(November 22, 2011) -- In 2009, Drake pleaded that he just wanted to be successful on his sensationalized So Far Gone mixtape. Fast forward to 2011, a few days before the pushed back Nov. 15 release date of Take Care, Drake’s second proper album, and it’s the #1 selling album on iTunes. If selling records when all but a few tracks of your album have been leaked and pirated thousands of times over is any measure of success, Drake is doing more than okay.

Even still, on Take Care, we find a lonesome 25-year-old Aubrey Graham gracing the cover empty and unsatisfied, sinking in a loot of gold. With scores of Grammy nominations, handfuls of #1 singles, a platinum-selling debut album, and enough leftover street-cred from So Far Gone, it’s puzzling why anyone in his shoes should present himself so “emo,” let alone make music as shockingly transparent to his feelings as he has on Take Care.

Drake and his handful of Toronto-native producers have tailored a somber R&B sound that compliments Drake’s introspective lyrics. Throughout the album, Drake shares pieces of his life that reflect lost love, family struggle, how he hates when people say they “feel” him, and an overall lack of satisfaction amidst riches, friends, and fame.

But Drake isn’t confused about his feelings or stardom anymore.  He doesn’t let his emotions cloud his view, but rather holds a steady grasp on them. He’s able to step out of his concerns about the dizzying fame he dealt with on Thank Me Later and really just analyze his place in life.  On “Crew Love,” he raps “I guess we’ll never know what Harvard gets us / But seeing my family have it all / Took the place of that desire for diplomas on the wall,” to finally say, “And really, I think I like who I’m becoming / Sometimes I do it just to do it like it’s nothing.”

It’s a moody record, engineered to tell what is Graham’s very personal route to everything the cover implies. The emotions and lyrics are stripped down, but the sound couldn’t be any fuller. From the treble on “Headlines” to the woozy guitar effects on the title track “Take Care” (compliments of Jamie xx production), to the minimalist winding down of the piano on “The Real Her,” the level of production is flawless.

Arguably the best production on the LP, “Lord Knows” stands out from the rest of the tracks with daunting gospel vocals, R&B samples, pounding bass, and driving drums that bend around some of Drake’s finest writing and probably the best guest feature by Rick Ross. Drake is “trying to find the right way to do the wrong things”, but “they take the greats from the past and compare us / I wonder if they’d ever survive in this era / where it’s recreation / to pull out all your skeletons out of the closet like Halloween decorations.” Plainly put, it’s an epic piece that pulls a lot of attitude without having to resort to excruciating amounts of in-your-face synth drops.

Coming in at a close second is the closer, “The Ride” finds the perfect balance between Drake’s rhymes and close friend and soulful singer, The Weeknd’s croons. Their bro-mance, highlighted in the thank-yous of Take Care is what Drake credits as the most inspirational and motivating factor to him to care so much about his music.  Tesfaye’s influence on his sound is as recognizable as is Drake’s loyalty to the rest of his crew. Take Care is about fraternity as much as family -- laden with shout outs to his team who comprises entirely of his friends from Toronto.  That’s the beauty of Take Care, Drake didn’t have to hire the flashiest producers or the most elusive directors for his music videos (instead two Toronto film school students) - it’s just him and his friends having a good time.

You can almost feel Noah “40” Shebib (Drake’s excusive producer sound engineer), strike chords on the piano on “Over My Dead Body,” “A Shot For Me,” “Marvin’s Room” and “Look What You’ve Done” or feel the strain in Stevie Wonder’s harmonica cameo on “Doing It Wrong.”  Not only that, but Take Care has all the bells and whistles too — from outros that fade seamlessly into the next song, spoken bits of poetry, and a voicemail recording from Drake’s grandmother on “Look What You’ve Done.” It’s that very attention to detail and experimental feel that makes people compare what Drake has done to Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or Watch The Throne and feel it has merit to be album of the year.

When “Headlines” released as the second single, Drake tied Diddy’s / P. Diddy’s / Puff Daddy’s / (whatever he goes by now) Billboard record for most #1 rap singles, but rap isn’t exactly Drake’s scene anymore.  Rap purists write him and Take Care off because he’s still viewed as a rapper and expect him to subscribe to the image it entails — an image that he “isn’t thug enough” to embody because he comes from suburban Toronto, likes to wear sweaters and “sings too much.”  On Take Care, Drake shouts out to Aaliyah twice and at the first concert on his Club Paradise tour he sang a Destiny’s Child cover.  “Gangsta” isn’t what he’s going for at all.

He’s embracing different emotions and writes lyrics about what he knows. If you want the Drake who “goes hard,” praises Jay-Z, or another “Over,” listen to his older material. The problem with Take Care is that it’s too pop to be rap, and too rap to be pop; what it really is, though, is an R&B album with a little hip-hop tang. Regardless of what label you slap on it, it’s still quality music.

It’s all been said and done before, so what is left for modern rap or even just urban music? Take Care is what’s left. There’s no room to be genre-conscious when you can find about a thousand underground rappers who are successful at re-fabricating archetypal rap vibes.

If you can get out of the mindset that there is a checklist of thug things a rap artist has to subscribe to, then you’ll be able to find something really substantial and innovative in Take Care.  From the resurrection of real chords played on actual pianos and guitars to the computerized treble, synths, and voice effects, the sound-scape behind Drakes’ bars find the perfect R&B balance.  It’s a digitally produced twenty-first century album with a classic analog feel.

At the end of the day you can hate on Drake for being soft all you want, but only because he does it so well.