As of now, his mixtape, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, is sitting at 2x Platinum. The project with Future, What A Time To Be Alive, is certified Platinum, and Views, his latest album, reached more than half-billion streams within a month of release. All that to say: Drake is the biggest artist in hip-hop right now (after all, his pool bigger than ‘Ye’s, and Ye’s pool is nice). But let’s look back at Take Care, the second full-length from Aubrey, originally released in 2011. It’s currently a 4 x Platinum album, and numbers aside, it’s a phenomenal body of work that carved out a sound/style that remains super relevant today, and will remains so for years. The atmospheric, R&B and electronica-inspired production style, heralded by Noah “40” Shebib, is at the foundation of the 18 tracks (with assists by Jamie XX, The Weeknd, Boi-1da, T-Minus and Just Blaze), and Drizzy gets busy sharing his deepest feelings, through bars and singing, about lost love, fame, and other life shit that rappers go through. No fillers here, really, but the obvious highlights are “Take Care,” “HYFR,” “Marvins Room,” “Doing It Wrong,” “Crew Love,” and “Headlines.”

• music label: Young Money Entertainment 2011

reviewed by donut savage 10/2016