Who knew the month of November would be blessed with some great releases in rap music. Drake's Take Care, Mac Miller's Blue Slide Park and my underdog favourite Pac Div's The Div. I'll tackle the latter 2 releases later this week but today I'll just be tackling Drake's sophomore effort.
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| 1/5 of this group had to consolidate to form Slaughterhouse. |
Deciding to review Drake's work before the other two independent releases is a telling of Drake's popularity as of late. And as of late, I'm talking about the last 3 years. If you are to take away the established rap artists of the earlier half of the 2000s, your Lil Waynes, Jay-Zs, Eminems you’re only left with Drake who has established a popularity that extends just beyond smaller rap circles. To extend the argument, take a look at the XXL Top 10 Freshman classes over the last 3 years. Focusing on just the success stories out of those lists, it would appear that 2008 Freshman Lupe Fiasco, and 2010 Freshmen Wiz Khalifa and late bloomer J. Cole can be considered close in terms of success to Drake over a similar time period. That's if you are to determine success by record sales, twitter followers, and YouTube views (Considering its 2011, is it fair to say the last 2 matter more than record sales?) But can mainstream success parlay into the final production of Take Care?
