In total Queen Bey fashion, rapper Drake dropped a collection of new music last Friday pretty much out of nowhere. Fans and the industry alike had little to no knowledge about Drake’s surprise release, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. Drake has clearly labeled the 17-track banger a mixtape; in other words, it is not his fourth studio album following 2013’s Nothing Was the Same but instead a pit stop on the way to it. He refers to it as a “tape” in his thank you notes on his blog. There you’ll also eye the massive tracklist and the tape’s producers who include PartyNextDoor, Boi-1da, and Noah “40” Shebib. …It’s Too Late releases days after Drake outed a nearly 15-minute short film titled Jungle; it includes snippets of a couple songs from the mixtape.
Download If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late at iTunes today. Though Drake technically regards it as a mixtape, he’s selling it for $12.99. How come, you ask? In a nutshell, Lil Wayne is clashing with his label Cash Money. He’s suing them to get out of his contract, and some speculate that Drake is taking calmer route to remove himself from the equation by releasing a “commercial mixtape” to serve as his fourth “studio album” which may release him from his 4-album contract with the label. For more on the internal drama about the Cash Money artists, head to Vulture. In the meantime, snag a copy of Drake’s latest now–he goes hard and it’s damn good. The surprise tape should hold you over until his next major studio release, supposedly titled Views from the 6, drops in the future.
