The thing about Drake is that he is extremely talented. There are a lot of critiques that people make of him in terms of style, substance and originality and they are largely justified, but he is extremely talented. So even when you get something with as little motivation as Scorpion, there’s still enough there to make it worth listening to.
The singles were all quite strong and things like “Mob Ties” and “Finesse” are earworms, and far from the only ones. Given the length of this album though, it would be a travesty if there were not. Nothing is outright terrible, but there some amount of what feels like filler, like “Sandra’s Rose”. Additionally, the album as a whole just feels a little samey. It just lacks fire and it lacks imagination.
I think that this is exacerbated by the idea of splitting it into a rap half and an R&B half instead of the normal merger that he built his career on. The rest of cliches are all still here though, the beats and the complaints are the same as they always were. It’s a pity that of all of his hallmarks, he chose to lose the most interesting of the lot.
This lack of change feels much worse due to the circumstances around the album. You would expect a son to make some kind of a change to Drake, but the child gets barely a mention throughout the album. The shocking entry of that child into public consciousness is even less addressed. Pusha-T dropped him in the hardest diss tracks in recent history and Drake’s failure to use his album to respond cements that feud as a crushing defeat for him.
Despite all of this though, the album is of a remarkably consistent quality. Drake rose to the top due to his immense talent and it looks like despite all of the failings of Scorpion, he will remain there. This is an album deserving of a few listens and is still one of the music events of the year. It’s just also a little unnecessary.
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