‘$ome $exy $ongs 4 U’ album cover
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Aubrey “Drake” Graham’s first album released since his feud with rapper Kendrick Lamar, “$ome $exy $ongs 4 U” ($$4U), is a return to his roots — generic pop-adjacent music with some familiar collaborators.
Fans hoping to see Drake’s rebuttal to “Not Like Us” will be disappointed. Out of the 21 tracks and 73-minute runtime, Drake dedicates only a handful of lines in a single track to the feud: “Gimme a Hug.” He says nothing directly against Kendrick Lamar, instead writing: “They be droppin’ s***, but we be droppin’ harder s*** (Droppin’ harder s***)/F*** a rap beef, I’m tryna get the party lit.”
Considering “Not Like Us” outperformed all of Drake’s disses in the feud at every level, claiming he’s dropped “harder s***” is revisionist history. But the last line signals the intent of the album. Drake wants to return to his career and forget about the beef.
If this is the best Drake has to resume his career, however, his best days are behind him. Despite the gratuitous runtime, the tracks lack originality or lyricism.
Most focus on the past sexual escapades of Drake and his collaborator, Jahron “PartyNextDoor” Brathwaite. PartyNextDoor even mentions a girl from Michigan, complete with an explicit joke poking fun at Michigan’s water quality.
Compare “$$4U” to Taylor Swift’s most recent album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” which also ran over an hour with 31 individual tracks — the longest of Swift’s career. Swift justifies the length with the depth of material, as Swift records her reaction to the Eras Tour and the increased spotlight.
Drake could have spent time reflecting on the impact of the feud — especially after thousands of people sang along to Kendrick Lamar calling him a “certified” pedophile at the Super Bowl. Instead, Drake dedicates a couple of minutes to the feud and focuses the rest on Valentine’s Day and his life as a bachelor.
The message is clear: Drake is done with the feud and has no intention of improving his artistry. The same generic music that brought him fame also brought him criticism, as Lamar and others picked apart Drake’s lazy attempts at releasing hits across multiple genres. His disses during the feud at least encouraged better lyricism from Drake, but “$$4U” demonstrates that those disses were an anomaly, and Drake can’t keep it up anymore.
“$$4U” is not the final chapter in the Drake-Lamar feud —it’s the first chapter of the rest of Drake’s career. Unfortunately, this chapter is too long, too shallow, and too similar to the music that got Drake into a feud in the first place.
