Drake, records in Toronto

DRAKE ISN'T KNOCKING HIS DEBUT album. Rrelly, he is't.  But I think I got caught up in making it seem big and first album ish, the Toronto MC says of 2010's smash Thank Me Later.  I may not have delved into anything because I was busy living it.  Drake's mission for his second LP is to dig deeper into how it feels to be a young superstar.

Collaborators include Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, Abel Tesfaye of mysterious R&B act the Weeknd and Stevie Wonder, who play a keyboard solo on a song called Doing It Wrong.  The production, mostly courtesy of Drake's longtime associates 40, T-Minus and Boi-Ida, runs from stripped-down melancholy (Marvin's Room, which recounts a sloppy drunk dial) to frosty bombast (Headlines, about been rich, high and lonely).

Drake credits his hometown, far off the hip-hop grid, with inspiring the album's reflective
mood. In the studio, I don't distract with TV or anything, he says.  Is sit on a couch, under a lamp, and there's Persian rugs and weed.  That does it for me.