Drake, Scorpion album review: Lacks a sting in the tail

Double album sees Drake address family matters and old beefs, but feels too catered to the cherry-picking habits borne from streaming to enjoy as one cohesive work

It’s frustrating how Drake either doesn’t understand or refuses to acknowledge that, more often than not, his releases are far longer than necessary.

His fifth album Scorpion is over-stuffed with material that varies dramatically in quality. His last studio album, 2016’s Views, felt too long at 20 tracks, so Scorpion feels ridiculous with 25... and oddly erratic. We all know Drake as a virtuoso and something of a hip hop chameleon, but the way he darts between different sounds is exhausting and, ultimately, messy. On certain tracks he raps like he has something to prove, on others it's like he has nothing.

One of the singles for Scorpion is a standout: “Nice For What” - which featured a star-studded video featuring Zoe Saldana, Letitia Wright, Michelle Rodriguez and Olivia Wilde - is tailored for the party: Drake is so much more engaging when he’s happy, offering up smooth, cheerful vocals that are bolstered by faultless production from Murda Beatz, and starring a chopped-up vocal sample from Lauryn Hill’s “Ex Factor”.

Trap track “Mob Ties” is a boring attempt to raise Drake’s street cred and shift away from that “boy next door” image, it’s a weak threat with little in the way of substance that he continues on “Sandra’s Rose”, which is supposed to be a tribute to his mother. Family matters are also raised on the Mariah Carey-sampling “Emotionless” and “March 14”, where Drake confirms he has an illegitimate son. "I wasn't hiding my kid from the world/I was hiding the world from my kid," he raps, continuing: "Breaking news in my life I don't run to the blogs/the only ones I want to tell are in my phone I can call/They always ask, 'Why let it run if it's false'/You know a wise man once said nothing at all."

Side B opens with three tracks that could easily have been scrapped from the record: “Peak”, “Summer Games” and “Jaded” are all instantly forgettable. But “Don’t Matter To Me”, which incorporates a previously-unheard Michael Jackson track from the 80s, is hauntingly beautiful and feels like a sequel to his Rihanna collaboration “Too Good” – there’s a similar vocal hook from Drake on the verses - before the song cuts abruptly to MJ singing the chorus: his voice is controversially auto-tuned to the point that it sounds more like one of his biggest imitators, The Weeknd.

“After Dark” features a sublime feature from Ty Dolla $ign but a generic beat that makes the track fall flat. Similarly, Jay Z’s offering on “Talk Up” is disappointing (that’s becoming a habit, Hov) as a generic, run of the mill brag that only livens up on the last two bars where he raps: “I got your president tweetin’, I won’t even meet with him/Y’all killed X, let Zimmerman live, streets is done.” Regardless, it’s a bland track that washes over you and leads to the ironically-titled “Is There More” (with 13 tracks still to go).

Some interest is piqued by the fact Drake holds himself up against the achievements of women (Adele, Amber Rose, Maya Angelou – the latter in the half-arsed: “Still I rise, Maya Angelous vibes”), slightly subverting the typical hip hop braggadocio where most male rappers would rank themselves against other men. Still, he also devotes plenty of time philosophising about how awesome he is, sounding as clichéd as it’s possible to be as he asks: “Is there more to life than goin’ on trips to Dubai?”

The harp on the erotic slow-jam “Final Fantasy” is a strange throwback to Bonobo’s 2006 track “Ketto”; Drake’s voice is gruff and deep as he meanders from one sexual fantasy to another. The only thing that jars is the slightly cheesy “I hope that the apocalypse is the only thing that doesn’t come now”, but that fades from memory as the track winds down on a zoned-out second verse: “You got options but I been chosen/To deal with you the way you like/The way you like it.”

He closes out on the wide-eyed, aforementioned "March 14" where he most-directly addresses the birth of his son with former adult film star Sophie Brussaux where he refers back to the MJ sample and raps: "She's not my lover like Billie Jean, but the kid is mine."

It's questionable whether there's actually much point in reviewing a Drake album as a whole, given how tailored they are for the streaming age; the tracks are designed more to be lifted and applied to playlists for certain moods, rather than songs that flow and create one cohesive feeling. The most on-point comment he makes with Scorpion is actually in the liner notes published on Apple Music, with the sarcastic "Drake Is Finished", knowing that whatever critics think, fully aware that this album will shatter multiple streaming records and likely enjoy a lofty position on the charts for several weeks. Yet for all the hype and drama that led up to Scorpion's release and for want of a better cliche: it really doesn’t have much of a sting in its tail.