"Drake elimination, fake intimidation / Take a minute, take a deep breath, have a little bit of patience / 'Drizzy, you amazin', you the inspiration / You set the bar for the next generation,'" the man himself raps over chopped-up chipmunk soul samples on "GIMME A HUG." Halfway through, a triumphant beat drops as Drake brags about a guy who loves "Marvin's Room," visits a strip club and declares, "Fuck a rap beef, I'm tryna get the party lit."
There it is, finally — the correct response to Drake getting demolished in his rap feud with Kendrick Lamar last year. No back-pedalling denials, loser-behaviour lawsuits, acting like a brat at Raptors games or self-pitying martyrdom, but just a catchy rap track about how good it is to be Drake. The reason "Not Like Us" has done so much damage to Drake's reputation isn't because of the jokes about him being a pedophile, but because of how embarrassingly he flailed in the aftermath.
$ome $exy $ongs 4 U isn't the reputation-saver Drake needs — but it does have glimmers of the Old Drake. Notably, "NOKIA" is a fast, fidgety bit of a bubblegum rap that's the most fun I've had listening to a Drake track since 2022's "Massive" (or maybe even 2018's Scorpion). And "DIE TRYING" is an unexpectedly cute acoustic pop ditty, finding the middle ground between R&B and Jack Johnson-ass dorm-folk I didn't know I wanted.
That's three thoroughly fun songs — which admittedly isn't a great batting average for a 21-track, 73-minute slog of boner-killing R&B slow jams, which I wouldn't even notice included PARTYNEXTDOOR if this weren't co-billed as a collab album. The 40-esque noir beats and voicemail clips are a clear bid to recapture the magic of golden-era Drizzy, which $$$4U mostly doesn't. Certainly, classic Drake wouldn't have done the slapstick Spanish from "MEET YOUR PADRE," which lands with the same confusing thud as "Wah Gwan Delilah."
But at this point, long-suffering Drake fans need to take what they can get. There's less spiteful misogyny than on For All the Dogs, and it's got some actual playlist fodder unlike the in-one-ear-and-out-the-other Certified Lover Boy; he keeps Megan Thee Stallion's name out of his mouth, thank god. At this point, a mostly forgettable but sometimes good album is a victory — a very mild one, but a victory nevertheless.