Drake’s HABIBTI – On HABIBTI, Drake toggles between lyrical intimacy and broader, colder observations—and the switch is where the album feels most uneven. The middle tracks drag, while moments of doubt, yearning, and carefully placed personal detail briefly pull the record into
By the time “Hurr Nor Thurr” is playing. you can hear what the album is trying to do—and you can also hear where it loses momentum. The song should snap with excitement. Instead, its ghostly hums and drums come off sluggish, as if they’re coated in molasses. Drake and Sexyy Red don’t so much ride the beat as trudge through it.
“Classic” doesn’t feel like a complete idea either. Half the track seems like window dressing for a pitched-up Jus’ Cauze sample—an obvious draw for crate-digging R&B nostalgia fans. Even when HABIBTI shifts into downtempo. Drake’s reserved approach on those slower songs puts his aphorisms about modern life under a harsher light than they once carried. Modern contradictions, delivered with restraint, land less charming than they did 15 years ago.
The unevenness shows up in how sharply “Gen 5” lands its point. Drake delivers a line about being “a passive guy” while “Fightin’ with me, tryna fire me up / That’s not gonna work, I’m a passive guy,” but then turns to domestic abuse as wordplay—treating a deeply serious reality as a punchline.
What lingers is that Drake’s music has historically found its clearest power when it stays close to the heartbroken figure at the center of the songs. When the camera pulls outward—toward broader jokes. score-keeping. and the messy arithmetic of who’s doing what—everything feels dimmer. HABIBTI can’t fully decide whether it’s a record about feelings or an inventory of modern behavior. and that whiplash makes the album feel unbalanced.
He does move past the early clunkiness of “Gen 5,” though. The second verse on HABIBTI’s darker material pulls you in, shifting into an echoing, morose melody. Drake opens the doubt like a crack you can’t stop looking at: “I don’t think you love me. but I could be wrong / Sitting at this table and I don’t belong.” The doubt creeps in slowly. and it’s the kind of uncertainty that still sounds human.
For a moment, “Slap the City” even seems ready to take off. London singer Qendresa brings breath and lift to the track with Aaliyah-like vocal runs on the hook. It’s one of the times HABIBTI sounds like it has a pulse.
Then Drake returns to what the album keeps circling: romance, followed by bite. On “Slap the City,” he starts by romancing—questioning why his Toronto mansion feels so empty. After that comes bitterness. and the song leans into Drake’s body count argument. framing it as a double standard he wants to address. It all has a hypnotic sheen, but the emotional center can still feel hollow.
That contradiction runs right through the record’s bigger idea: HABIBTI is part of Drake’s heroic trio of releases and an attempt to prove he still has “it” in different forms. With ICEMAN, he’s still in fighting shape (not really). With MAID OF HONOUR, he can still make hits (yes). With HABIBTI, the question is whether he’s still sensitive. Even when the small details don’t fully land on their own—mocking girls’ trips to Scottsdale or noting there are too many Pilates studios in Dubai—their presence makes the world he’s rapping about feel more lived-in than the rigid set design he’s constructed since Scorpion.
The closest thing to personalization here is exactly what Drake’s appeal has often depended on: making the “world he’s in” feel like more than a costume. It’s a sharper ache when he returns to tenderness. On “White Bone. ” he raps. “I love you so much. I cannot lose you so. ” and he’s yearning for soulmates after admitting that he should show more emotion. The opening verse carries a refrain he punctuates like a thought he can’t quite stop: “I’ve never gotten this close / I’m so close. ” he whispers.
You can almost picture him muttering that phrase after he’s left the booth—like the one vulnerable thread he’s still willing to pull. And in a record that otherwise keeps slipping into emptiness, that small, stubborn sincerity is what keeps HABIBTI from fully letting go.
Drake HABIBTI Sexyy Red Qendresa Jus’ Cauze sample Gen 5 Slap the City White Bone ICEMAN MAID OF HONOUR Scorpion