Take Care Review

The achievement is atmosphere. The mixes put everything at the bottom of a well, drums at half speed and drenched, keyboards holding single chords for bars at a time, and a vocal that sits close and dry against all that space. Marvins Room is a drunk phone call recorded as a song, and it should be unbearable and is instead the most influential three minutes he has ever made.

The title track takes a house record built from a folk cover and turns it into something regretful. Headlines and The Motto are the hits. Look What You've Done proves he can write plainly when he wants to, a grandmother in a hospital bed and not one punchline. The self absorption is total and the album runs eighty minutes, both of which would sink a lesser record. This one turns them into the point. Almost everything sad and expensive in rap for the following ten years came out of here.