Turn It Up: Drake

3 posts categorized "Drake"

October 14, 2010

Concert review: Drake at the Chicago Theatre

Drake performs at Chicago Theatre. (Photo for the Tribune by Marina Makropoulos)

The 23-year-old, Toronto-born TV-star-turned rapper Aubrey Drake Graham just has to walk onstage to rev up his lady-killer mojo.

At the screamfest that broke out Wednesday at the sold-out Chicago Theatre in the first of two concerts, Drake flexed the muscular posture, the sunglasses and the three-day facial hair of a guy who’s never hurting for female companionship. But on his recent debut album, “Thank Me Later,” he juxtaposes his boasts with anxiety, a regular guy wondering just what he’d gotten himself into, whether the love he feels is genuine, whether his chosen path is just a soul-sapping charade.

It all makes for one of the most intriguing new voices in hip-hop, a talent who in the last two years has collaborated with or written for artists ranging from Jay-Z and Kanye West to Alicia Keys and Mary J. Blige. What they crave is not just a piece of his charisma, but also his knack for combining pop hooks, psychodramatic combativeness, lip-smacking playfulness and unexpectedly dark introspection.

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Posted by leisureblogs at 1:00 AM in Drake, Music, Rap | Permalink | Comments (4)

October 13, 2010

Tonight's top shows: Guided By Voices, Drake

Guided By Voices: Robert Pollard is the one constant in the Ohio band’s myriad lineups. This reunion pieces together the GBV lineup from one of its most beloved periods, 1994-96, which produced the band’s masterpiece, “Bee Thousand,” 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Riviera, 4746 N. Racine, $29 (sold out); etix.com

Drake: Toronto-born Aubrey Drake Graham has been the most in-demand new voice in hip-hop the last two years, with numerous cameos paving the way for his acclaimed debut album, “Thank Me Later,” 8 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday at Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State St., $61.04, $81.51, $105.09; ticketmaster.com.

greg@gregkot.com

Posted by leisureblogs at 12:03 AM in Drake, Guided By Voices, Music, Rap | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 17, 2010

Album review: Drake, 'Thank Me Later'

3 stars (out of 4)

The most heavily touted and highly anticipated hip-hop debut of 2010 is here, but it doesn’t exactly seize its moment.

Fame seemed preordained for Drake with Lil Wayne’s tutelage, countless cameos on other artists’ singles and a well-received 2009 EP and mix tape -- which might be why the 23-year-old, Toronto-born Aubrey Drake Graham sounds almost skittish on “Thank Me Later” (Cash Money). In a genre that demands boldness and bravado, Drake turns his first full-length release into an inward-looking, slow-moving, psychedelic psychodrama. If not the expected commercial juggernaut, “Thank Me Later” is personal and eccentric, the journal of a flawed, self-doubting regular guy rather than a strutting icon-in-waiting.

So Drake isn’t the hip-hop savior he was hyped to be. Instead, as he drifts through what should have been his boisterous coming-out party, he comes off as muted and rueful, missing the days when he was 19 and it was just about him and his girlfriend in a college dorm room.

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Posted by leisureblogs at 9:46 AM in Drake, Rap | Permalink | Comments (17)