Yancey Strickler
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"A Better Views," Drake

Yancey Strickler

by Yancey Strickler

The new Drake album, Views, was released two weeks ago to reviews ranging from critical to tepid. Most of the reviews were posted within 72 hours of the album’s release. This is culture in 2016 — someone spends years making an album and the internet gives it all of three days to decide that it’s a major disappointment.

The internet is wrong. The Drake album is as good as anything he’s ever done. We just forget what it’s like to hear something new, the way a song evolves from unfamiliarity to something that lifts us when it pours out of open bodega doors.

The internet isn’t entirely to blame. The album is too long and poorly sequenced. Drake put more stock in constructing a “concept album” synced to Toronto’s seasons (the album goes from winter to spring to summer to fall, which is to say it starts way too slow) than in making an album a listener may enjoy.

So let’s fix this. Over the past week I’ve resequenced and edited down Viewsinto something more listenable. It’s called A Better Views. Here it is on Spotify.

A Better Views

  1. Childs Play
  2. Pop Style
  3. Feel No Ways
  4. Still Here
  5. Too Good
  6. Weston Road Flows
  7. Grammys
  8. With You
  9. Controlla
  10. Hype
  11. Fire & Desire
  12. One Dance
  13. Redemption
  14. U With Me?
  15. Hotline Bling
I write, build projects, and develop frameworks that help artists and creative people. Cofounder of Metalabel, Kickstarter, and The Creative Independent. Author of This Could Be Our Future and The Dar

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