Album Review: For All The Dogs
Graphic by Jonah Weintraub
By: James Kelly
After a whole summer of teasing, Drake finally dropped his eighth studio album, For All the Dogs, on October 6. Funny enough, this was the first time that Drake, the founder of the record label “October’s Very Own,” released an LP in the month of October. The album was first announced with the release of Drizzy’s poetry book in June. From there came many release dates, some rumored, some confirmed, that built anticipation over the past few months. The large hype for this project, however, couldn't save it after being released.
The record starts strong with “Virginia Beach,” a dreamy track where Drake reflects on a relationship over a Frank Ocean sample. This is followed up with the next entry into Teezo’s amazing feature run, as he lends his vocals in “Amen.” While Teezo clearly outshines a very run-of-the-mill Drake verse, the instrumental is dynamic enough to keep the song going. The “TSU” reminiscent “Calling For You” would be one of the highlights of the album if it wasn’t for the extremely long skit right in the middle of it. To emphasize how worthless the skit is, not even a 21 Savage feature can save the overall track.
Sadly, these early woes translate to the majority of For All the Dogs, as features save it from being one of the most boring Drake albums to date. But while this means Drake himself was disappointing, these cameos were great – even Drake’s six-year-old son, Adonis Graham. J. Cole achieved his first #1 Billboard Hit on one of the highlights of the album, “First Person Shooter.” This is tailed by maybe the most surprising features of the album, Yeat, on “IDGAF.” Yet still, Drake has painfully basic verses on most of these songs, which keeps them from being stellar.
Following this run of the LP’s biggest hits, the album hits a wall, and there are few songs that move me. Cuts like “7969 Santa” and “Bahamas Promises” seem like they would be good based off of their beats but fall off once they get going. The Future-carried “What Would Pluto Do” does have a fun flow by Drake, but once the novelty of that goes away, it feels washed out in the song. Then (unsurprisingly) the Chief Keef verse on this track brings the song back to life but catches the boring-Drake-verse-virus that much of the tracklist was plagued by.
The album does pick back up following this song with another addition to the time-and-date series, “8am in Charlotte,” however, it does not stay good for long. While “Gently” with Bad Bunny sounds vibrant in theory, it ends up being another hollow track. Even “Rich Baby Daddy,” which has a surprisingly good feature by Sexyy Red, falls flat the second Drake’s verse is introduced.
For All The Dogs is kept alive by its features, with the solid Drake performances being outweighed by the much more frequent Drake performances that come off as uninspired. While the album has some exciting tracks that I expect to stay in the rotation, I have a hard time believing that people will come back and listen to the LP as a whole – self included.