Let’s just get this out of the way in case anyone is unclear now or ever has had any doubt about it: Drake is emo. He wears his heart on his sleeve, he’s a mama’s boy, he falls in love with strippers, and he embodies all of this in his music with aplomb. Though he’s sometimes made some questionable attempts at portraying a more hardcore side (Is anyone really scared that Drake will ever “catch a body” like he claimed in “Headlines”?), for the most part he has been upfront about his innermost feelings and his need to express them. Either you rock with it or you don’t, so coming into an album of his with the expectation that he’s not going to delve into these types of subjects is not only futile, it would suggest a complete lack of understanding of what type of artist he is.

That being said, Take Care is still a bit of departure from what he’s been best known for since his first album dropped. Sonically, Take Care is more similar to Drake’s breakthrough mixtape So Far Gone than it is to his debut Thank Me Later, which means that although much of the album’s lyrical content is deeper, the overall vibe is much more subdued. There’s no track here that instantly energizes the way “Fancy” or “Up All Night” did on first listen. It’s a slow burner, though, and you’ll find yourself wanting to revisit it and picking out elements you missed the time before.
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