Drake has been teasing his new album For All The Dogs since June, but it’s not clear at all how much of what we hear now was written at that point. Since that first teaser, he has pushed the album’s release back multiple times, and only confirmed its arrival date – an unconventional 6am on the US East Coast – the day before it dropped. Search & Rescue, a song shared earlier this year to preview For All The Dogs, doesn’t even make the final album. If the album’s rollout feels off the cuff and spontaneously thrown together, this energy continues on the music itself.
The follow-up to his pair of 2022 albums – Honestly, Nevermind and full-length 21 Savage collaboration Her Loss – stretches across 23 songs and 90 minutes, with little to knit it together across its length. The album was announced as a companion piece to Drake’s poetry book Titles Ruin Everything, though again the touted threads between these pieces dissipate across its mammoth run-time.
As ever with Drake’s latter day projects – more data dumps than bodies of work – there are gems to be unearthed here. SZA collaboration Slime You Out, released ahead of the album’s arrival, is an understated and atmospheric highlight, with the pair trading verses full of drama. Others to stand out from the crowd are throwback single 8am In Charlotte, the smooth, Frank Ocean-sampling opener Virginia Beach and gospel-influenced Teezo Touchdown collaboration Amen.
It’s through a slew of mid-album interludes, though, that the album drags its feet and loses its cohesion. If For All The Dogs was presented as a peek into Drake’s hard drive, or a glimpse into the mechanics of his latest era – as 2021’s Dark Lane Demo Tapes was – the bloat and unevenness here may be easier to forgive. But it’s in the perceived interconnectedness with the poetry book that the concept falls apart, as such parallels simply aren’t observable when listening.
It feels almost fitting that the album’s core listeners, members of the playlist generation, could trim the fat on For All The Dogs to make a strong 10-to-12-song album on their streaming service of choice. Such an album would sit closer to Drake’s best work, but he feels entirely uninterested in becoming that strict and decisive editor himself.
“They say they miss the old Drake girl don’t tempt me,” Drake said, when first announcing For All The Dogs earlier in the year. Though there are glimpses of the old magic here, he clearly wasn’t tempted quite enough.
