I immediately gave it the car test, but never left the parking garage, as a precaution against any involuntary physical reactions. The highs on If You’re Reading This are as high as anywhere else in Drake’s discography. In a way, If You’re Reading This was the last time we all convened online and agreed that the New Drake was not only welcome, but banging, and probably what we’d be listening to for the foreseeable, and not just the immediate, future. I measure “Know Yourself” in dropped points on Uber ratings, spilled drinks, and hoarse voices, but also in mentions and retweets. History will look back on “Know Yourself” as an unlikely model of community-it’s notably un-hit-like, and takes basically forever to do what it does, yet the song explodes something within a group of people. I remember seeing a deluge of reaction shots and CAPS LOCK EXCLAMATIONS stream down TweetDeck (I was a serious blogger), then searching for a Zippyshare link, then skipping directly to “Know Yourself,” which seemed to be getting the most impressions (I was a very serious blogger). I was sitting alone at my Dell XPS lava brick in a half-lit office park in Los Angeles, finding newer and more inventive ways to describe the same five kinds of basketball highlights. When If You’re Reading This dropped, I was actually working the (blog) night shift. Despite If You’re Reading This not performing as well as his other albums, commercially, it has outsize cultural impact. But only artists who are mega-superstars already can stop the Earth spinning on its axis with little to no advance warning. Worse yet, Views was limp and uninspired, where If You’re Reading This still, today, is like a shot in the arm.īy the end of 2014 Drake had picked up a head of steam with several SoundCloud one-offs that energized the spacious angst of NWTS, creating songs you could actually queue up at parties, like “0 to 100 / The Catch Up.” He’d also entered a new tier of success-the popular line on If You’re Reading This was that it fulfilled Drake’s contractual obligations with Cash Money, clearing his path to mega-superstardom. Music critic Steven Hyden described the listening experience of 2013’s desolate, deliberately paced Nothing Was the Same as “a little soft rock, even by well-established softness standards.” 2016’s Views was even more maudlin, way longer, and required you to believe that Drake was a compelling protagonist of his own mafioso story, which all led to the most tepid reception of any Drake album since his 2010 debut, Thank Me Later. The rap commentariat dubbed Take Care a classic, and it is, but Drake is often a total bummer on it, equal parts romantic entitlement and trashing-my-own-house-party dejection. It’s 17 tracks long, there’s nothing on it resembling a radio single, yet it holds together-and holds up-better than most event albums. If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late was released two days later at the stroke of midnight, and I don’t think it’s especially important whether we classify it as an “album” or a “mixtape,” although it was originally supposed to be hosted by DJ Drama. Williams was a walking bucket, in other words-wet, from everywhere suddenly, but not overly fussy or in a hurry about it. Toronto reversed a 10-point deficit, and like so many other nights in his first Sixth Man of the Year season, it felt as though Williams couldn’t miss, even though he technically only shot 50 percent. (They’d sweep Toronto in the playoffs that year.) DeMar DeRozan iced the game, but down the stretch the Raptors went to Lou Williams, who led all scorers off the bench: He walked over screens he dashed into the paint he snuck down the baseline he hit spot-up jumpers. On February 11, 2015, the Washington Wizards went to Canada with hope and left with a two-point loss to the Toronto Raptors, whom they just couldn’t seem to close the gap on in the East at the time.