Without Drake, we wouldn’t get the wave of melodic SoundCloud rappers, the beat switch-happy blare of pop artists trying on rap and vice versa, Billie Eilish slipping through hip-hop aesthetics and electropop blazes, Taylor Swift sluicing from country to Max Martin-powered pop to muted indie albums. But it’s clearer now how he catalyzed, or continued, a path that would obliterate genre entirely. The record sharpened and shaped both his sound and the sonic stylings of those who would imitate him, and rippled through the culture, becoming inextricable from Drake’s image and influence.Ĭritic after critic wrote at the time about how Drake wobbled between pop and rap. The bruised bravado of Take Care cast Drake as a character and caricature, an enthralling figure you couldn’t help but follow, enabling his ascent to the record-obliterating king of streaming. In the 10 years since the album’s release, its grip on the music industry has only gotten tighter. It’s a dark, moody record, flickering between hurt and hubris, enchanted with its own inertia. Take Care would become his defining work, the record that honed his sound and crystalized the emotional core of Drake’s music. And then the album sprang online, days before the 25-year-old rapper planned to release it. “I knew I was going to go home and take longer than six months, I knew that I was literally going to take care of making this project and be attentive, be clear, be immersed in it,” he said.
He told GQ at the time that he named the collection after his intense devotion to the process of making it.
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He was anxious and antsy when his sophomore album, Take Care, leaked online in November 2011, all the passion and purpose he’d channeled into making the record suddenly available to anyone willing to download it. Drake couldn’t control the biggest moment in his career.