For All The Dogs, Or, A Feature-Length Pity Party For One Dog

Lucca Swain ‘Freshmen / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

Aubrey. The Boy. Drizzy. Champagne Papi. A man of many names, he speaks in mystic tongues, a language of subtleties too complex even for the brilliant mind of the average Rap Caviar listener: ‘I live like Sopranos, Italianos. I’ve been El Chico for cincuenta años,’ he intones softly, ‘Me gusta su culazo perreando.’”

Despite all the jokes that people make about Drake being a living cartoon character, he, or his writers, seem to have actually leaned into the jokes a bit too heavily, to the point where he can make a song like ‘Gently,” with the kind of lyrical, definitely-not-racist brilliance presented before, and think to himself “I should put this out for other people to listen to.” He’s too deep into the meme (or maybe the meme is an excuse to avoid talking about other problems), and he’s lost all focus of what he wants to make, which leads to unfortunate situations like the existence of For All The Dogs.

The new album from Drizzy Drake is a whopping twenty three tracks, an hour and twenty three minutes of – say it with me now – the same things he’s done for the past five years. Also unsurprisingly, the majority of it is mediocre! To give Dogs the benefit of the doubt, this one is most certainly better than Honestly, Nevermind and the punching bag that was Certified Lover Boy, simply because unlike those albums, For All The Dogs has less moments that are genuinely grating, and is more like a whole lot of nothing.
Dogs is an album of filler, lifeless 808 after icy, lifeless 808, leading the listener deeper and deeper into a proverbial void promising something, anything at the end of the tunnel. Instead, what they’ll find is songs like “BBL Love” and lines with as much thought put into them as “beefin’ like a cow.” Drake promised an album for the dogs, but ended up tossing them scraps, the leftovers of a meal that may or may not have been there in the first place. It leads one to wonder: who are Drake’s dogs?

It isn’t his fans, it most certainly isn’t the women he loves to talk about on nearly every track, and it can’t be his son Adonis with how downright deplorable some of the bars about him are on this record (Adonis should be commended for giving this album a great cover, though). Perhaps the only real dog is Drake himself, and For All The Dogs is his “introspective” record – even when being in-your-feelings is his entire M.O.

Drake doesn’t seem to understand that putting out an hour and a half of music every year focused entirely on how much of a loverboy you are, how you’re your exes lifesaver, starts to make you seem more toxic and less suave. “What if I was somebody else/Would your ass still be here?” he posits from atop his golden throne, too enveloped by mansions and champagne and spiteful exes to see that the music has become secondary to his usual plights, the same women, the same parties, the same drunk texts he’s been on about since Take Care back in 2011. For All The Dogs is a giant pity party, Drake at his most pathetic and his least poignant. He has a formula, sure, and the formula sells huge every time, but at what point will even the hardcore fans get bored?

This article hasn’t elaborated much on the specifics of the music, and to be honest: there isn’t much to say. For All The Dogs is much of the same, the album only kept from being white noise by the occasional terrible bar or insane production choice – which are incredibly funny, to be fair, as Drake seems to have one-upped himself in making moments that are unintentionally (or intentionally) hilarious.

One of the most egregious examples is “IDGAF”, which at first opens with soothing key arpeggios, soft cymbals, and trumpets that sounds like they’re radiating through space, all which is sampled from British trio Azimuth. It’s actually quite lovely, and goes on just long enough to convince you that the song is going to be good, before the improv instantaneously dissipates into what could effectively be deemed a “Yeat jumpscare,” the turban-clad Irvine rapper and his trademark autotune mumble bursting in over a booming trap beat so suddenly and in such thorough contrast to the previous mood that it’s almost shocking.

Or there’s “Calling For You”, which features an incredibly mediocre auto crooned verse from Drake, and somewhere in the song has a decent 21 Savage feature. The only problem is that his part of the track is hidden behind two whole entire minutes of an audio clip of someone complaining about a vacation that went awry, which gets tiring quickly. At points it feels like Drake is trying to bore the listener, never providing anything to grasp on to other than some meme-worthy goofs and gaffs here and there.

That isn’t to say that it’s a total dumpster fire, as when a track on For All The Dogs hits, it hits hard. Opener “Virginia Beach”, with its chipmunked vocal samples and skittering 808, makes a perfect match for Drake’s lovelorn socialite pondering, complimenting his usual cheese with a real warm that he hasn’t had in a long time (“I move mountains for you/ F*ck that social climbing”). It’s one of Drake’s best songs in years, an intimate piece of trap moodiness that sets the atmosphere for the rest of the album brilliantly.

The vibe on For All The Dogs is probably Drake’s other greatest achievement on the record, as Drizzy finally manages to render that hazy, blackout drunk in the back of a limo feeling (for at least the majority of the record), a mood that he’s tried to capture desperately for the last few albums, while cameo appearances from legends like Snoop Dogg and even Drake’s longtime idol Sade stream through a fictional radio station, which all in all amounts to the most honest attempt at worldbuilding in music The Boy has ever attempted.

Both of the lyrical rap cuts on here are probably Drake’s best attempts at the style, with J. Cole turning in a seriously solid verse on “First Person Shooter”, and on “8am in Charlotte”, where Drizzy spits maybe his most quotable bars since If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late (“Where I go, you go, brother, we Yugoslavian”).

Yet even the highlights can’t entirely save Dogs or give it much replay value as a whole. 90 minutes is just too much, and in that time a few good songs are just waves in an ocean of snooze fests. One has to commend Drake, though, for his sheer commitment to one singular sound, because even if it does become utterly unbearable at some point, it’ll keep raking in the big bucks, which will in turn let him keep going to luxurious parties and buying expensive cars, which in turn gives him more material to write about.

He knows exactly what he’s doing, and in the end, it all functions in a brilliant loop, a self-serving cycle for the one and only dog, the legendary Champagne Papi; may his fame be everlasting, and his dogs fed lavishly.