Drake: If You're Reading This It's Too Late (2LP) [CASH MONEY / OVO / REPUBLIC]

Why you'll love it

If You're Reading This It's Too Late debuted at No. 1 with 535,000 units, broke Spotify's first-week streaming record and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album. It's Drake at his hungriest, with "Know Yourself," "Energy" and "Legend."

This edition

• 2LP set, 17 tracks
• Cash Money / OVO / Republic pressing
• Produced mostly by Boi-1da and Noah "40" Shebib

About the album

Why don't we defer to our in-house music writer Ben on this one? He had nice things to say about Drake's fourth "mixtape," If You're Reading This It's Too Late, in the Toronto Star on Feb. 15 of 2015 just after the record's "surprise" online drop, and he stands by his words to this day: "Is it an album? A mixtape? A protracted audio infomercial for the alleged 'real' new album to come, Views from the 6? Does it really matter? Drake dropped a Beyonce-esque 'surprise' on iTunes at the midnight hour on Thursday, and it's a bristling testament to the esteemed position the Toronto MC currently occupies on the international hip-hop landscape."

"If You're Reading This It's Too Late boasts no singles, scarce hooks, barely any guests and a profoundly misanthropic temperament, and yet it will undoubtedly shift virtual bucketloads of downloads, because even the people who profess not to like Drake will be desperate to know what Drake is up to these days. And also because, like most everything Drake does, it is of exceptional quality and resembles nothing else going on in hip-hop at the moment." Hometown producers Boi-1da, Noah "40" Shebib and Wondagurl keep the beats skeletal and slow, and "Energy," "Know Yourself" and "6 God" have the 6 shouting along to this day.

Also at Kops: more Drake on vinyl · browse CDN Hip Hop

Tracklist

Listen

On Cash Money / OVO / Republic, first out in 2015.