By Odeisel

Remember high school? Senior year. You finally get up the nerve to ask the girl you’ve been chasing for four years to the big dance. You’re working overtime shifts at your corner store job so you can get that limo (and that hotel room). You finally get to the moment you’ve been waiting your whole career for, the one you will tell your kids about…and she doesn’t put out/wasn’t that good/had B.O.  The buildup is almost a setup for disappointment.

Drake has the unenviable task of trying to fulfill our Hip-Hop prom night dreams. Able to drop laser sharp freestyles and write hit songs and sing hooks in Swiss Armian fashion, Drake has the pole position on “next,” much to the chagrin of his contemporaries. But like young Phillip Pirrip there are great expectations, particularly when you have a wealth of talent and that machine at your back. So we get the first leak on what could either be a nuclear sub, or the Titanic, “Over” from the much anticipated Thank Me Later.

The music is pristine…but missing rhythm.  Each brake or change of pace feels uneven, often changing right when you are used to the rhythm. While each by itself is pristine, the early transitions feel abrupt. What this does is force Drake into an uneven rhythm and takes him off his game.  His voice is a bit heavy on the hook, a departure from the butter soft delivery on his previous offerings. You can hear the tension and the chip on his shoulders, and on the hook that anger in his delivery pushes his perseverance/defiance thing to petulance.

The intro strings are brilliant in the initial arrangement and give you that gravity and weight and the drums and guitar are brought in seamlessly but as soon as you’re riding it, they switch the beat up to the main body. Drake’s flow is slower and his voice is pushed too high; straining to get over the production.  His bars are a bit predictable and punch line driven and he’s been carrying the whole me against the industry/doing things my way thing a bit too long. It’s time to let people in and start telling that story. People are already invested in the phenomenon but in order to really break things open, they are going to have to invest in the person, and on “Over” there just isn’t enough “story.” There are a few Jigga-isms in the second verse, but at this point which young rapper doesn’t have those?

The good news is, there are some good lines in there, and the music, while in my opinion not optimally arranged, is laser sharp, and certainly upper tier. It’s clearly ready for consumption on a high level without the pop panache that would candy-out someone on this stage. The song isn’t soft, or bad. It’s very solid, but it doesn’t come together as well as it could. If he approached it with a bit more speed and a little less force, he would have nailed it. If the production on the album is this crisp all he has to do is relax and finish the game. Think a highly touted rookie in his first NBA game.  Flashes of why he was the number one pick, and butterflies from the enormity of the stage. He’ll be fine in the end…I hope. Anyway, enough of me.  Here’s Drake

Drake-Over 01 Over

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