FUCKING DRAKE REHABILITATION STARTS HERE?

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[7.54]

Crystal Leww: Drake is so painfully embarrassing. He opens himself up to ridicule with his silly choice in wardrobe, his outrageous music videos and appearances, his need to catchphrase everything, and his neverending feelings. The feelings, in particular, often seem completely ridiculous, as Drake is rich and famous and gets to party all the time and sleep with babes who line up to do so. But no one else can channel the simultaneity of winning and loneliness except for Drake. The production on “Hold On, We’re Going Home” is perfect; it’s so simple and sparse, particularly in the bridge where the drums literally turn into heartbeats. The longing, more sensitive side, a desperate need to know someone else who can look past the bullshit, comes from “Take Care.” The role that Rihanna plays, the girl who Drake can simultaneously take care of and project his own bullshit onto, is back. She doesn’t really exist the way that he tells it; she’s probably putting on a mask for him, too, and she’s probably going to break his heart. But he’s so lonely and he so badly wants to believe that there’s someone else who might be able to connect to him. There is no blanket statement, no single thinkpiece that can capture the essence of my generation, but I know a lot of people who are young, gettin’ it, and so god damn awfully lonely.
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Andy Hutchins: As comforting as the blanket over the ingenue in the back of the pickup truck in the inevitable movie scene that uses it, and softer still. Drake’s made considerable strides as a rapper and a mean-mugger in recent years, but “Hold On” requires little more from him than “Find Your Love” did back in 2010 (fun and/or fun. fact: that song was Jeff Bhasker’s first post-Kanye Hot 100 top 10 track), and yet he’s doing more, creeping upward toward an ill-fitting falsetto and veritably cooing about “hot love and emotion.” And it’s amusing that in 2013, a year of popular Chic and Marvin Gaye and Prince/Michael Jackson homages, the DNA of Drake’s big radio swing is more Genesis than anything else.
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Brad Shoup: If going out becomes a mythopoetic act, then taking it back to the house completes the hero’s journey. Drake navigates the melody bravely. He’s no Timmy T, but a bygone culture of DIY has flipped technique on its back. Still, this song wouldn’t have left the parking garage without Majid Al Maskati’s background work: falsetto, response, general feels. Even with the assist, the synthbeds are still the heart, ensuring a reflective (but static) mood. The only hooks are sung, and that’s not something you can normally say about a Quincy production. I know this was made for celebrations, so dropping the high-stepping kick midway through is kind of a con. From that point, it’s couples only.
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Patrick St. Michel: Noah “40” Shebib has been Drake’s greatest asset and curse. He’s crafted some stunning music for Drake and helped define who he is, yet Aubrey Graham oftentimes has trouble synthesizing with Shebib’s minimalist productions. “Hold On We’re Going Home” is Drake melding into Shebib’s sounds perfectly, choosing to embrace the sad-sack disco and just sing without shoehorning in any catcalls.
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Anthony Easton: I like this more than most Drake joints, maybe because I hear a lot of Majid in it, maybe because the production de-emphasizes Drake. Or to put it another way, I only seem to like Drake when he doesn’t really sound like Drake.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Drake’s just like you: he likes “Blurred Lines” more than he really should, he thinks he’s got an unprecedented, completely un-trendy connection with Quincy, he thinks he makes the good girls go bad, he’s never met a woman he didn’t try to own, he tries on lines like “I want your hot love and emotion” and sounds 13, he wants your wedding-DJ residuals endlessly. Huh, guess Drake’s still just like fucking Drake after all.
[5]

Alfred Soto: “I know exactly who you could be” sounds okay from the lips of a parent but repellent from a frightened-sounding lover. But when the drums drop and the vocal sits over the expensive atmospherics I could be listening to a Miguel album track. As usual I only care what this man is saying when the arrangements talk.
[5]

David Lee: Drake, as he often does, straddles the line between ogling lust and lonely desperation — a murk of emotion that plays well off the muted ’80s R&B production. And although Sky Ferreira and Solange already raised the bar for underwater emo-synth-pop last year with their respective albums, Drake’s take on the style hints to a future for the aesthetic outside of the Weeknd circuit. That’s a movement I can get behind.
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Jonathan Bogart: As much as I enjoy grumbling about Drake’s inert rapping and gross ego and leaden hooks, he’s still got the skill, or maybe just the taste, to hook himself to a pop classic every so often. I haven’t loved a Drake song since “Find Your Love,” and “Hold On, We’re Going Home” hits the same sweet spot of thawing melancholy, Majid Jordan’s production and bgvx pillowing like some forgotten New Pop ballad, Drake’s nasal, uninflected voice droning pleasurably against it like satin rubbed the wrong way. This is why I can’t ever give up on modern pop: beauty and grace are everywhere.
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Scott Mildenhall: In a week it will be September, and the best season of the year will be on its way to the northern hemisphere: autumn, with its innate melancholy, reflected in the artificial glow of streetlamps that come on earlier and earlier until the clocks go back and it’s suddenly dark all day. Everything starts to get cold, brown and miserable and as well as just being weather, it’s beautiful. Also, it’s what “Hold On We’re Going Home” sounds like. Ignore the verse lyrics, listen to the hook and let it be about whatever you want it to be.
[8]

Will Adams: No reason to complicate it. No sense in writing a new verse after everything’s been said — “I want your hot love and emotion, endlessly,” sighed with a twinge of ache. No point in making the track do more than marinate in the dusky keyboards and punchy drum machine. No need to sully one of the sweetest moments of the year.
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: VIDEO TREATMENT: It’s Saturday night in Toronto. Aubrey (played by Drake) is chilling at the roller-rink with the OVO crew when he sees the cutest girl in school walk past. His eyes turn wide. Every other girl he sees is there to be saved, or something, but this one is different. Her perm is perfect, just like Lisa Turtle’s. As he walks over to her in slow motion, “Hold On, We’re Going Home” begins to play in the background. 40, dressed in one of Fred Savage’s old varsity jackets, yells over from the rink barrier: “Don’t do it Aubs! She’ll think you’re soft!” He ignores his friend with a smile and saunters over. CUT TO: Drake performing the song in the centre of the roller-rink, singing into an old-timey microphone. The two members of Majid Jordan wear matching leather jackets, looking like the Psychadelic Furs. Drake and the two members of Majid Jordan walk-dance across the screen a la Genesis’s “I Can’t Dance”. A montage of slow-motion roller blading and roller romancing follows. At the video’s climax, Aubrey wins over whatever the girl was called, and they snuggle on the back of a Toronto Transit Bus. The roller rink party continues, Aub’s bearded friend hooks up with the girl from the “Started From The Bottom” video, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
[8]

Britt Alderfer: The thing about Drake is that he seems to feel he has an obligation to complete honesty but also a total lack of awareness about how he comes off when he’s sharing (else he probably would have stopped by now). Many of his rap verses and all his slow jams, with the possible exception of “Take Care” (as a duet it’s got a perspective beyond his), fall into this gap and attain a weirdly compelling kind of pathos. He would have you believe he is self-deprecating as he talks about the difficulties of finding people to really trust (Rihanna? Strippers? That ex-girlfriend who sued him?) as he accumulates fame, musical success (“every song sounds like Drake featuring Drake”) and wealth (“25 / sitting on 25 mil”). His vulnerability comes off as acutely real. This track sounds smooth and louche — nobody nails the slow-motion of 4 a.m. when everything’s closed and forlorn after a good night and you can hear yourself think w/ the booze throbbing in your blood better than Drizzy. But. “Cause you’re a good girl and you know it / you act so different around me / ’cause you’re a good girl and you know it / I know exactly who you could be,” Drake is telling this girl that he loves, over and over. It’s kind of obnoxious. He reminds me of a dude I knew in college who wanted to wife one of my close girlfriends because she wouldn’t sleep with him the first month they were dating (or ever) and freaked her out. Drake knows her better than she knows herself, and he just gets out with it because he’s coming from a place of love? Is this getting him anywhere? Just like when he drunk-dialed that ex and rambled about her new boyfriend? She could do better. Earnest Drake keeps crashing in the same car, but I can’t look away; it’s like every bad romantic decision he made, and I made and you made, in the name of honesty or something ultimately equally misguided, got together and made an album, and could sing to break your heart all over again. Freaking Drake. In the end he gets you because he’s so willing to fail.
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