VIEWS
Your Review
CRITIC REVIEWS
80
It's a slow album, but through multiple listens, we're treated to the same complexities, but personal and musical, that have made him such a fascinating figure throughout the past decade.
80
Views isn’t a perfect album – some judicious pruning of the less impactful tracks would make it more easily digestible, and there are certainly moments when you start to wish Drake would cast his gaze a little further afield than his own navel.
80
Aubrey has reclaimed his position delivering the ardently despondent music he initially built his reputation on, through patented melancholy, petty pretentiousness and newly adopted riddims.
80
Drake delivers a strong album that will undoubtedly get played for months and even years to come, but at this point he should be pushing the boundaries in his music.
80
‘Views’ should be a slog. But remarkably, his signature brand of downbeat introspection remains gripping.
80
This is glittering, diamond-sharp stuff that sees Drake switch from the dulcet lothario of ‘Take Care’ to the clipped, canine street rapper of ‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late’. The result is new patterns, new tones and new pockets of Drake’s secret weapon: empty space.
75
Given all the resources he has, the album may have been too big to fail, but he’s still maintained enough of his unique talent that it’s unlikely anyone could have done it better.
75
Drake still remains a master at producing low-key mesmerizing rap, but the Views are slightly less breathtaking here.
70
Views is a truly glacial, intensely morose album, one that confronts the same basic concerns as previous efforts, while further amplifying their significance.
70
Drake has tilled this soil on several albums, with little new insight or complexity unearthed here; the result is an occasionally excellent LP that feels, naggingly, like a missed opportunity.
70
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who listen for lyrics, and those who listen for beats. If you belong to the latter group, then Views will be one of the best albums released this year. If you’re in the former, well… lines like “I’m a staple in the game, all my papers together” might tarnish golden production work from Noah “40” Shebib, Boi1da, nineteen85, and Maneesh, among others.
68
Drake's fourth proper album feels claustrophobic and too long and weirdly monotone, but the occasional tweaks in sound lead to a few great moments.
67
Even more so than 2013’s Nothing Was The Same, an otherwise fantastic effort that hugged its predecessors’ template a little too tightly, Views can’t escape the sense that Drake’s done this before and done it better.
60
‘Views’ is far from perfect. Yes, at times it does drag a little and - though clever and often charming - the content isn’t particularly inspiring. But that’s not who Drake is and it never will be; he’s arrogant, self-obsessed and a little bit goofy.
60
At 20 tracks, Aubrey for the most part provides a rather overweight and lethargic waltz through his musical comfort zone.
60
Views, like Take Care and Nothing Was the Same before it, is brilliant in places and thoroughly bloated in others. Most interesting is how Drake manages to vacillate so dramatically between being so likeable one minute and so off-puttingly self-involved the next.
60
To say Views is a victory lap after the successes of his two mixtapes from 2015 is a lie: no victory lap in hip-hop sounds so supine and inert.
60
For him to be so often contented with merely satisfactory results is somehow much more disappointing than a total failure.
60
There are enough moments of glory and splendour here to validate Drake’s position at the head of the hip-hop table, but you wonder whether he can stay there much longer without doing something drastically different.
60
As emotional and specific as Drake is in his lyrics, Views often feels uninspired. He continues to grow as a singer, but his rhymes are stuck in a broody and banal limbo, stubbornly beholden to the boring machismo of American hip-hop drama but also drawn to the eclecticism of the world beyond.
58
Kanye West’s 2010 magnum opus, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, takes a piercing look at the relationship between humanity and celebrity. Such a duality is clearly what Drake sought to explore on his 4th studio effort, Views, yet he falls short at almost every turn.
58
Drake may not be “making a statement” in the way people might expect him to, but there’s no denying he’s saying something.
50
There really isn’t a whole lot that can be said about VIEWS that hasn’t already been said about Drake’s three previous albums. For an artist so eager to entertain, so set on proving his superstar status in a fickle industry, he surprisingly doesn’t take any risks in order to do something truly different.
50
Frankly, it's become as boring and annoying as a needle stuck in a groove. No matter how ably the production casts his raps and ballads in the best possible light, no matter how well the frequent use of chopped and swirled samples from '90s R&B songs fit in the mix, no matter that the occasional song rises up from the narrative and makes a splash, the album is a meandering, dreary rehash of what Drake has done before in much better fashion.
40
Canada's own Drake returns with his most drab commercial release yet.
when drizzie releases a new record, it becomes a warzone and you gotta Keep the Family Close. although this doesn't out-right suck, it's def. not even coming close to a 9, U With Me? i Feel No Ways about the Hype, although Weston Road Flows almost had me feeling some Redemption for drake. id be willing to listen to this With You whether you're a Faithful drake fan or a hater hollaring "im Still Here!" we get it you can't Controlla your mouth when it comes to your opinion. but all ... read more
turn the 6 upside down, it's a 67 now
EDIT: Turn the 67 upside down, it's a 61 now
EDIT: Turn the 67 upside down, it's a 61 now
If a girl could love me as much as Drake loves Toronto I'd be set
A misstep for Drake. I've stuck with him through the years since Take Care, even as he has grown steadily less consistent (with the exception of If You're Reading This It's Too Late, which is starting to feel more like a brilliant one-off than the career reset it seemed at the time), but on Views, he's starting to coast. There are plenty of fine songs here, and even some new flavors to his sound, like the dancehall beats that pop up on tracks like Controlla and One Dance. But this is the first ... read more
END OF YEAR LISTS
| #5 | / | Dummy |
| #5 | / | People |
| #8 | / | Les Inrocks |
| #12 | / | The Wild Honey Pie |
| #13 | / | Digital Spy |
| #14 | / | The Times / The Sunday Times |
| #15 | / | BLARE |
| #15 | / | Complex |
| #15 | / | Hypebeast |
| #15 | / | LA Music Blog |
| #17 | / | Billboard |
| #17 | / | NME |
| #20 | / | The Guardian |
| #22 | / | The 405 |
| #25 | / | Esquire (US) |
More Lists
MISC LISTS
Track List
- Keep the Family Close
- 9
- U With Me?
- Feel No Ways
- Hype
- Weston Road Flows
- Redemption
- With You (feat. PARTYNEXTDOOR)
- Faithful (feat. Pimp C & dvsn)
- Still Here
- Controlla
- One Dance (feat. Wizkid & Kyla)
- Grammys (feat. Future)
- Childs Play
- Pop Style
- Too Good (feat. Rihanna)
- Summers Over Interlude
- Fire & Desire
- Views
- Hotline Bling
Contributions By
Jose_LuisBC, thisisabtlgrnd, philthy, AlexBarajas1996, patton, mpowell009, colm, royalflush, PureRage, surfnoiir
Added on: February 9, 2016
