Canadian artists Drake and PartyNextDoor just released their first collaboration album, “$ome $exy $ongs 4 U” (Abbreviated as $$$4U). The album marks Drake’s third collaborative album and PartNextDoor’s first. The highly anticipated album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 200 list, did 246,000 first-week sales, and set the 2025 first-week streaming record at 287 million official on-demand streams, surpassing The Weeknd’s “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” which did 171.5 million streams.
Due to the heavy use of profanity and inappropriate topics in the album, I will be paraphrasing some of the lyrics, which will be marked with (___). If you want to find the uncensored lyrics, visit genius.com.
The album starts with “CN TOWER,” which is a well-known monument in Toronto, Canada, the city in which Drake and PND reside. It opens up slowly, which was expected for the type of album that $$$4U has been advertised as, and stays this way for most of the song until Drake has a brief verse where he speeds up and goes into a more traditional rap flow. Overall, the song is a great way to start the album as it is catchy, but doesn’t do too much, and allows the listener to get the feel of what Drake and PND plan to do with the album.
“MOTH BALLS” is about both artists’ dating lives. PND goes into how a girl manipulates his mind with tricks that she knows he just can’t refuse, while Drake goes into his complicated relationship with women, as he knows that certain girls aren’t good for him, but the type of girl he wants is inaccessible to him, due to his reputation that he has amassed during his prolific rap career, which includes numerous relationships with, what some consider to be, the most attractive women in the entertainment industry. That, along with the fact that these relationships never end well, makes it impossible for Drake to find the girl that he wants.
The next song, “SOMETHING ABOUT YOU,” isn’t special. It’s a catchy song but lacks a lot of substance, which is a gripe that Drake has received in his most recent albums, as it feels like he puts in more songs than he needs, especially when he could cut a few filler tracks to condense the album and make the overall quality of the project better.
In “CRYING IN CHANEL,” Drake is the only artist on the song, and he is trying to make a relationship work with a woman who was previously part of a relationship with a man who Drake depicts in a bad light. He ends up getting to the point where he is willing to pay any price just for the girl that he is with to get rid of the stuff that brings her turmoil from her last relationship. He then switches the flow and puts out a verse that saves the song in its entirety, as it makes this go from another skip to a song that contains a plot. He does this by showing how no matter what he tries, he just feels like the girl he’s with isn’t happy, and it’s never enough. Despite the strong ending, the lackluster flow that the song has for ⅔ of the duration can’t be saved, which leads me to say that if you have to skip this one, you aren’t missing anything unique.
“SPIDER-MAN SUPERMAN” is one of the smoothest songs on the album, but once again, I feel like Drake and PND leave the fans craving for more. “DEEPER” is the only time that we get to see PND get his own song, and it feels like a true R&B song, and is the first time that I feel like PND got to use his full potential as a songwriter and artist, as he isn’t necessarily a rapper or lyricist like Drake, but rather just someone who makes a song that you can blast on you speakers late at night.
“SMALL TOWN FAME” is Drake’s second solo track, and once again it lacks substance. It’s just Drake venting on the mic, which isn’t bad at all, but coming off of his beef with Kendrick Lamar, which accused Drake of not being a real rapper who can make stories in his tracks, you would’ve liked to see something that could go down as a Drake hit at this point.
The next song, “PIMMIE’S DILEMMA” is seen by some as an interlude, but to me, it’s so much more. Listening to one of the best voices that I have had the pleasure of hearing in my years of enjoying music gives a perspective that hasn’t been part of nearly any Drake album… the girl. Pim says, “Please, don’t go out with your friends… They gon’ let you do whatever, and blame it on the liquor.” This is huge, as it gives a passage into the next song on the album, and I feel like it also really represents the turning point that this album could have, as long as Drake and PND don’t mess it up.
The following track, “BRIAN STEEL,” is named after Young Thug’s attorney who got Young Thug (one of Drake’s close friends) out of a very large prison sentence, which had an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of Thug, whose real name is Jeffrey Williams, being found guilty. Drake says, “The (love) so good, it could keep me inside, But (screw) that baby, I gotta pop out with the guys tonight.” This is obviously about Pim on the last track, which makes the songs feel like they somewhat go together. Despite the track only having about one minute of rap, it felt like a song that Drake put some effort into, which is an incredible leeway into the next track.
“GIMME A HUG” is the long-awaited song that the entire hip-hop community has waited for, as Drake, albeit briefly, addresses the beef that he had with Kendrick Lamar in April of 2024, along with many other artists throughout the entirety of 2024. He compares himself to Keanu Reeves’ character, Neo, which is featured in the 1999 classic, “The Matrix”, along with the many subsequent follow-up films that came after it. He then compares everyone else to “Nemo in the ocean, small fish making kids feel emotion,” which means that everyone else is little compared to him, at least in terms of influence, which is something that even the biggest Drake haters can’t deny he has had on this generation of musicians.
“RAINING IN HOUSTON” and “LASERS” are just some simple, catchy songs that anyone could enjoy whenever they feel like chilling out. The difference between these two and the earlier songs that I had complaints about is that they both have lyrics that aren’t all over the place. They had a clear meaning and the listener didn’t feel like Drake wrote each line at different points in time, which is how both of these songs seem.
The next three songs are my personal favorites, due to their impeccable and brand-new sounds, that neither Drake nor PND have ever really attempted in their careers.
“MEET YOUR PADRE” features Chino Pacas, a Mexican rapper who Drake has worked with in the past. Drake and Pacas open up and you can tell quickly that this isn’t going to be for everybody, as it is a blend of corrido, Latin pop, and rap, which is certainly not something that many expected coming into an album that was generally assumed to be R&B with a little bit of rap mixed into it. The only complaint I have is I feel like it would’ve been better to remove PND from this track in its entirety. The reason I say this is because he doesn’t have the voice, or even the flow to really do a piece like this, and there are already so many songs that don’t even feature PND that it wouldn’t have been an issue. Despite this, I still think that you should listen to this one, and while you may not like it, it could also immerse you into an entirely new genre of music that you may have never heard of.
Finally, a song like “NOKIA” comes onto the album. There have been a couple of good songs, but none have felt like a song that could debut at No. 1 until we reach “NOKIA.” From the bouncy beat to the weird but appealing chorus from Elkan, to the simple lyrics that Drake has to keep the listener from getting bored. I believe that this is the next big hit that will dominate the charts for the upcoming weeks.
“DIE TRYING” has the last official feature of the album, which is Yebba, who previously appeared on “Yebba’s Heartbreak,” from Drake’s 2022 album “Her Loss.” “DIE TRYING” has clear pop influences, with an acoustic guitar playing as the primary beat. Drake tackles internal struggles of whether or not he should fight to remain in a relationship or accept that it’s over. He does this in the chorus, where he says, “Can’t decide if I should stay and say I tried, or I should leave and say goodbye, it’s killing me inside.” This song feels like Drake attempting to find real love, especially after a year when many close friends turned out to be enemies, and his character ended up being called into question. I think that both “NOKIA” and “DIE TRYING” are attempts by Drake to get a mainstream song on the radio for this album.
“SOMEBODY LOVES ME” and “CELIBACY” are both catchy songs, but they lack any real content. “SOMEBODY LOVES ME” is just PND and Drake talking about how they know someone loves them, as the title suggests. “CELIBACY” is very slow, which likely caused many listeners to miss the lyric, “We’re not like them baby, they’re not like us.” This is a light jab at Kendrick Lamar, who recently won five Grammys for his hit single “Not Like Us,” which had many outlandish claims about Drake that were backed with little to no evidence. Other than that, these are just a few catchy songs that you won’t likely suffer from skipping.
“OMW” is my first skip of the album. The lyrics are bland, and both artists’ voices do not mesh well with the beat, alongside a mediocre flow, just makes me feel like the artists got bored and made a song in 10 minutes and threw it on the album, which is a bummer, as to this point I loved the album.
“GLORIOUS” features a UK drill beat, along with Ice Spice, which does adlibs. It feels like Drake is talking about how he is putting trust in a girl, and Ice Spice plays the girl talking to others behind Drake’s back. Then out of nowhere the beat switches and PND just starts talking about having a physical relationship with a woman. Thankfully, Drake, along with the drill beat, comes back onto the track and he’s back with metaphor and irony-rich lyrics that can leave a listener perplexed on how the same artist who can make pop hits like “DIE TRYING” and “NOKIA” can also make real rap music like “GLORIOUS.”
“WHEN HE’S GONE” is another song that I think you can skip if you don’t have time, as it’s just a catchy song that explores Drake and PND’s relationships with women who recently left their ex-boyfriend.
Finally, we reach the last song, “GREEDY.” The song opens up with Drake opening up about what’s been going on in his mind over the last year, saying “I’ve been a nice guy, people I’ve done right by flipped on me… Not surprised by nothin’, I just take it in stride.” The track could genuinely work as the outro on Drake’s career, as he is confessing his love, and opening up about his prior experiences, in the same way that a movie character may when they have a monologue at the end of the film, as they are just about to risk their lives for the greater good. Then PND comes onto the song and ruins the vibe for me. If it weren’t for him, I feel like this song would have been much bigger. After the artists are done, we get an angelic instrumental of rain and thunder, along with a few instruments including a harp and a xylophone, which is the perfect way to bring this album to a close.
All in all, “$ome $exy $ongs 4 U” isn’t a groundbreaking piece of art. It won’t go down as a legendary album, but there are certainly some incredible moments throughout the tracklist. Some things that were done well include diversifying the sound, as with a 21-track LP you can’t have every song sound the same, or the listener will inevitably be bored by the end. I also think Drake deserves his flowers here, as he single-handedly carries some of the tracks, especially in the second half of the project.
Some gripes I have are that PND should not have had a collaboration album with Drake. This marks Drake’s third collab album, previously releasing “Her Loss” with 21 Savage back in 2022, and “What A Time To Be Alive” with friend turned foe Future, back in 2015. The common denominator between those two is that they are rappers, not singers, which is why Drake and the other artists paired so well together, unlike this album which has PND singing his heart out after Drake already serenades us with a voice that fits better on these tracks, and lyrics that are more well thought out and contain literary elements that PND couldn’t dream of writing. I also think that they could’ve shortened the tracklist a little bit, as the overall message and meaning of the album are lost near the end.
I give this album a ⅘, as it was a great listen with many hits that will be played frequently in the months to come, but it also has some moments where you wonder just what could’ve been if the artists were different, or if the songs were made differently.
