Drake: Take Care [YOUNG MONEY]

Why you'll love it

Take Care won the Grammy for Best Rap Album and turned "Marvins Room," "Crew Love" and the Rihanna duet "Take Care" into instant classics. The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, André 3000 and Stevie Wonder all show up, with 40 steering the ship.

This edition

• Young Money / Cash Money / Republic pressing (cat# B001628001)
• Original 18-song sequence, including "Buried Alive Interlude" with Kendrick Lamar

About the album

Maybe we just like it when Drake cries.

After the runaway success of his So Far Gone mixtape and 2010's hit debut album, Thank Me Later, Aubrey Drake Graham and his right-hand man and executive producer Noah "40" Shebib were in a position to take more control of and take a little more time (a little more care, if you will) with 2011's Take Care. The result was a confident next-level extension of its predecessor, with Drake steppin' up on the microphone as both an uncommonly sensitive rapper and singer, and he and 40 bending an entire high-priced cast of characters including Rihanna, the Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, Jamie xx, Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj to their druggy, dreamy, downtempo musical vision. Say what you will about Drake, but he and his crew changed the direction of contemporary mainstream hip-hop by bridging the gap between the Dirty South and narcoticized post-rave Toronto electronica and, seven hit singles later, it became clear to all observers in real time that Take Care was an instrument of change.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Young Money / Cash Money / Republic (cat# B001628001), first out in 2011.