If You're Reading This It's Too Late (Double Gatefold LP)

Death is the only certainty for rap dynasties. One year it's "All About the Benjamins" and the next it's Lincolns and Washingtons. Cash Money Records has escaped the fate of the Roc-A-Fellas and Bad Boys thanks to the enduring genius of Bryan "Baby" Williams, AKA Birdman. Birdman's business acumen and A&R smarts carried Cash Money through three distinct eras, from the late '90s Hot Boys heyday through Lil Wayne's mid- to late-2000s bid for "Best Rapper Alive" to the current YMCMB incarnation featuring Drake and Nicki Minaj. (With Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan he seems to be training still another army.) The wheels appeared to come off of the Cash Money machine for good, however, on a random December afternoon when Wayne gave a curt Twitter update on his long-gestating Tha Carter V album, blaming Birdman and Cash Money for the holdup and demanding an exit from the label he's called home most of his life. He's since initiated an audacious $51 million lawsuit requesting not only his own exit but that of Drake and Nicki Minaj as well.

Drake and Nicki have been smartly mum on the split (well, word around town is Birdman was barred from Minaj's Grammy party earlier this month), but years of whispers about Drake being owed substantial back royalties were publicly validated with the surprise release of If You're Reading This It's Too Late, a retail mixtape arriving on the six year anniversary of Drake's star-making So Far Gone. If You're Reading This is littered with pith for Drake's label situation ("No Tellin'": "Envelopes coming in the mail, let her open 'em/ Hoping for a check again, ain't no telling," "Star67": "Brand new Beretta, can't wait to let it go/ Walk up in my label like 'Where the check, though?'"), and all of this surfacing weeks after Wayne's lawsuit bombshell raises a few questions. Is this release a ruse to close out Drake's Cash Money deal? Is the absence of Birdman from the mixtape's lengthy thank you's an oversight or an intentional slight? Is the title a dig?

If You're Reading This arouses many unanswered questions on a business front, but where it truly delivers is giving Drake room to breathe outside of the lumbering commercialism of his retail albums. There's little in the way of obvious singles here, (though the Ibiza bop "Preach" might find a chart by accident). Instead we get a spectral late-night longing not unlike that of So Far Gone touchstones "Lust for Life" and "Successful". The pre-fame queasiness of early Drake is now the loneliness of a distrustful despot. On "10 Bands" he's holed up in a home studio for weeks pushing himself to create ("Drapes closed, I don't know what time it is/ I'm still awake, I gotta shine this year"). "Know Yourself" celebrates the thrill of mobbing through a city that's his for the taking, but even in joy there's a note of tension and the ever-present possibility of actual danger. ("I ain't rock my jewelry, and that's on purpose/ Niggas want my spot and don't deserve it.") Success creates as many problems as it solves.

Music is the real joy for Drake, and If You're Reading This It's Too Late is best enjoyed as an exercise in the casual excellence of the artist as rhymer and purveyor of hooks. The vocals are often just vampy flow experiments, but at their best these verses exhibit the weightless exhilaration of a technician at work. Drake's never more formidable than when he's shadowboxing, and at its flashiest, If You're Reading This It's Too Late feels like his Rocky run. Inspired by gauntlet tosses from adversaries high and low, Drake uses the mixtape to toast and taunt a rogue's gallery of industry frenemies. For Diddy, who reportedly punched him over ownership of the beat for "0 to 100/The Catch Up": "Real quick, man, you couldn't've hated that/ Let's be real, nigga, you couldn't've made it that." For disgruntled labelmate Tyga, who insulted Drake in a Vibe magazine feature: "You need to act your age and not your girl's age." For friend-turned-rival Kendrick Lamar: "They gon' say your name on them airwaves/ They gon hit you after like it's only rap."

On If You're Reading This, all of this chest beating is delivered over the most darkly hypnotic beats Drake's graced since So Far Gone. Much of the mixtape foregoes the supervision of his producer-in-residence Noah "40" Shebib, but 40's codeine-soul aesthetic is the ghost in the machine. The PARTYNEXTDOOR showcase "Wednesday Night Interlude" matches the OVO signee's pleading vocal to a chunk of Canadian producer Ekali's ethereal "Unfaith", itself an interpolation of Ciara and Future's "Body Party". Ginuwine and Timbaland's 2000 classic "So Anxious" is sampled twice, soundtracking the slow-cooking opener "Legend" and the 40 contribution "Madonna". Where R&B sounds aren't incorporated directly, their thick sensuality is frequently hinted at. The pace of the mixtape rarely elevates past a crawl, reveling in the moody, winding instrumentals and hooky sentimentality of Boi-1da, PARTYNEXTDOOR and newcomers Wondagurl, SykSense, and Sevn Thomas without worrying about posting upbeat knockers to Top 40 radio.

In the days to come you'll read that Drake "pulled a Beyoncé" with the stealth drop of If You're Reading This, and yes, both are surprise releases from A-list artists topping the charts without a rollout or much in the way of an advance warning. But Radiohead's In Rainbows is the better comparison: Both records found the artists revisiting the mood of a highly regarded early work as they transition into new methods of delivering music to fans. Whether the Drake tape is a clever track dump disguised as an album with the intent of worming out of his Cash Money deal, a deliberately planned gesture to tide fans over until the upcoming Views from the 6, or just an exercise in shirking the protracted waits and missed dates of the retail rap game, If You're Reading This It's Too Late winningly employs the occasion of the So Far Gone anniversary to revisit the twilight consternation of Drake's breakout release, perhaps to close out a chapter of his career on the same note on which it began.
8.3 / 10 Pitchfork.