The title of Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR’s $OME $EXY $ONGS 4 U is supposed to be an exercise in self-referential fun: i.e., “You know us for making sneaky link soundtracks and — surprise — that’s exactly what we’re doing, so we’re going to phrase that concept as straightforwardly and casually as humanly possible.” It’s kinda funny. But the sterility of the music undoes the joke; it’s not an ironic punch as much as an apt description for a collection of tracks that are as disjointed as they are indistinct. They might as well have called it, These Are Our Sexy Songs — Here You Go. While $$$4U delivers on some of the sexy, it’s usually got all the charm and imagination of missionary with the lights off.

Released less than a week after Kendrick Lamar turned his Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show into a victory lap around Drake’s grave, $$$4U carries the added burden of Drake’s recent losing streak. Following his battle rap defeat to Kendrick — whose Drake diss “Not Like Us” was literally named Song Of The Year at the Grammys a couple weeks ago, signifying a full-scale industry embrace of K.Dot’s disdain — Drake’s singles have generally underperformed. And as evidenced by crowd response to Kendrick’s “Not Like Us” performance, the public isn’t exactly on his side. With this in mind, each new Drake job is, in one way or another, the rap equivalent of an NBA legacy game. Does Drake still have it, or is he in his Wizards Jordan phase? The answer will take more than one project to determine, but $$$4U isn’t the most promising start.

Understandably, the LP sees Champagne Papi returning to familiar moves. It’s coated in the misty ambiance typical of Drake’s sonic architect 40, even if he’s not the one making the beats this time. Embedded in the aural soundscapes are samples from Lil Wayne (“CN Tower”), Beyoncé (“Raining in Houston”), Aaron Hall (“Gimme A Hug”), and even Drake’s own “The Real Her” on “Spider-Man Superman.” The production doesn’t feel particularly inventive — it’s more like the end result of a YouTube search for “Drake & PartyNextDoor Type Beat” — but the melodies and the space around them evoke chilly nights in Toronto. They’re fitting canvases for too much money, too many drinks, and not enough regrets.

At their best, Drizzy & PND leverage their chemistry enough to escape the monotony of the production. For “Somebody Loves Me,” they suffuse ambient synths with genuine, overflowing emotion, a refreshing change from the android-like playboy anthems Drizzy’s been serving us for a few years now. There’s something elementally endearing about exasperated romantic confessions, and their wounded (if pitch-corrected) yelps just make you feel it.

“Die Trying” can make you feel it, too. For this one, the two cruise over supple pop strings for more tales of romantic damage. PND serves up an expressive hook, and Drake turns in some rare moments of crystalline introspection. The sequences here point to someone with actual emotional intelligence instead of a self-absorbed monster: “This year, me and God, we wasn’t seeing eye to eye/ I prayed to her from time to time/ She was busy on another vibe/ I can’t vent to you through no text message and reply.” Distilled through a register that doesn’t tax his vocals, those bars sound as candid as any Drake’s written, and with Yebba’s pillowy contralto bookending the track, it all rips through the album’s brooding atmosphere like a ray of sunshine.

Though it’s an R&B-adjacent album, Drake was, of course, never going to let this release pass without getting some petty bars off at Kendrick’s expense. And he does so. Quite skillfully. Coasting over a soulful Terrell sample, “Gimme A Hug” is Drake at his most incisive. Here, he gives props to himself with all the zeal of Kendrick’s “Man At The Garden,” unloading colorful flexes that require a certain tax bracket — and dexterity — to distill so neatly: “Really fuckin’ with a visionary/ Only reason I ain’t got a girl and I ain’t gettin’ marriеd/ ‘Cause I’m really out herе, filling up the itinerary ’til I’m six feet in a cemetery/ Bulletproof doors so heavy, got me rollin’ ’round like a dignitary.”

Elsewhere on the track, he seems to take aim at folks like Ye, Joe Budden, and, likely, Kendrick. He doesn’t hold back. “‘Cause if I die, it’s these niggas that become the sole beneficiary/ And what the fuck are they gon’ do with it?/ Have the girls up at 29 on stage twerkin’ with a dictionary,” he raps in a barb directed at Kendrick, the most elaborate wordsmith the world has ever seen. Considering the subject matter and the beat switch, it’s a moment where Drake drops any facade of indifference or detachment.

Unfortunately, momentary emotional overflows and brief rhyme exhibitions can’t make up for the sameness of the record. By “sameness,” I mean that the whole first five songs of the LP could come from literally any Drake album between Views and For All the Dogs; the void-like beat on “CN Tower” is a perfect vessel for Drizzy’s vapid failed-relationship-isms that have only grown emptier. The PND verse feels like Drake just threw him on at the end because he remembered they were supposed to do a joint album. While they sound smooth on the same tracks, no song reaches the anthemic stature of “Recognize” or a “Loyal,” and because they’re both essentially doing the same thing, there’s no push-pull contrast to maintain the propulsion that made Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss so kinetic. For that one, we got to see Drake play gangster and 21 Savage play R&B star, and their role reversals made the songs off-kilter adventures. There are fewer quests here.

The second half mixes up the sounds a little bit, but the results aren’t always rewarding. The Elkan-produced “Nokia” turns a classic Nokia commercial into a quirky bop. Drizzy eschews a lot of the self-serious Drakeisms here for something that’s eccentrically fun. I wish he’d reeled it in a bit for “Meet Your Padre,” which sees him spitting in Spanish for a track that’s more embarrassing than wryly funny. Still, at least it’s an attempt at something. It’s made people laugh. Much of $$$4U doesn’t really make you … well, anything. If you’re a Drake fan hoping that this album will help you forget his epic defeat, you’re better off pulling up More Life or So Far Gone and remembering the good ole days. If you’re an OVO fan, you’ll be happy to soak inferior versions of Drizzy and PND collaborations past. If not, the monotony and the 73-minute runtime will make you want to escape like the throes of an awkward hookup.

COLD AS ICE

ROAST ME

This how Kendrick Lamar and Serena Williams did Drake 😭 pic.twitter.com/MKN4bIs3g4

— Ringer-Verse (@RingerVerse) February 10, 2025