Everyone in rap and their grandmother (presumably, not that we’ve ever met the woman) seems to be dropping an album on us these days, Drake included. The rapper was only the latest (after Kanye West and J Cole) to grace us with an album announcement. Granted, that release won’t be happening until September 17, but out of sheer generosity, Drake has also released four singles to warm his fans hearts (or help them cool off, seeing as how it’s the middle of summer right now,) which may or may not be featured on the record.

The official tracklist unfortunately hasn’t been released yet. One smart strategy from Drake is collaborating with some extremely popular rappers of late, like on Jodeci Freestyle, which features recent sensation J Cole. Cole’s record “Born Sinner” of course dropped within days of Kanye’s Yeezus, prompting a natural comparison between the two, which brought some welcome publicity for the rapper. Back to Drake, however, the rest of his new tracks - ARTYNEXTDOOR's "Over Here" and a remix of Migos' "Versace," as well as “The Motion,” featuring Sampha, all show that the rapper is getting into the collaborative spirit lately, which could be taken as a sign of the number of people working on his September release.

If Drake is taking any cues from Kanye, he should be all about the collaborative aspects of music production right now. Of course, nothing is certain yet for an album, which would be due out in three months, but unless Drake pulls a complete 360, it looks like we’ll be seeing another highly collaborative album this year.

Drake, Ontario
Drake was mostly a gossip site mainstay for a while.

Drake, Grammy Awards
Now he's finally back to making music.