Does it really matter? Drake dropped a Beyoncé-esque 'surprise' release on the Internet — on iTunes, specifically — at the midnight hour on Thursday, and it’s a bristling testament to the validity of the esteemed position the Toronto MC currently occupies on the international hip-hop landscape.

If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late boasts no singles, scarce hooks, barely any guests and a profoundly misanthropic temperament, and yet it will undoubtedly shift virtual bucketloads of downloads in the days ahead because even the people who profess not to like Drake will be desperate to know what Drake is up to these days. And also because, like most everything Drake does, If You’re Reading This… is of exceptional quality and resembles nothing else going on in hip-hop at the moment. Except all the stuff that bites on Drake, of course.

Drake thinks a lot about the haters, the doubters and the rip-off artists 'cloning me' on this surly, stripped-down 17-track offering, as he usually does. Indeed, if you’re not a fan of the solipsistic knots in which Aubrey Drake Graham consistently ties himself over every nearly aspect of his existence — especially, y’know, his agonizing fame, fabulous wealth and unerring luck with the ladies — you’re not gonna find much of a buffer between yourself and 'the naked Drake' here: If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late is basically the guy laying himself bare in kinda-freeform fashion with a 'That’s one bottle of red wine in!' degree of late-night intimacy for nearly 70 minutes, over skeletal, deferentially cohesive slo-mo beats stripped of any easy fun by hometown producers Boi-1da, Noah '40' Shebib and Wondagurl (with a gauzy appearance by protégé PartyNextDoor on a pair of tracks at the mid-section).

There’s an edge to Drake’s self-absorption that hasn’t been there before, though, as one might expect from a record whose title and cover art are stylized like a suicide note.

Gunfire intrudes upon the funereal paranoia of 'Energy' and 'Know Yourself'; a Kanye-esque, newly sick-of-it-all sneer renders the character narrating '10 Bands' and '6 God' even more difficult to love even though he clearly, desperately wants to be loved; self-loathing spews with uncomfortably spit-flecked ferocity from 'Company,' wherein Drake moans 'I don’t deserve her / She’s just a little too perfect / She’s just a little too worth it / I don’t deserve her at all' a couple of times before venturing out for a late-night drive through Detroit with Travi$ Scott in an increasingly garbled narcotic haze.

'Star67,' meanwhile, seethes with a violence uncharacteristic of a nice Toronto kid like Drake and seems to shore up rumours that If You’re Reading This… might be a gambit to walk away with mentor (and 'Used To' guest rapper) Lil’ Wayne from Cash Money Records: 'Brand new Beretta / Can’t wait to let it go / Walk up in my label / Like, "Where the cheque, yo?"'

Who knows? It could all be fiction. What do I know about Drake other than what Drake gives me in his music? But Drake’s strength as a rapper — beyond his increasingly multidimensional flow, now audible leaps and bounds beyond the flow it was when he released his breakthrough mixtape, So Far Gone, exactly six years ago — is that he’s still willing to project himself as a bravely and believably human persona ('I can’t be out here being vulnerable, mama,' he worries to his mama, being totally vulnerable, on 'You & The 6') into a hip-hop universe that’s still very much preoccupied with dubious machismo.

He’s fronting nothing but his skills, the unadorned skills of his core production team and their shared skill at turning his insecurities into something that sounds remarkably like strength on If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. If this is really just a teaser for Drake’s proper 2015 album, the kings of the hip-hop throne might best get ready to bow."