and meaningful from track one to the tape’s end.
80
Long chided for being a simp, this new Drake still loves his mom but no longer has love for anyone else. It’s wonderful.
80
‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late’ is by far Drake’s most dense and complex album.
80
This is a refined, looser, freer Drake. Between only a couple hiccups, If You're Reading This It's Too Late weaves personal raps, 6-side boosts and absorbing production in cohesive fashion.
80
For the first time in his career, Drake doesn't sound like he wants to be remembered as one of the greats. This time, he just is.
80
At 28, he’s very much hitting his stride in Rap, using every transitional moment to add one more compelling chapter to his narrative.
80
If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late is the sound of a man reaffirming what the world should already know in somber language.
70
Whether it’s a full-blown album or a curiosity mixtape as Drake himself suggests, the work sees the rapper descending into a dark cavern of sedated beats and bruising introspection.
70
Par for the course for a Drake album lately, but the difference here is that there are no pop singles to balance the claustrophobic rants.
70
Sonically and thematically, this not-album is easily the harshest release of Drake's career, a brooding, unsettling listen with few respites offered from its sense of creeping dread.
70
If You're Reading this it's Too Late is cold, heartless, and detached realizations of Drake's growing ennui.
70
He writes best as a critic within his immediate social circle, but when he steps outside of this circle, he falls flat.
67
His raps are as information-rich as ever, and that’s what makes It’s Too Late feel necessary, even when the material is second-rate.
60
Beat-wise, 'If You're Reading This It's Too Late' is fire ... But at times the lyrical component can leave you cold.
60
For all the music's cagey intelligence, Drake sounds like the kind of guy who comes sauntering out the traps in a 100m race and immediately breaks out into a victory lap, pausing only to remonstrate with hecklers.
hip hop think tank – episode 1 – Drake's investigation
Hey AOTY, as announced 1 week ago, here is the launch of my second new mini-series dedicated to Hip Hop and published weekly. Hip hop think tank will be built on no rules. I can talk about an album, an artist, a song, a musical sub style in particular, no matter as long as the subject is related to Hip Hop. You will find all the episodes that will be added to my lists. I'm also open to suggestions, even if I can't assure you ... read more
This record really holds a special place in my heart. A close friend of mine put me on to this tape back in 2015 when it dropped, and I imediatly loved it due to the fact that it's Drake's hardest release. We bumped this shit non-stop that year, plus we would play it almost every time we would get together. However, last year I moved to another city and I sort off lost touch with my dog. 3 years later, and my brother's been gone for a week. This album just brings back all the memories. Rest in ... read more
It's just sad to see how much Drake has fell from this great body of work to the garbage and filler that he makes today.
BEST TRACKS: Energy, Used To, 6 Man, Company, Jungle, 6PM in New York
WORST TRACKS: Madonna
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Track List
| 1 | Legend 4:01 | 81 |
| 2 | Energy 3:01 | 88 |
| 3 | 10 Bands 2:57 | 81 |
| 4 | Know Yourself 4:35 | 90 |
| 5 | No Tellin' 5:10 | 83 |
| 6 | Madonna 2:57 | 75 |
| 7 | 6 God 3:00 | 84 |
| 8 | Star67 4:54 | 83 |
| 9 | Preach 3:56 feat. PARTYNEXTDOOR | 68 |
| 10 | Wednesday Night Interlude 3:32 feat. PARTYNEXTDOOR | 71 |
| 11 | Used To 4:28 feat. Lil Wayne | 80 |
| 12 | 6 Man 2:47 | 81 |
| 13 | Now & Forever 4:41 | 76 |
| 14 | Company 4:12 feat. Travis Scott | 78 |
| 15 | You & The 6 4:24 | 79 |
| 16 | Jungle 5:20 | 91 |
| 17 | 6PM In New York 4:43 | 86 |
Total Length: 1 hour, 8 minutes
Year End Lists
| #3 | / | Dummy |
| #3 | / | Rolling Stone |
| #4 | / | Blare |
| #5 | / | Stashed |
| #8 | / | Pigeons & Planes |
| #9 | / | Complex |
| #10 | / | Vulture |
| #12 | / | Billboard |
| #12 | / | Time Out London |
| #12 | / | Time Out New York |
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2d
Even though I rated this album an 85 I personally choose to consider it a 9/10 because I just pretend that Madonna, Preach, and Wednesday Night Interlude don't exist
Added on: February 13, 2015