Drake
Scorpion
Release Date: Jun 29, 2018
Genre(s): Rap, R&B
Record label: Cash Money / Republic
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Album Review: Scorpion by Drake
Fairly Good, Based on 11 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
The boy is back. Drake just released his fifth studio album, Scorpion, the followup to his 2017 playlist, More Life. 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. The 25-track album comes organized into two parts, with a collection of songs from his rap persona on the former, and showcasing his softer side in the latter. On one hand, he goes hard at addressing his industry ops on ….
Based on rating 3.8/5
Last year's spring playlist More Life all but rinsed the bitter taste left by 2016's inconsistent Views. Where the latter felt overlong and self-serious, the former's equally sprawling structure was excused due to the fresh new ingredients thrown into the gumbo that is the "6god style." Drake acknowledged his self-aggrandizing character flaw on More Life closer "Do Not Disturb" and swore that he would try to humble himself before his next album. Instead, after a fair whooping from GOOD Music head honcho Pusha T, Drake's lamenting finally feels necessary.
Based on rating 6.9/10
Drake was hiding a child. He'd like you to believe he kept his son a secret to protect him from the slings and arrows of gossip blogs and internet commenters. On Pusha-T's venomous diss track "The Story of Adidon," he suggested Drake was biding his time until he could make his baby the centerpiece of a marketing campaign for his new line of Adidas clothing.
Based on rating 6/10
Scorpion is everything, all at once. No, really. Drake has had a reckoning coming for a long time. Skillfully piling on global styles onto a seemingly unstoppable pop machine, it's been catching up to him. Once tempering his palette largely with a Houston-lite sound, the Toronto king's quest for ….
Based on rating C
Listen and subscribe via iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS The Lowdown: Drake's fifth full-length studio album, Scorpion, is an outsized, double-sided journey into the mind of a wounded rapper. Split down the middle, the first side of Scorpion is dedicated to rap while the second side is focused on R&B. The album is a 90-minute response to the scathing battle-rap indictment of Drake's manhood and character that was Pusha T's "The Story of Adidon".
Based on rating 2.5
With all the attention on Kanye West's slew of strikingly short albums, it's easy to forget that the bigger trend in rap/R&B releases has been towards excess. Migos, Jhene Aiko, Rae Sremmurd and Chris Brown have all released albums longer than 80 minutes in the past year, and Drake joins them with double LP Scorpion. The idea is that disc 1 is his rap side and disc 2 his R&B side, but since he often raps with a sing-song cadence and sings with a rapper's flow, this can become a distinction without a difference.
Based on rating 4/10
Is there anything more tiresome than being at a party, or at work, or anywhere really, and finding yourself cornered by someone who tells the same story over and over and there's no chance to escape? On his last two albums, and the many singles and songs that surrounded them, Drake skated dangerously close to being exactly that kind of joy-killing, endlessly tiresome boor. On 2018's Scorpion, the ice finally cracks and Drake plunges headfirst into the icy depths of boredom and despair as the 25 songs go back and forth over the same lyrical territory and the monochromatic trap beats drag along slowly behind. Drake runs through his greatest hits yet again -- he's the best rapper yet no one will admit it, he's been treated wrong by every woman he's ever been with, he's rich as hell, and life is tough when you're on top -- to decidedly diminished returns.
Opinion: Excellent
Drake is an artist who hits more often than he misses, so of course everyone was eager to hear Scorpion - but nothing increased the anticipation for the project more than his exchange of diss tracks with Pusha T. This exchange lead to Pusha T's 'The Story Of Adidon', the diss track that silenced Drake for a while. For weeks, it was all people talked about.
Opinion: Excellent
Rating: NNNN Just in time for summer, Drake's latest release is a 90-minute double album that masterfully tackles various facets of his persona. (Guess what? He's a Scorpio! Analyze that and get back to me.) Side A is mostly introspective threats, neurotic boasting and paranoia about enemies. Side B is the same but with a focus on women and his love life.
Opinion: Very Good
Drake is the first artist to get one billion streams in a single week with his fifth studio album 'Scorpion'. The Toronto rapper, singer and - at this point - pop artist is the first to truly master a new generation of music consumers. From the album's tongue-in-cheek meme-ready cover (you can make your own at MakeYourDrake.com) to the Instagram-ready bars being displayed on billboards around the world, the aesthetic and marketing is as finely tuned as ever.
Opinion: Average
Drake was one of two mainstream artists that I could envision pulling off a double album. The other one was, of course, Miranda Lambert, who had been making consistently great country pop albums for years such that all she had to do was make a longer one. And that’s exactly what she did on 2016’s The Weight of These Wings, also one of the best country albums of that year.
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