by
Drake
- Record Label: Cash Money
- Release Date: Feb 13, 2015
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Feb 19, 2015Sonically, this is the most Drake Drake's ever been, with the signature sound he's been dancing around ever since 2009's So Far Gone (released exactly 6 years prior) finally being cemented in wall-to-wall.
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Feb 17, 2015If You're Reading This It's Too Late comes with all of the baggage and experimentation a mixtape brings while managing to surpass the quality of most artists' output.
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Feb 17, 2015If You’re Reading concentrates the anger pocketed within NWTS’ moodiness. The result is more thrilling.
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Feb 17, 2015Luckily, even without all of the context and lofty exposition, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late is an altogether great and always thrilling listen.
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Feb 17, 2015Late is hardly a throwaway. In fact, it might be his most consistently rewarding full-length yet.
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Feb 17, 2015On If You’re Reading This, all of this chest beating is delivered over the most darkly hypnotic beats Drake’s graced since So Far Gone.
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Q MagazineApr 13, 2015This enthralling, enigmatic statement conjures a mood that's all its own. [May 2015, p.108]
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Mar 17, 2015Throughout, ego is rightfully extended through the sheer material force of his content generation. The listener must ultimately face their visceral love or hate toward his character, or, at least, observe how the majority of any given subway ride is in their feelings with his music.
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Feb 26, 2015Drake’s main concern now seems to be maintaining his status for as long as possible, resulting in some of the most intricately psychological and personally motivated songs in his catalog.
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Feb 18, 2015Drake is increasingly astute at reframing hip-hop braggadocio about wealth and competition as a kind of existential crisis through telling--but now familiar--details about his life (“I got two mortgages $30 million in total”) and subtle uses of melody and atmosphere.
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Feb 18, 2015For all his subtle lyrical techniques, the Drake experience at full throttle is only achieved with the aid of his criminally underrated usual suspects; Noah “40” Shebib, PartyNextDoor and Boi-1da dominate the instrumental duties.
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Feb 18, 2015You won’t be listening to this one all the way through, but that’s perfectly fine. The release is more than capable of holding up his legacy until Views From the 6 arrives later this year.
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Feb 18, 2015If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late is by far Drake’s most dense and complex album.
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Feb 17, 2015A sudden 69 minutes of Drake binging on hypnotic soundscapes, spitting out gleefully hung-over flows.
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Feb 17, 2015Between only a couple hiccups, If You're Reading This It's Too Late weaves personal raps, 6-side boosts and absorbing production in cohesive fashion. It's an engaging preview of the upcoming Views from the 6.
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Feb 17, 2015The 17 tracks that Drake released at midnight on a recent Thursday hit harder and hold together more cohesively than most big-budget event albums.
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Feb 17, 2015At 28, he’s very much hitting his stride in Rap, using every transitional moment to add one more compelling chapter to his narrative.
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Feb 13, 2015This sounds like the work of an artist who knows he is at the head of the hip hop pack, laying down a gauntlet to the whole of rap music.
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Feb 13, 2015“Longevity?” You can count on it, if he can keep converting narcissistic navel-gazing into music as complex and compelling as If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late.
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Feb 17, 2015The 17 tracks read like a fed-up farewell note penned in Drake's typically introspective, first-person style. It's so fresh the ink's still wet: bracingly honest and filled with observations about the darkness just outside the circle of the spotlight.
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The WireMay 15, 2015His music has an airless, contrived and over-polished quality. However, the production style developed by his team of collaborators is glacially impressive, if gloomy. [Apr 2015, p.66]
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Mar 18, 2015It makes for an album that's hard to love right away, but if you stick with it, is a rewarding listen.
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Feb 20, 2015The overall feeling is of a Drake record weirded out to its absolute extreme.
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Feb 17, 2015Too Late definitely scans as a transitional work, a transfixing moment-in-time sort of recording that sees an unprecedentedly fortified Drake firing off paranoid and power-drunk thoughts from his basement, sounding even lonelier than he does than when he specifically talks about feeling lonely.
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Feb 13, 2015The "album" feels like a bunch of random songs, some quality songs mind you, but still just a bunch of songs that don't add up to anything larger.
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Feb 17, 2015Drake may not have an hour’s worth of great songs here, but he does have an hour’s worth of thoughts he needs to get off his chest.
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Feb 17, 2015If You're Reading This It's Too Late isn't that good.... There are definitely some songs that have commercial potential that I don't hate, and though I'd rather hear Drake rapping than singing, "Jungle" seems like the kind of track that with a few choice edits could get radio play.
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Feb 17, 2015The album doesn't lift off until it's nearly over.
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Feb 23, 2015At its best--Know Yourself is a standout-- Drake turns grumpiness into an art.
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Feb 23, 2015For all the music's cagey intelligence, Drake sounds like the kind of guy who comes sauntering out the traps in a 100m race and immediately breaks out into a victory lap, pausing only to remonstrate with hecklers.
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Feb 20, 2015At times the lyrical component can leave you cold.
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Feb 18, 2015It’s Too Late is a woozy, scattershot thing--Late Night Drake, if you will.
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Feb 13, 2015The album ends up seeming more like a stop-gap than a surge ahead. For the first two-thirds, Drake relies on his usual sing-song style, stoking interest only with his inventive stretches in phrasing.... Otherwise, cooler hooks, melodic flashes of R&B, or great variation can be hard to find.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 433 out of 517
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Mixed: 41 out of 517
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Negative: 43 out of 517
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Feb 15, 2015
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Feb 14, 2015
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Feb 18, 2015