Drake Shuts Up

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Music

Drake Shuts Up

One thing that makes 'More Life' great is it means Drake might finally go away for a little while.

"Takin' summer off 'cause they tell me I need recovery / maybe gettin' back to my regular life will humble me / I'll be back in 2018 to give you the summary / (More Life)."

These are the bars that Drake uses to close his new album—sorry, we're not calling this thing a playlist—More Life, and they're some of his absolute best. They're a good technical accomplishment, sure, with the density of the rhymes and the way he echoes the sound of "summer" with "summary." They're clear and evocative, spelling out a little riddle for his listeners. They end his album by making it an event and promising a sequel, the same way comic book movies like to leave one plot strand conveniently unresolved. But most of all, they are great lines because they tell us something we've been waiting to hear: Drake is finally going to go away for a while. The guy who has managed to insert himself into practically every one of rap's narratives and far too many SNL skits over the past half-decade has finally learned how to shut up when the occasion calls for it.

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That may seem like an odd thing to say about an album that sprawls out over 22 tracks and includes such Drake clunkers as "trust this little light of mine is gonna shine, positively." But Drake is uncharacteristically good at getting out of his own way on More Life, ceding the floor to lush instrumentals, gorgeous samples, and an array of talented guests. He hands over entire songs to Sampha and Skepta, the two artists whose careers he's already most selflessly given bumps over the years. He lets the songs dictate the mood rather than forcing everything to fit into a single claustrophobic mindset, like he did on Views (not that he lets go of taking a few jabs at some old enemies, but he does acknowledge in multiple places the way anger clouded his recent music). And he also announces, thankfully, that we don't have to pay attention to him for a while if we don't want to.

It's hard to overstate how much Drake has held rap in an attention chokehold in recent years. This impression is particularly pronounced for people like me, who are in the cottage industry of having to pay attention to what Drake does all the time, but I think it extends to the climate of music and pop culture at large. Since he announced his upcoming album "Views from the 6" (eventually Views) in July 2014, Drake has put out two ostensible "mixtapes" and another project's worth of loose singles, several of which he used to propel the most high-profile yet unsatisfying rap beef in years. He released the long-promised "album," which crowded out the charts for months and set all kinds of records. He toured relentlessly on the backs of all three albums—sorry, two mixtapes and an album—and, as the last of those tours was wrapping up, announced More Life.

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In addition to dropping a career's worth of songs in the last three years, he increasingly became the guy who set the terms for how any new rap was consumed (for example, by making up random distinctions about what we call his albums). It has become a rite of passage for new rappers to not only get the OVO social media stamp of approval but then see it become a central part of their narrative. Drake isn't just the public face of the world's biggest company's music arm—or, alternately, the music industry's technology arm—but the curator of a segment of event radio that expands his reach as the guy who dictates what music people care about. That role has lent itself to the loose, genre-hopping feel of More Life, but it has also redefined the very terms by which many fans evaluate new music in general. He has, as he brags, basically kept the lights on for the music industry, although perhaps not by everyone else's choosing. Rarely, if ever, has a rapper had such a culturally dominant run.

Yet we haven't gotten a moment of reprieve from Drake in three years or more, and it's been bad for the rest of music, if not culture at large. After a while, the whole idea that you want to tune into a celebrity's life all the time gets tiring and, frankly, undermines art. When was the last time you looked at DJ Khaled's Snapchat? Nobody pays closer attention to how Drake is being perceived than Drake, and there's no doubt he's aware of the feeling of saturation, even as he recognizes that he had to do things this way to tie up all the loose ends and leave on as dominant a note as he did. He probably also, given his incredibly precise understanding of celebrity, has seen the damage that the mindset that following celebrities' every move can engender, the way it reduces culture to a series of stupid talking points and idiot leaders to make them. He understands that the culture right now calls for something different, and he's smart enough to bow out rather than try too hard to pivot to whatever that thing might be. Leave that for Kendrick—or whoever comes next.

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The reset effect is one of the other positive things about him bowing out now: He sets himself up in the position Jay Z was post- Black Album or Wayne after Tha Carter III, walking away as the elder statesman and gracefully clearing the floor for someone new to take his spot. (Before you start getting stirred up about the Jay comparison: It was seven years from Reasonable Doubt to the Black Album and his "retirement"; Drake's been going for eight, with objectively more crossover success.) He knows that he will eventually brush up against the specter of uncoolness (I mean, people make jokes about Jay Z, a guy who once stabbed a producer in the middle of a Times Square club, being washed; Drake, a guy who sparked a meme by using a lint roller, is toast), so he's wisely chosen to take a break, let his coolness at the moment speak for itself, and make room for the next thing.

He's done it effectively, too: More Life is a high note in the narrative that will leave his core fans happy; he's tied up perceived rifts with the likes of Kanye and XO; he's put on lesser-known artists like Giggs and reached out to innovators like Black Coffee, setting out a blueprint for a new generation of kids primed to think globally when it comes to music. Crucially, More Life settles for being a good album rather than a perfect one, and it comes out feeling more assured as a result. It doesn't demand attention the way other recent Drake moves have: If there were ever a Drake album for which it's fine to listen to when you get to it, More Life is that. These songs don't have to all get dissected and run up the charts and flooded into our skulls; they'll work better with some space to breathe.

If all of this discussion feels a little too strategy-oriented and not focused enough on the music, allow me to add: Drake has always been obsessed with his narrative. His early hits had lines about things like feeling guilty for renting a Rolls Royce. His albums have been unapologetic about making a bid for rap's top spot, particularly since If You're Reading This It's Too Late, and they've always involved a healthy degree of self-mythologizing. As critic and Noisey contributor Al Shipley recently pointed out on Twitter, "Drake has tonally been doing The Black Album since Thank Me Later, he just grew into it more by now." To be a fan of Drake is to buy into this side of him, for better or for worse. And as far as this aspect of his appeal goes, he has played the game perfectly.

We're not going to be rid of Drake completely. He's already managed to make his latest tattoo into a whole news debacle, and surely he'll have a verse for a Taylor Swift single remix at some point. He'll definitely go star in a so-so movie, and you can bet that he'll pop up at a 21 Savage show at SXSW next year. But hopefully we can check out for a bit. Views was supposed to be a walk through all of Toronto's seasons, but it was basically a cold winter. More Life is spring: The ice is melting, the sound is a little more equatorial, and the attitude is sunnier. Spring is a season of possibilities for the warm months ahead, and that's the mindset here. For the first time in a long time, Drake has stepped out on a note that can one day lead to anticipation for him doing something new.

Photo by  David Wolff - Patrick / Getty Images Kyle Kramer has a 6S with the screen cracked and is fully resigned to Drake never answering his texts. Follow him on Twitter.