By: Ricky Perez Cardoza
‘For All The Dogs’ by Drake is his long-awaited 8th studio album announced in July and released after a couple of push backs on October 6th. It’s one of Drake’s longer albums, coming in at 23 songs and 1 hour and 24 minutes of playtime.
The album starts strong with the song “Virginia Beach”. We get the beautiful high-pitched sample from Frank Ocean’s unreleased song “Wiseman”. Drake does what he does best on this song and it’s his vocals/singing that make this song perfect for an intro and sets the tone for most of the album going forward.
“Amen” (feat Teezo Touchdown) is another strong song of the album where we get hard-hitting bass along with piano that makes this song feel classy. This is especially true when Teezo Touchdown starts singing its performance that takes the song up a level. Drake does his rapping but goes a little more lyrical and talks about his connection with god, and has all his bars correlate with praying and things like god.
“Calling For You” (feat. 21 Savage) is a song we all expected in this album. Drake starts with a big switch up in tones from religion to explicit things on a dark synth and hyper hi-hats to go along with the background singing making it one of the best instrumentals from the album. What makes this song 5 minutes long is its unnecessary almost interlude-like section in the middle of the song of just an unknown woman ranting about a broken relationship that transitions to 21 Savage’s feature, that is the highlight of the song, with the same formula for an instrumental like the first part for his section as well.
“Fear Of Heights” is the next song on the album. It starts with a somber song with a laid-back performance from Drake but transitions this low-energy song to a high-energy hype song in just 45 seconds. This is one of Drake’s many attempts at a new style of music and pulls it off with an instrumental that sounds like those of Yeat’s featured later on the album.
“Daylight” is another hype song from Drake but he adapts more of a faster rapping style on this song with hard-hitting bass. It’s a song that most people have heard before. What most people didn’t expect on this song is a feature from his son Adonis freestyling on an old style boom bap beat and going from the topic Drake was rapping about on this song. It’s a little strange having his son on this track.
“First Person Shooter” (feat. J. Cole) Is one of the many Billboard hits on this album. This song has another amazing performance by J. Cole and Drake. They both have great chemistry on this song and it’s a great balance of a song with J. Cole mentioning beef and hinting at his next album in a great lyrical way. Drake brings hype to the song but ultimately gets outshined in this song.
“IDGAF” (feat. Yeat) Is another Billboard hit that starts with these spacey synths with jazz singing and jazz trumpet playing but suddenly switches completely to a different song with one of the best rage beats we’ve heard recently in music. Yeat is made for this song but the same thing can’t be said about Drake who sounds mostly out of place and out of his sound on this song. Yeat carries this song and it sounds more like a Yeat song than a Drake song.
“7969 Santa” is the next song that switches up the vibe from rage to Drake rapping about relationships on a more cloudy instrumental with not as much bass as he typically has on his songs. He also does his usual emotional singing which he always incorporates into his songs. At the end of the song, we have another appearance by Teezo Touchdown where he gives us even more great vocals for the ending of this song and just pure pianos. Snoop Dogg also makes an appearance giving the theme of “dogs”.
“Slime You Out” (feat. SZA) by Drake is the single released before the album’s release and it’s a song that had mixed opinions when it first came out mostly because of its focus on R&B and not what most people expected. It has a great SZA performance where she has great emotion behind her singing.
“Bahamas’ Promises” is a return to the old style from Drake incorporated with dog barking that we also hear throughout the album. It’s a classic from Drake that reminds people of a more modern version of the song “Take Care”. It talks about mixed emotions about a failed relationship and is all done on a great flowing piano beat.
“Tried Our Best” is again another return to an old style for Drake and gives off the vibe of a song from his album ‘Views’. It’s a melodic song from Drake that overall is good but one of the more forgettable songs from the album.
“Screw The World – Interlude” brings back the boom-bap sound we heard from Drake at the end of the song “Daylight”. It’s an interlude that doesn’t do much for a transition but more as a break from the R&B and gives us an old-style boom-bap sound.
“Drew A Picasso’s” is like the other songs just as “Bahamas Promises” and “Tried Our Best” just done more emotionally and overall more boring, whereas Drake brings us more memorable lines in this song. After hearing more or less the same song 3 times in a row it gets more boring and is another example of longer albums having songs like this that feel like they are there just for bloating.
“Members Only” (feat. PARTYNEXTDOOR) is another song people forget about in this album. The song is another R&B song from Drake with a feature from PARTYNEXTDOOR that doesn’t save the singing from Drake and the lyrics are some of the worst on this album.
“What Would Pluto Do” saves this mediocre middle part of this album and references Pluto or AKA Future that should’ve had a spot on this song, that just fits his style, and it’s something Drake still performs great on. It’s a shame we couldn’t get a single Future feature on this album given the duo have made great songs together.
“All The Parties” (feat. Chief Keef) is one of the more disappointing songs on the album. Mostly because it’s R&B again but now with an out-of-place feature from Chief Keef which would be the best opportunity to make a great hype song, especially when the last 8 songs have all been singing and R&B.
“8 A.M. in Charlotte” is a continuation of Drake’s city songs and stands out for its great production from Conductor Williams and was also a song released before the album came out. The song features the best rapping performance on the whole album; the piano and mentions of Drake’s past beefs and current ones is a perfect mix to make Drake go all out on his rapping from a rap-dry second half of the album.
“BBL Love” is a forgettable interlude serving no purpose and is one of the most embarrassing interludes/songs from Drake. Easily, the worst song on the album.
“Gently” (feat. Bad Bunny) has most people confused in the first half where Drake does possibly one of the worst Spanish sections on a song where he says almost cringe-worthy stuff. Gladly, the song switches up quickly to a Spanish form of song called “Dembow” where Drake delivers his part with some of the best flow on a Spanish beat, something people didn’t expect at all. Bad Bunny does his thing on this song and is a great addition because he almost talks like the American version of Drake.
“Rich Baby Daddy” (feat. Sexyy Red & SZA) is one of the best R&B songs on this album mostly because of its fast tempo instrumental but is made worse by the Sexy Red feature that isn’t known for appropriate songs or lyrics. The song is ultimately saved by SZA who shines on a song like this and hopefully makes more songs like this. It’s also unnecessarily long with an almost interlude end part from Drake on this song.
“Another Late Night” (feat. Lil Yachty) gives us the expected collaboration from the 2 best friends and is a good song where you can hear Lil Yachty’s influence on the song. Both of them do well on this song. It’s one the most vibey songs on the album.
“Away From Home” is another song that doesn’t stand out much from the album. Easily one of the most boring songs on the album and very regretful. This song doesn’t give anything at all. No good lyrics. No good instrumental. And not the best rapping performance by Drake. It’s a song most people will forget about.
“Polar Opposites” is the final song in this 23-song-long album and it’s not even a good outro for the album. He should’ve done what he does most of the time and it’s the end of his signature hype we saw on “Honestly Nevermind” & “Her Loss”. This R&B song gets boring after listening to the same style of music for 6 songs in a row.
“For All The Dogs” by Drake is one of his best projects if it kept the style or direction of Drake trying new sounds. He does this in the first half of the album and he does it well. If the album had been just the first half with a couple editions of other songs from the second half it could’ve been easily one of his best new projects in his discography.
The second half of pure R&B music is something that people were complaining about back when he released his album ‘Certified Lover Boy’. It was an album most people found boring and we see the same thing in the second half of this album.
This album brings an end to new music from Drake for a while now and it is safe to say he didn’t disappoint on the album at all and it could’ve been one of his best if he just made the album shorter. This is something we see too much of and is only ever done well by very few artists.
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