I’m going to take a different approach here because, in all honesty, I don’t know how to tackle this one. I’m going to tell you about myself in hopes of setting some kind of scene, a mood.  

I’ve had a grey-blue year, discontentment turning melancholy turning despondency and again.  Since the start of this steady decline, there have been very few chaste nights and fewer crystal mornings. When I sleep it’s long and fitful. Daylight hours are foggy and fast. It’s a dull, constant ache — one hard truth per second. I wouldn’t mention all of this morbid “blah, blah” if I weren’t confident that you’d understand where I’m writing from  All that being said: 

“Marvin’s Room” on Drake’s new album, “Take Care,” is a sad-bastard’s lament presented in the form of a drunk-dial discourse and wasn’t originally intended for inclusion on the album. However, the positive response to the single landed the track on the album’s final cut. 

Drake is not above the self-aggrandizing clichés heard ad-nauseum in rap music, but he’s aware that balance between audacity and humility is necessary.

Drake recognizes this just as he recognizes the necessity for a balance between strong melodies and sturdy beats in his music.  “Take Care” is a damn good album as a result.

Between the arrogant proclamations of “Headlines,” the album’s single, and the sentimental tears-in-my-Patron regret of “Shot for Me” there is a dude breaking his back just to make some sense out of his world.  

Certainly that world is miles and miles from the world in which folks like myself live, but the struggle  is the same. Drake’s “wisdom” is derived from his understanding of this all-too-human predicament.

So, here I am. Midnight is creeping up and I’ve spent the last week listening to nothing but the wheelchair dude from Degrassi’s latest album. Things aren’t exactly looking up, but there’s something a little steadier moving between my ears.  

I would say that the record has acted as a friend or confidant, but that’s not exactly true and it sounds lame and contrived. Rather, “Take Care” has served mainly as an inspiration – I realize that this also sounds lame and contrived.  

I’m going to stick with the statement because I love the fact that the only  review I could write about “Take Care” was a highly personal one that maybe isn’t the most comfortable to write — or read. That says a great deal about the record.  

Really, I think that Drake himself says it best during one of “Take Care’s” finest moments: “I know that showin’ emotion don’t ever mean I’m a pussy.”