Drake Take Care is the Toronto artist’s second studio album and the record that set the template for a decade of melodic hip hop. Released on November 15, 2011, it paired confessional writing with spacious production from Noah 40 Shebib and a guest list that mapped Drake’s whole world at the time.
Take Care debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 631,000 first week copies despite leaking nine days early, and it has since been certified 8x Platinum in the United States. It won Best Rap Album at the 55th Grammy Awards in 2013, Drake’s first Grammy, and placed 95th on Rolling Stone’s updated 500 Greatest Albums list in 2020.
Drake Take Care Album Essential Tracks
Any guide to drake take care album essential tracks starts with the singles run, because few albums have ever sequenced hits this well. Headlines announced the album’s confidence, Marvins Room, released first as a standalone preview, announced its honesty, and the title track with Rihanna gave it a genuine pop centre. The Motto, a bonus cut built around the phrase YOLO, became a cultural export on its own, while Make Me Proud with Nicki Minaj and Crew Love with the Weeknd showed both sides of Drake’s collaborative instincts.
The deeper cuts are why the album lasts. Over My Dead Body opens with a mission statement over Chantal Kreviazuk assisted production, Lord Knows pairs Drake with Rick Ross over Just Blaze’s gospel scale production, and Look What You’ve Done closes the emotional arc with a tribute to his family that still plays as one of his most direct performances.
I get to take my time this go-round.
Drake explained the album’s title with that line, contrasting Take Care with a debut he felt was rushed, and the patience is audible in every sequencing choice. He reunited extensively with 40, expanded the low tempo, dark and sensuous sound of Thank Me Later, and let songs breathe at lengths mainstream rap rarely allowed in 2011.
The Toronto Sound, Formalized
Take Care is also a document of a city becoming a sound. The Weeknd appears across the album as a writer and vocalist, Jamie xx contributes the sample architecture under the title track’s foundation, and Boi-1da, T-Minus, Illangelo and Doc McKinney fill out a production roster rooted in Toronto and its diaspora. Readers keeping up with Drake’s honours at home can continue with Drake Wins Fifth Straight SOCAN Honour.
Four of the album’s singles peaked inside the Hot 100 top 20, and the album kept returning to year end Billboard 200 charts for most of the following decade, the statistical shape of a catalogue record rather than a moment.
Essential Listening Order For New Fans
For a first full listen, keep the original sequence. The album was built as a mood arc, moving from the guarded confidence of the opening run into the late night middle section and out through the family minded closing tracks. The Weeknd collaboration thread is worth following closely, and it connects directly to our archive video piece The Weeknd Secrets Music Video for where that voice went next.
Production students should note how little is happening at any given moment. Take Care’s influence on the following decade, from alternative R and B to melodic rap, is largely an influence of restraint: fewer drums, more piano and atmosphere, vocals mixed like lead instruments.
The album’s Canadian chart story matched its American one. Take Care debuted at No. 1 in Canada as well, and its singles performed strongly on the Canadian Hot 100, underlining that Drake’s breakthrough was a domestic story as much as an export. The supporting Club Paradise Tour became the most successful hip hop tour of 2012, taking the album’s intimate sound into arenas without enlarging the arrangements. That translation, from headphone record to arena record with the songs unchanged, is part of the album’s legend: the quietest mainstream rap album of its year also became one of its biggest live draws, a contradiction Take Care resolved simply by trusting the material.
Revisited now, Drake Take Care Essential Tracks is less a nostalgia exercise than a map of modern hip hop’s defaults. Emotional directness, sung and rapped vocals in the same verse, and albums sequenced as complete moods all became standard practice after this record proved they could also be commercial practice. Fifteen years on, it remains the Drake album every later Drake album is argued against.
