Drake - If You're Reading This It's Too Late 2015

Is it an album? Is it a mixtape? Who cares? The 17 tracks that Drake released at midnight on a recent Thursday hit harder and hold together more cohesively than most big-budget event albums. There's nothing resembling a radio single on If You're Reading This It's Too Late, and not many of the seductively sung hooks that rocketed the Toronto MC to fame. Instead, there are lots of songs like "Star67," a sullen chomp at the hand that feeds him: "Brand new Beretta, can't wait to let it go/Walk up in my label like, 'Where the check, though?'" It's hard to imagine the heads of Cash Money Records, who are currently embroiled in a financial dispute with Drake's mentor Lil Wayne, shmoney-dancing to that one. But for fans of the singular aesthetic that Drake has developed in recent years, "Star67" and the rest are manna straight from heaven, or at least from Canada.