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Drake — For All The Dogs: Scary Hours Edition
Shortly after dropping For All The Dogs, Drake delivers a revamped version. This week, he unveils the album’s Scary Hours Edition with six new songs.
Drizzy recently went No. 1 with his J. Cole-assisted single “First Person Shooter.” Now, the duo is back at it with “Evil Ways.” The Alchemist, Lil Yachty, Boi-1da, Ovrkast, and Vinylz also handled production on this project, per Spotify.
Drake tied Michael Jackson for most Hot 100 chart-toppers by a solo male artist with the aforementioned “First Person Shooter.” He paid tribute to the late King of Pop with a nod to “Billie Jean” during the song’s music video.
Jackson and Drake share the 4th spot for most overall behind The Beatles (20), Mariah Carey (19), and Rihana (14). Aubrey Graham seems to have his sights on the No. 1 spot, too.
He at least alludes to this on the previously-named “Evil Ways.” “To find your way up to the top, the sh-t gon’ be a maze,” he raps on the song. “Volkswagen sh-t, the way I’m running Beatles plays.”
The original Scary Hours dropped in 2018 with the follow-up landing in 2021. This is the third installment but it isn’t a standalone offering on streaming services. Instead, it appears as an extension of For All The Dogs.
André 3000 — New Blue Sun
André 3000 shocked fans when he announced his solo debut album earlier this week. Sure, the announcement was a big deal, but so was the follow-up word that it would be an instrumental LP instead of the long-hoped-for rap project.
So instead of the wishlist body of work, Three Stacks delivers an 8-song offering full of whimsical and ethereal sounds. Dre’s flute, which he’s been seen playing in the streets of Los Angeles, New York, and beyond, centers the album.
3K is upfront about this. The first song is called “I swear, I Really Wanted To Make a ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.” He spoke about this in pre-release interviews too.
“I would love to be out here playing with everybody, but it’s just not happening for me,” he told NPR. “This is the realest thing that’s coming right now. Not to say that I would never do it again, but those are not the things that are coming right now. And I have to present what’s given to me at the time.”
Thus, the album’s title represents a new beginning, he added. “At some point, that sun will die just like all stars. And New Blue Sun, for me, was like, I guess in a sci-fi way, the next world or the next beings will be under a bluer, cooler burning sun. It will burn cooler, but it will be larger…It’s kind of like this whole album and this whole direction is a new world for me. New Blue Sun is like a new direction.”
Lil Wayne & 2 Chainz — Welcome 2 Collegrove
Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz continue to rep their homes and their unity with the release of their second joint project, Welcome 2 Collegrove.
21 Savage, Usher, Benny The Butcher, Rick Ross and Marsha Ambrosius all join the dynamic pairing. Meanwhile, 50 Cent narrates the entire album with appearances on “Scene 1: Welcome 2 Collegrove”; “Scene 2: Duffle Bag Boys”; “Scene 3: Ladies Man”; “Scene 4: No Fent”; and “Scene 5: Never Was Lost.”
“Let me tell you a story about these two guys that eventually became brothers,” Fif says on the opening track. After introducing the musical titans, he explains the project will reveal their story even further. “When they met up, they devised a plan on how to take over the land and it kind of went like this…Welcome to Collegrove.”
2 Chainz has been beaming about this project for months. “I’ve been talking about it so long,” he recently told The Source. “I’m anxious at this point to try to get it to the fans’ ears, [so they can] hear some of the hard work, and the blood, sweat, and tears that me and my brother put into this project.”
DJ Premier & Common — “In Moe (Speculation)”
Twenty years ago this month, JAY-Z famously name-checked a Chicago legend on his presumed retirement album. “Truthfully, I wanna rhyme like Common Sense / But I did 5 mill and I ain’t been rhymin’ like Common since,” Hov rapped on The Black Album’s “Moment of Clarity.”
Today, Com references a different JAY-Z song that dropped 26 years ago this month: “Intro / A Million and One Questions / Rhyme No More.” Common’s nod appears on DJ Premier’s new single, “In Moe (Speculation).”
“A lot of speculation ’bout the things that I said / Is he coming off the head?” Common raps. “Is he that high level that his third eye’s red? / I know he used to love H.E.R. Is it true he really cared? / Did he become a great actor when Hip-Hop was dead?”
The instrumental for “In Moe” first appeared on DJ Premier’s Beats That Collected Dust 3. Watch the POE-directed video for “In Moe (Speculation)” below.
