“I definitely had time to sit with albums for reviews, at least a week or more depending on when we got the advance. For insight I reached out to Jerry Barrow, the managing editor of WatchLoud and formerly of The Source, who explains that a hastier review for an album was on a case-by-case basis during rap’s golden era. But I’m curious to know if rap writers back then factored in a substantial amount of time to dissect instant classics like Nas’ Illmatic. I’m not an OG hip-hop writer who was writing in the ’90s, especially when album reviews in the aforementioned magazines held a lot of weight as the big dogs in a small pen. I wanted to investigate if the same metrics that determined a classic album for XXL and The Source (a XXL or five mics rating) can even be applied in 2016, a year when traditional album releases are being abandoned for streaming exclusives and explosive rollouts that drum up excitement. Part of calling something a classic is evaluating it over a period of time after the hype dies down and knee-jerk reactions have been said. My main reason for this 30-day marathon of VIEWS is I didn’t want to rush my opinion of the album’s potential classic status. This was supposed to be his classic that put him in the pantheon of the Jay Zs and Eminems, and Twitter certainly threw the term around. (Physical copies and digital versions were available on May 6.) We were quick to judge if the album was a classic based on the high expectations Drizzy put upon himself after washing Meek Mill in the biggest rap feud of 2015 and coasting through 2016 with “Hotline Bling” becoming a pop phenomenon. It was an Apple Music exclusive for two weeks before arriving on Spotify and Tidal on May 13. In this age of surprise releases and an urgency to churn out content, VIEWS was an event album consumed in real-time. On the one month anniversary of VIEWS, I wanted to spend more than 24 hours to sit with the production of Noah “40” Shebib and collaborators, as well as the nuances in Drake’s 20-track effort.

I’ve listened to VIEWS every day in everyday situations to examine what Drake says on “Hype” is actually true: Is his album already a classic? As you’re reading this, it’s been one month since Drake’s fourth studio album, VIEWS, released on April 29.

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