On Valentine’s Day and after many months of turmoil Drake finally returned to the music scene and he did with a new album titled “$ome $exy $ongs 4 U” dedicated to all R&B lovers. He does it alongside his October’s Very Own, OVO for short, signee PartyNextDoor.
Since the album’s announcement in 2024 people wondered how Drake and PartyNextDoor would come about this album, was it going to be a mixture of rap and R&B? Was Drake going to diss Kendrick Lamar? What type of album was it going to be?
But after announcing that it would drop on Valentine’s Day these questions were answered, it would be an R&B album. And sure enough, in this album, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, Drake gets back in his Take Care era bag and drops a predominantly R&B album, with some rap songs and some other genres mixed in, alongside PartyNextDoor.
The album marks Drake’s 14th album and PartyNextDoor’s fifth. It is 21 tracks and 1 hour and 13 minutes long, and is a love letter to both single and taken people. Most tracks have a predominantly slow beat.
Throughout the album we see a lot of soft drums, guitars and piano in order to set the mood whether you are single or taken, this comes alongside a lot of autotune which is spread throughout the album. The best tracks that represent this and the vibe of the album as a whole would be “Pimmies Dilemma” which features up and coming artist Pim, “Somebody Loves Me”, “Something About You” and “Raining in Houston.”
It is not all slow songs tho. There are also some tracks that will definitely hype you up like “Brian Steele” and “Gimme Hug”, both solo Drake tracks. In these tracks Drake mentions the beef with Kendrick Lamar and speeds up the tempo of his instrumentals and flow, using samples and louder and faster drums in the background.
If you want to dance to the album Drake and PartyNextDoor included some songs in there for that as well. In “Nokia” Drake taps into the 80’s disco era and delivers a club classic and in “Meet Your Padre” Drake and PND collaborate with Mexican artist Chino Pacas to deliver a song to all latinos and spanish-speaking fans. They start the song on a Flamenco Spanish beat and end it in trumpets, guitars and accordions, worthy of any classic corrido.
The album also has been a great success earning 56.6 million first day streams on Spotify, which makes it the second-highest streaming album of the year, just behind The Weeknd’s “Hurry Up Tomorrow.” It has also become the R&B/soul album that has earned the most first-day streams in Apple Music history.
While the highest debuting song was CN Tower, the first track, which debuted at No. #1 in the global Spotify and Apple Music charts. Yet it is not all smiles for Drake and PartyNextDoor as the album received mixed reviews.
I definitely would recommend listening to this album, especially if you love R&B and a more chill rap vibe, while I don’t think it is Drake’s or PartyNextDoor’s best album it is not half bad.
Yet I don’t think this is the last we will hear from Drake this year as in “Gimme a hug” he hinted about dropping music for the summer. But for now let’s enjoy this and wait to see what Drake has coming on this new chapter of his career.