Bibliographic Information:
Release Date: November 11, 2001
Artist: Drake
Label: Young Money; Cash Money Republic
Producers: Drake; Lil Wayne; Cortez Bryant; Noah “40” Shebib
Genre: Hip Hop; R&B
Summary: Take Care is Drake’s second album that he released. This album includes various hits such as “Take Care” featuring Rihanna, “Marvin’s Room”, “Make Me Proud” “Hell Ya F****** Right”, “Headlines”, and “The Motto” featuring Lil Wayne. Many of his hit singles were very successful; ” Take Care” peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100. In addition to the names listed, Drake worked with a lot of established music artists such as: The Weeknd, Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Kendrick Lamar, Birdman, Andre 3000, and more. Drake won his very first GRAMMY with this album, winning the title of Best Rap Album.”Hell Ya F****** Right” earned him a Best Rap Performance nomination, and ” The Motto” earned him a Best Rap Song nomination.
Critical Evaluation: Some of the songs seem to be a bit lengthy. The overall vibe of the album is a mixture between slow tempo music and party music. A lot of the slow songs sound like something that a person would play late at night; for that reason the album tends to have sort of a 1990s R&B feel to it. Sometimes it feels like his music can be a little narcissistic, just because he tends to go on and on about himself in his songs, or how he was hurt by a woman. I enjoyed most of the up tempo songs a little bit better because Drake can get to be very dreary sounding very quickly. So it is always refreshing to be able to skip the long monologues about him being wronged by somebody.
Reader’s Annotation: N/a
Artist Information: Aubrey Graham, better known as “Drake” is a former Toronto native. Before he became a famous rapper, he was an actor playing the character of Jimmy Brooks, a wheel chair bound teenager in the teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation. His ethnicity is both African American and Jewish. His family came from a musical background: his father was the former drummer of Jerry Lee Lewis, his uncle played bass for Sly and the Family Stone, and his mother had a musical background on her side of the family as well.
Drake is always in the news for something, whether it is for his music, his label, who he is allegedly dating, his appearance, his vacations etc. His career has been very successful; he is a multi grammy award winning artist. Earlier in his career he got into a “rap beef” with singer Chris Brown concerning the affections of singer Rihanna, but luckily they reconciled. Drake’s latest album that is out right now is called “Scorpion”.
Genre: Hip Hop & R&B
Curriculum Ties: N/a
Book Talk Ideas: N/a
Interest Age: 10 and up
Challenge & Defense Preparation:
Challenge Issues: Mature Content; Sexual Content; Strong Language
Why Included: Drake is a very popular rapper, and it would be very hard to find a teenager out there today who hasn’t heard of him. It seems like teenage girls absolutely love Drake. While some of his music does come off as wallowing and self pity fueled, I can appreciate that Drake doesn’t try to put on this hardcore thug persona. He is almost like the nice guy next door that you wouldn’t think twice about until he comes back from the summer all grown up. Teens in general seem to love Drake, and they even know the lyrics better than I do. Once for a class visit, I had to teach the teens how to search databases. I used Drake as my example, and they were so excited about that. When in doubt always pick Drake.
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