On October 6, 2023, Drake released his eighth studio album under OVO, titled For All the Dogs.

For half a decade, Drake’s albums have struggled to rise to the level of consistency as his past records, such as Nothing Was the Same and Take Care. A certain type of storytelling followed these works, along with the high-quality production, and features gifted to a young Aubrey Graham. 

Since 2016’s Views, streaming presence has taken precedence over everything else. Making an artistically satisfying body of work is what Drake used to do, but with the rise of music streaming services, quantity over quality has taken control.

The quantity over quality factor has been most prevalent in the past two years with the trilogy of Certified Lover Boy, Honestly, Nevermind, and Her Loss, with CLB breaking into the top five of Drake’s most-streamed albums and Her Loss gaining over a billion streams in just a year. Pitchfork described Honestly, Nevermind as an album with “half-measure house beats and lackluster songwriting,” so it’s no wonder why the hard-techno record didn’t put up record-shattering numbers.

For All the Dogs follows the formula of this trilogy well, inserting plenty of filler music with mainstream songs that will get radio plays with artists whose fans will listen to them no matter the project, such as J. Cole, SZA, and Bad Bunny, or up-and-comers such as Teezo Touchdown, Yeat, and Sexy Redd who connect more with a younger audience. Looking back at the high-quality features that were gifted to a young Drake, we seemed to be spoiled and it wasn’t appreciated enough until it was gone. There was a symbiotic relationship between Drake and his primary collaborators Lil Wayne, PartyNextDoor, Rick Ross, and Rihanna, when now, the features he garners are for clicks and streams, rather than high-quality music.

This has been one of my biggest grievances when it comes to Drake, it seems like his music doesn’t have flavor anymore and it’s not just me, it’s my peers as well. Whenever I told someone about the concert I was going to this fall, they told me to send them some videos of when Drake would perform one of his older songs, not something new.

What Drake has been putting out recently isn’t what his fans want to hear, the people want to hear the “Old Drake” that we were promised to receive in this album, the amazing production from the likes of Sampha and PartyNextDoor, and most importantly the amazing features that elevated Drake to the top of the totem pole in the first place. With these working parts, Drake could easily have another chart-topping record that the fans enjoy and don’t find “hard to listen to” in a year.

For All the Dogs caps off a recent persona that sounds like Drake isn’t having fun with, and he’s deciding to drag us along to be the company of his misery.