On the cover of his second album, Take Care, Drake holds a chalice. He's dressed in a black shirt with the top buttons undone, revealing his chest, and he wears a few gold chains around his neck. ("Bracelets and rings/ All the little accents that make me a king," he says on "Lord Knows," before adding that his only role models are Hugh Hefner, Michael Jordan and his Young Money/Cash Money Billionaires bosses Lil Wayne and Baby the Birdman.) His eyes stare soulfully at the table in front of him, as if he were deep in thought. It's as if he wants to tell us that he, too, has dark moments of the soul.Take Care is a thematic follow-up to 2010's Thank Me Later, but it's much closer to the pop zeitgeist. It caps a year when a host of artists echoed the ambient blend of R&B and hip-hop Drake introduced last year, including Frank Ocean and The Weeknd (who appear on several Take Care tracks). Big Sean and J Cole embraced the clean-cut, proudly middle-class, fame-for-fame's-sake ethos that Drake trumpeted. He didn't invent it (that honor goes to Kanye West), but his success has come to personify it. Much of the hardcore rap audience views these suburban braggarts suspiciously, taunting them as being too "soft," lobbing homophobic slurs and claiming that they're pop sellouts. Smartly, Drake doesn't bother answering these trolls. He's too focused on extending the cultural moment that began with Thank Me Later and exploring a vague melancholy that emerges in his relationships with women.
There's an 
"Wasn't I a good king?" complains 
Texas native 
During his nearly 25-year career, we've watched 
After three solo albums and a full tour of duty in 
Perhaps the best thing about 
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