Drake’s fifth proper studio album is richly produced, studded with gems, and grapples with his fatherhood in a way that casts his arrested development into sharp relief.
Scorpion, his fifth studio album, isn’t entirely focused on the significance of fatherhood. Many of its 25 tracks are built around standard-issue Drake themes—the audacity of rappers who dare speak his name, the psychic toll associated with dating multiple beautiful women at once, people who use Instagram weirdly—and the hyper-topical nature of the lines regarding paternity suggest they were added to the album at the last-minute. But fatherhood hangs over Scorpion all the same, casting Drake’s emotional immaturity into sharp relief. He’s never been more skilled as a technician or melodicist, and it’s remarkable how many of Scorpion’s 90 minutes are musically engaging. But the kind of juvenile navel-gazing that leads someone to write a line like, “She say do you love me, I tell her only partly/I only love my bed and my mama, I’m sorry” is less compelling when it’s coming from a 31-year-old father than a would-be college kid trying to make a name for himself.
Paternity has been a long-standing source of anxiety for Drake, one that’s persisted as he’s become exponentially more famous. He was already sweating close calls on “The Resistance,” a gaseous Thank Me Later highlight that references a one-night stand who wishes she’d kept Drake’s baby. He bemoaned the paperwork that comes with superstardom on 2015’s “30 for 30 Freestyle,” talking about the paternity tests he’s legally obligated to complete for women he’s never slept with. And the issue resurfaced on this year’s loosie “Diplomatic Immunity,” a song released when his son was just a few months old: “I got the sauce and now shorties keep claimin’ preggo.”
Scorpion invites you to pretend that becoming a dad hasn’t been one of Drake’s foremost concerns for the last decade. He makes the disclosure for the first time on the stunning “Emotionless,” coasting on top of an instantly recognizable Mariah Carey sample: “I wasn’t hidin’ my kid from the world, I was hidin’ the world from my kid.” He refutes Pusha’s claim that he’s a deadbeat dad on the opulent “8 out of 10”: “The only deadbeats is whatever beats I been rappin’ to.” To hear Drake tell it, he can’t be bothered to keep their spat going because he’s just too satisfied. “Kiss my son on the forehead then kiss your ass goodbye,” he taunts. “As luck would have it, I’ve settled into my role as the good guy.”
Claiming the higher ground is a convenient way to elude the fact that Pusha had the last and most memorable word in their battle, but it doesn’t hold up under close inspection. On the odious “I’m Upset,” one of his worst songs ever, he sounds unenthused about the prospect of child support: “Can’t go 50-50 with no ho/Every month I’m supposed to pay her bills and get her what she want… My dad still got child support from 1991.” This from someone who’s settling into his role as the good guy? And it’s hard to overlook the fact that Drake’s still using his son as a tool—maybe not to sell sneakers and sweatpants, but to insulate himself from criticism over taking a decisive loss.
If you can get past Drake’s toxicity, you’re free to luxuriate in Scorpion’s sumptuous sound. With glistening production from his favorites in Noah “40” Shebib and Boi-1da, and new faces like the young Memphis producer Tay Keith (the infectious “Nonstop”), Drake abandons the global pop dalliances of 2016’s VIEWS and last year’s More Life—releases that derived much of their vitality from dancehall, Afrobeats, and grime—to revisit sounds and structures from his earlier career. The tough-talking, rap-centric Side A toggles between the icy, anxious mood of 2015’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and the rich production of 2013’s Nothing Was the Same; the sung tracks on Side B reach all the way back to the moody, nocturnal Take Care, though he sounds less like a lonely sophomore than a zaddy whose heart hasn’t totally frozen over.
This means that Scorpion is the first Drake album to double back instead of chart a new course, and its conservatism is disappointing given the near-decade he’s spent at pop music’s vanguard. Splitting Scorpion into two distinct sides—rap and R&B—detracts from his pioneering synthesis of those two genres, but the best songs here don’t sound like retreads; they’re the most refined possible expressions of familiar aesthetics. Soulful, sample-centric cuts like “Emotionless,” “8 out of 10,” and the long-awaited DJ Premier collaboration “Sandra’s Rose” are pure comfort food, a reminder that Drake idolized Kanye West long before they became each other’s nemeses. On the other end of the spectrum, the frosted android choirs haunting “Elevate” and “Finesse” are as weird and thrilling as any beat you’ll hear this year; they sound like Oneohtrix Point Never demos, but they still have a place in Drake’s sound world.
It’s on Scorpion’s Side B that Drake comes closest to finding his sweet spot, that inimitable zone where aromatherapy candles never burn out and champagne flutes are never left empty. The Michael Jackson “feature” on “Don’t Matter to Me” is a preposterous flex—consider how many artists have the funds to clear a sample like that—but it’s also the perfect exclamation point for a pop song with the warm throb of “Hold On, We’re Going Home.” On the sublime “After Dark,” he upgrades Thank Me Later-era slow jams with filthy, funny smooth-talking and assists from the late Static Major and Ty Dolla $ign, this summer’s most valuable utility player. And the few songs that cover new ground are indisputable highlights: “Summer Games” supercharges a garden-variety breakup with new wave dread, and “Nice for What” and “In My Feelings” are infectious spins on New Orleans bounce. Cramming in 25 tracks means you’re guaranteed a few duds—the cursed, joyless “Ratchet Happy Birthday”—but for a bloated streaming-era release, the batting average here is remarkably high.
Scorpion ends with “March 14,” an extended reckoning with fatherhood in place of Drake’s usual state-of-OVO status report. It’s an appropriate capper for a fascinating, flawed album. He connects his current situation—squabbling with his son’s mother, meeting him just once, buying him a store’s worth of gifts he’s already outgrown—to his recurring analysis of his parents’ failed marriage: “Single father, I hate when I hear it/I used to challenge my parents on every album/Now I’m embarrassed to tell ‘em I ended up as a co-parent/Always promised the family unit/I wanted it to be different because I’ve been through it.” It’s some of the most vulnerable writing of his career, and it’s proof that he can still muster the kind of unflinching self-examination that once differentiated him from his peers. And yet, there are chunks of “March 14” that just don’t pass muster. He describes finding out about his paternity as “the first positive DNA we ever celebrated,” which is both a remarkably unsentimental way to react to becoming a father and hard to believe given the content of songs like “I’m Upset.” “I got this 11 tatted for somebody, now it’s yours,” he moans, as if regifting your own tattoo is something other than deeply embarrassing.
The last thing you hear on Scorpion is an interpolation of Boyz II Men’s tender “Khalil (Interlude).” It's supposed to be an endearing transitional moment: an unexpected, consequential development has compelled music's foremost Lothario to change his stripes. The days of finding “two girls that I rope like Indiana Jones” and making “them hoes walk together like I’m Amber Rose” are over. It’s time for Drake to love something other than his bed and his mama. And then you remember that this extended mea culpa might have never have existed if Pusha-T didn’t release a diss track featuring a young Aubrey Graham in blackface.
It’s not like Drake needs to serve as a beacon of moral clarity, but this year’s paternity saga—and with Scorpion, its ostensible conclusion—has revealed his shortcomings as a writer and pop personality. Whether it’s 2011 or 2018, you’re getting the same guy: anxious, calculating, and self-obsessed, with a golden ear and a fondness for terrible punchlines. Fatherhood hasn’t made him grow up—and if you’ve gotten older and wiser, Scorpion just feels like the latest in a series of diminishing returns.
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