Drake Unveils 'More Life,' Calls The Project A Playlist, Not An Album

In an industry full of surprises, Drake premiered his new LP the old-fashioned way. In fact, the biggest surprise surrounding More Life — the studio album he's calling a "playlist" — is that it finally came out as predicted. After months of teasing fans with rumored tracklists, a string of potential singles and cryptic Instagram posts hinting at release dates that came and went, the 6 God debuted his seventh solo LP on OVO Sound Radio Saturday at 6:30 p.m. ET, and it appeared on streaming services at 8:30 p.m.

"Thank you for your patience," Drake's manager and OVO radio host Oliver El-Khatib said to open the show. Drake also joined via phone from London to introduce the album. "This project is just a celebration of the fact that we're still here, still going," he said.

The extended tracklist of More Life fueled early speculation about the impact of streaming, as artists begin to trend toward chunkier albums to monopolize the charts. And sure enough, the playlist clocked in at 22 songs.

Drake, More Life Tracklist

1. "Free Smoke"
2. "No Long Talk" (feat. Giggs)
3. "Passionfruit"
4. "Jorja Interlude"
5. "Get It Together" (feat. Black Coffee and Jorja Smith)
6. "Madiba Riddim"
7. "Blem"
8. "4422" (feat. Sampha)
9. "Gyalchester"
10. "Skepta Interlude"
11. "Portland" (feat. Quavo and Travis Scott)
12. "Sacrifices" (feat. 2 Chainz and Young Thug)
13. "Nothings Into Somethings"
14. "Teenage Fever"
15. "KMT" (feat. Giggs)
16. "Lose You"
17. "Can't Have Everything"
18. "Glow" (feat. Kanye West)
19. "Since Way Back" (feat. PARTYNEXTDOOR)
20. "Fake Love"
21. "Ice Melts" (feat. Young Thug)
22. "Do Not Disturb"

Certainly Drake, the most-streamed artist of 2016, was eager to retain his crown this year. One week after his frequent collaborator, Atlanta rapper-slash-Auto-Tune-crooner Future, became the first solo act to score back-to-back No. 1 debuts on the Billboard 200 album chart, making history has to be at the front of his mind. And every song off More Life is likely to chart on Billboard's Hot 100 at once. If so, it will total two songs more than he simultaneously placed on that same chart last year with the release of his 20-song album Views. More Life is a project designed, in part, to break his last record.

The rumor mill surrounding the release has served as a strategic part of the hype. Whether the speculation proves true is a matter of time — as in the amount of time it takes for the full playlist to finish streaming live.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.