He’s the man of the hour, the self-proclaimed 6 God, the pop-rap star with a monopoly over the charts. You already know who it is – it’s Drake, and in this article I’m going to be ranking his albums from worst to best. Up for consideration are Drake’s solo studio albums and mixtapes, from Thank Me Later onwards – so no So Far Gone or Comeback Season, and I won’t be including the Future-assisted What a Time to Be Alive (which was pretty lit, by the way). I figured that More Life and If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late are still studio-quality albums, even if Drake insisted on calling them something else, and, regrettably, I’m not especially familiar with the mixtapes he released before Thank Me Later. So, without any further ado, I’ll jump right into the list.

 

7. Scorpion (2018)

In the streaming era, an album as bloated and forgettable as 2018’s Scorpion was inevitable. At this point, Drake had become perhaps the biggest pop star on the planet, and only seemed to care about churning out chart-ready singles and hacking his streaming numbers with an overlong track list, taking cues from Migos’ Culture II. Every move made here feels calculated to maximise Drake’s commercial success, with artistic integrity unfortunately being left by the wayside. Admittedly, there are some bright spots on here: ‘Nonstop’ and ‘Mob Ties’ are bangers, ‘Jaded’ and ‘Finesse’ are decent, and I actually quite like the Michael Jackson feature on ‘Don’t Matter to Me’. Plus, ‘God’s Plan’ is a tune, although I am surprised at how popular it’s become. But ‘Ratchet Happy Birthday’ and ‘I’m Upset’ rank among Drake’s worst songs (who the hell pitched ‘I’m Upset’ for a single release?), ‘In My Feelings’ is supremely annoying, and most of the album’s other tracks feel lifeless and uninspired. Scorpion is the sound of an artist who’s become too big to fail, testing out his newfound invincibility – this is the man who deflected (pretty damning) ghostwriting accusations with memes, after all. And with this in mind, Drake realised that he could afford to put out an album of dross and the public would still lap it up. It pains me to say it, but this is a genuinely awful record.

 

6. Views (2016)

Not much better is Views, released in 2016. On this album, Drake shows off his melodic side a bit more than usual, while also flirting with a sunny dancehall sound (which seemingly runs antithetical to the snowy Toronto promo shots taken for the album). Make no mistake, there are some good tracks here: ‘Keep the Family Close’ is a decent opener, ‘One Dance’ is incredibly infectious, and ‘Controlla’ is an enjoyable cocktail of tropical flavours. But even these highlights shine rather dully compared to Drake’s other material, and there are far more misses than hits over the course of the whole project: ‘Grammys’ is one of the worst songs he’s put out, thanks in no small part to an obnoxious Future feature, PartyNextDoor cut ‘With You’ features a mindlessly repetitive hook that grates on first listen, and both ‘Hype’ and ‘Western Road Flows’ are rehashes of a formula we’ve heard from Drake countless times before. Views is the album where Drake realised he could make it onto the End of Year lists for publications who didn’t even respond to his album especially warmly in the first place, a prime consequence of his extreme popularity. It’s the album where he realised he could put out as mediocre a single as ‘Pop Style’, featuring his worst ever lyric (‘Got so many chains, they call me Chaining Tatum’), and still get nominated for Best Rap Performance at the Grammys. Views is the album where Drake realised he had nothing to prove, and it shows. This record sounds effortless – and not in a good way.

 

5. More Life (2017)

Perhaps I had lower expectations going into this album because it was sold as a ‘playlist’ rather than as a main entry in Drake’s canon, but I found 2017’s More Life far more enjoyable than Views. The dancehall influence is still strong on songs like ‘Blem’ and ‘Passionfruit’, both of which are pretty decent tracks with an atmospheric Moodymann sample on the latter, but there’s also a distinct UK presence here. In particular, Jorja Smith steps in to deliver some smooth vocals on ‘Jorja Interlude’ and ‘Get It Together’, Giggs lays down two gruff verses on ‘No Long Talk’ and ‘KMT’ respectively, while Skepta gets a song all to himself with ‘Skepta Interlude’. While I don’t think Giggs and Skepta are necessarily the most talented emcees in the game, it’s cool that Drake was able to shine a light on the culture internationally. There’s a sense that Drizzy is having way more fun here than on Views, and he definitely takes more risks, rapping and singing his way through bouncier beats and more inventive song structures; on ‘Fake Love’ and ‘Glow’ (the latter featuring now-rival Kanye West) he scrapes into his upper register in a way he’s never really attempted before, and on ‘Free Smoke’ he sounds angrier than he has in years. All in all, this is a pretty solid project – and I still think it’s hilarious that Drake’s speech at the 2016 American Music Awards show was written seemingly with the express purpose of sampling it for this record (‘More tune for your headtop, so watch how you speak on my name, you know?’). That’s dedication.

 

4. Thank Me Later (2010)

Ah, the days of Heartbreak Drake. Cast your mind back nine years to a world where Drake was not yet a household name, where hip hop heads and R&B lovers alike were bumping his mixtapes, but the mainstream media hadn’t yet caught on in a big way. While Drake didn’t quite achieve world dominance with this album, 2010’s Thank Me Later was a strong debut and a commercial success. Sure, some of the lyrics are a little cringey – just listen to ‘Shut It Down’, where Drake tells a prospective love interest that ‘if you were a star, you’d be the one I’m searching for’. Gag. But the bombastic ‘Over’ was one hell of a lead single, and the three-song suite of ‘Fireworks’, ‘Karaoke’ and ‘The Resistance’ that opens the record sets a moody, navel-gazing tone that the introspective songsmith has come to be known for. The middle stretch of the album features some of Drizzy’s best pop-rap bangers, such as ‘Show Me a Good Time’ and ‘Up All Night’, while the Lil Wayne-assisted ‘Miss Me’ towards the record’s latter half is another great single. Penultimate number ‘Find Your Love’ hints at the pop smashes that would come on subsequent projects, and closing track ‘Thank Me Later’ finishes things off with tonnes of clever rhymes and wicked wordplay. This is Drake before he truly set his sights on the charts – there are lots of long verses here, as well as songs with multiple rapped verses. On Thank Me Later, Drake gave back to the fans that had supported him throughout the release of his mixtapes and contributed to his come-up. And on the whole, the album turned out great.

 

3. Nothing Was the Same (2013)

Following the major success of Take Care, an album that solidified Drake’s position at the top of the rap game, Nothing Was the Same was the difficult follow-up project, but listening to it you’d never guess it was difficult to make. The first thing to note about the album is that it has the most iconic artwork of Drake’s career, featuring a painting of the rapper as a child with a comb stuck in his hair, superimposed against a background of blue, cloud-strewn sky. The music’s not bad, either. Opener ‘Tuscan Leather’, named after the Tom Ford fragrance alleged to smell like cocaine, is by far and away Drake’s most epic intro track to date, with a killer three-part instrumental made by long-time collaborator Noah ‘40’ Shebib that samples Whitney Houston’s classic ‘I Have Nothing’ three times over. After this breath-taking start, we have ‘Furthest Thing’, ‘Started from the Bottom’ and ‘Wu-Tang Forever’, which are all near-flawlessly executed, hitting that sweet spot between hip hop and R&B with precision. ‘Own It’ comes next, which I rate as an underappreciated gem, and one of my favourite Drake songs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Drake couldn’t keep up this kind of godlike consistency for a whole album, and as a result the remainder of the record is slightly spottier, but there are still some top quality songs here. ‘Worst Behaviour’, for instance, is repetitive, even more so than ‘Started from the Bottom’, but Drake comes through with such swagger that you can’t help but get carried away with it. Meanwhile, ‘From Time’ is a chilled-out track that features some beautiful vocals from Jhené Aiko, and ‘Connect’ is another one of the record’s highlights. Overall, this was a great project, and a worthy successor to Take Care.

 

2. If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (2015)

If we’re talking straight-up rapping, Drake has never sounded quite this good. ‘It was written like Nas, but it came from Quentin’, punned Pusha T on his latest album, Daytona, and it’s true: parts of 2015’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late probably were ghostwritten by Quentin Miller, and maybe that’s why Drake sounds so damn hungry here. But, if you can look past that, this is undoubtedly one of Drake’s best projects. Billed as a mixtape, there’s a carefree air to this record that lacks the pretension of a major release – it’s simply a collection of really good songs, and while I normally prefer the ambition of a Take Care or a Nothing Was the Same, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late really won me over. On ‘No Tellin’’, one of the album’s best tracks, Drake successfully makes eating Alfredo pasta in the kitchen sound like the most badass thing in the world, while on ‘Star67’ he talks about his involvement in a phone line scam amidst some customary flexing (‘Text from a centrefold, I ain’t reply / let her know I read it, though’). And there’s still room for the smoother, more melodic side of Drake to come through on songs like ‘Legend’, ‘Now and Forever’ and ‘Jungle’. Whether or not the fresh rhyme schemes and satisfying punch lines did in fact come from Quentin (a favourite of mine referencing Drizzy’s Degrassi days: ‘I got rap n***** that I gotta act like I like / but my acting days are over, fuck them n***** for life’), I’m not sure I mind too much. This is a top album, second only to one other record in Drake’s discography: Take Care.

 

1. Take Care (2011)

Take Care has a special place in my heart. It chronicled a long summer break from high school back in 2011 in which I navigated a complicated almost-but-not-really-relationship; that summer I must have listened to this record hundreds of times. I still remember where I was when I first listened to it, how it made me feel, how it blew my mind – it’s crazy how music can crystallise time like that. As soon as those beautiful, wistful piano chords came in on the album’s opening track, ‘Over My Dead Body’, I knew I’d entered a different world. Progressing through the album, there are tear-jerkers (‘Doing It Wrong’, ‘Good Ones Go’), sing-song bangers (‘Headlines’, ‘We’ll Be Fine’) and more straightforward rap tracks (‘Underground Kings’, ‘Lord Knows’), all of which thread together to create the album’s irresistibly melancholic, lovelorn aesthetic. ‘Take Care’ with Rihanna is another great pop track, with a simple but effective chord progression and emotive lead melody, while ‘Marvin’s Room’ is a memorable ode to drunk-dialling your exes. And, I’m a big Drake fan so it almost seems sacrilege to say this because it’s practically the Weeknd’s song, but ‘Crew Love’ has got to be the best track Drake has ever released: the thumping bass that suddenly subsides, Tesfaye’s ethereal falsetto vocal, the cascading piano chords and swirling production – it’s otherworldly. In terms of other features, Kendrick Lamar absolutely kills ‘Buried Alive (Interlude)’, while Lil Wayne and André 3000 show up with characteristic aplomb on ‘The Real Her’. But Take Care, of course, is Drake’s record through and through, and this is deservedly the album in which he truly mastered his craft and hit the big time. No, this isn’t a perfect record, but the vibe it creates is something else. Make no mistake, Take Care is a classic album.