Drake did something last week that I have not seen for a long time. Tuning into Apple Music’s radio station for his OVO Sound show as he premiered his mixtape the highly anticipated More Life. Instantaneously as it was being streamed I was seeing quote on twitter of some of the lines in the songs and one thing was for sure, it was having a very positive impact on listeners.

Drake is currently in the midst of his European tour Boy Meets World and has during this time has spoken out at his love for other genres of music, most notably the UK Hip-Hop scene. When you hear this project you can really hear how Drake has been influenced by other cultures from the instrumentation of his music, to his flow and once again it shows how versatile of an artist Drake actually is.

After the mixed reaction of his latest project Views, the pressure was on and it wasn’t in some aspect for Drake to deliver for More Life, which is probably why he stressed that this was a mixtape which was more like a playlist. One thing I can say for certain, this in my opinion is a far better mixtape than both If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and What a Time to Be Alive.

Drake once said famously that “Every sounds like Drake featuring Drake”, this time round that is most certainly not the case, he gives his collaborators on this project the space to shine, Giggs, Jorja Smith, Sampha and Skepta arguably are the ones who had the most freedom on this project to express themselves and it is nice to see that they are all UK artist’s and for me, it is a huge positive that Drake is backing our artist’s and exposing them to new audiences.

Sounds on this project really do vary a lot, KMT, Long Talk and Gyalchester are very heavy rap beats with a lot of UK influence on them over to Get It Together and Madiba Riddim which were very much influenced by the sounds of Africa. Glow which features Kanye West had fans on twitter rejoicing at the fact Drake brought old school Kanye back. Tying the projects in with tracks like Do Not Disturb (which has him slyly digging at Meek Mill in a very subtle and clever way), Lose You and Teenage Fever which has the epic Jennifer Lopez sample of If You Had My Love, almost take you back to the vibes that So Far Gone had.

Overall this is probably the best mixtape Drake has released since So Far Gone and is up there with one of his best projects that he’s actually put out. The Toronto native sounds a lot more relaxed in this album and you can hear that he’s actually just enjoying life at the moment, whilst he commented that on Views he sounded angry and felt like he almost had a point to prove.  One thing I do think Drake needs to do, is to have an Ed Sheeran moment and disappear for a while, let us consume and enjoy the mammoth amount of music he’s given us over the last 18 months and come back towards the end of 2018 with a solid album which is up there with Take Care and Nothing Was The Same.