Lyrics
What magazine does Jon Dolan write for?
Take Care (album)
The album's subject matter expands on "Thank Me Later"s theme of ambivalence and conflicted feelings toward fame. Drake's lyrics on "Take Care" address failed romances, missed connections, relationship with friends and family, maintaining balance with growing wealth and fame, concerns about leading a hollow life, the passage of young adulthood, and despondency. The album's slower songs generally explore themes of loneliness, heartbreak, and mistrust. The topic of women is prevalent on the album, with songs that address past and potential lovers ("Marvins Room", "The Real Her") and songs about revering ("Make Me Proud") and lavishing them ("We'll Be Fine"). Juan Edgardo Rodriguez of No Ripcord denotes women as "the main force in his songs - he’s consciously aware about what it takes to love them, but simply decides to thrust aside the guidelines because he's on an entirely different stratosphere from any female average joe. "The album's expositional content is interpreted by critics in relation to contemporary society. "Newsday"s Glenn Gamboa views that Drake's "emotional self-doubt and realizations about [...] success", along with the album's melancholy mood, "capturtoday's zeitgeist of uncertainty and diminishing expectations." Music journalist Ann Powers cites Drake's "predicament — the inability to locate oneself within everyday power relations" as "one that's afflicted existential antiheroes throughout modernity." She denotes his point of view as that of a "biracial upper middle-class kid [... from a position of privilege that few rappers would occupy", and finds his subject matter culturally significant, stating "melancholia is that of the overly sated [... But Drake's relentless focus on the point where money empties out happiness isn't merely autobiographical. It's emblematic of our moment of crashed markets and occupied streets, and it speaks to a generation beginning to question whether the All-American, celebrity-endorsed credit card lifestyle will make them anything but bankrupt." Pitchfork Media's Ryan Dombal compares his "unrepentant navel-gazing and obsession with lost love" to Marvin Gaye's 1978 album "Here, My Dear", adding that Drake's "penchant for poetic oversharing" makes him "an apt avatar" for the Information Age. Drake's songwriting is characterized by wistful introspection, existential contemplation, and minimal boasting, with lyrics that convey frankness, vulnerability, melancholia, and narcissism. Andy Gill of "The Independent" writes that he "eschews anger or threat for a weariness shadowed by wistful regret." Music journalist Greg Kot comments that Drake does not "indulge in the macho poses that have dominated mainstream hip-hop for decades, and blurthe line between singing and rhyming", adding that he "makes his rhymes sound conversational, matter of fact, like he’s talking to the listener one-one-one". Tim Sendra of Allmusic notes that his "introspective tone [... is only rarely punctured by aggressive tracks, boasts, and/or come-ons." Drake's persona on songs shows traits of sincerity, self-doubt, regret, passive-aggressiveness, and self-absorption. Kazeem Famuyide of "The Source" explains his conflicted persona as being "arrogant enough to know his place as one of the most successful artist in hip-hop, and comfortable enough to realize his own faults in his personal life." Jon Dolan of "Rolling Stone" writes that Drake "collaps many moods – arrogance, sadness, tenderness and self-pity – into one vast, squish-souled emotion." Kevin Ritchie of "NOW" notes "an overwhelming sense of alienation, and sadness" on "Take Care", calling it "an idiosyncratic, aggressively self-conscious and occasionally sentimental album".