On “Views,” the rapper bleeds onto the page and then admires the pattern. Illustration by Stanley Chow

The Toronto rapper and singer Drake got his big break in 2009, back when describing someone as both a rapper and a singer still seemed like a way to undermine his credibility. That year, he released “So Far Gone,” a mixtape that showcased him as a one-man distillation of modern hip-hop and R. & B. In the past, the impassive outlaw rapper and the gushing doe-eyed singer crossed paths only as a way of combining their genres’ respective charms for a hit single. Drake cracked the code: he collapsed the distance between these archetypes, seeming equally comfortable rhyming about dodging bullets and baring his insecurities in a come-hither hook.

There had been artists before him, like Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliott, who toggled between rapping and singing. But what distinguished Drake was a sense of shameless guile, a confidence in his complex persona that was due partly to his background as an actor. (Under his birth name, Aubrey Graham, he played a basketball star on “Degrassi: The Next Generation.”) As with his predecessor Kanye West, there was something novel about a male rapper who appeared to be so sensitive. Since the success of “So Far Gone,” Drake has become one of pop music’s most polarizing figures as well as one of its most influential. He is like an algorithm cycling through a set of durable themes: Nobody believed in me; always be loyal; my enemies are out to get me; we should be together; I’ve tried to be faithful, but I just can’t. And, above all: nobody’s perfect.

This last motif has defined Drake’s growth as an artist. Starting with the ornate melancholia of “Take Care,” from 2011, Drake elevated the unfurling of one’s imperfections into an art form. It wasn’t just his interest in scrutinizing his own contradictions, by now a trope for any thoughtful rapper. It was the harshness of his raps and the unabashed softness of his singing, the way his music flitted between styles and rhythms, expressing a restless desire to become someone or something better. The music sounded intimate and precise, owing largely to a close-knit circle of producers, led by his friend Noah (40) Shebib, who swaddled his voice within their digital purrs and tolling bells.

The thing about introspection, though, is that it allows us to think of ourselves always as works in progress. While this is a healthy realization with which to greet every day, it doesn’t make for the most compelling narrative. In recent years, Drake has grown perhaps too comfortable in this perpetual state of self-examination and light sadness—he bleeds onto the page and then admires the pattern he leaves behind. He mines his past, not as a reason to change but as rationalization for his worst behavior. Late last month, Drake released his fourth album, “Views.” On the cover, he poses high up on Toronto’s CN Tower—an apt, if melodramatic, image of loneliness at the top. “All of my ‘let’s just be friends’ are friends I don’t have anymore,” he croons on “Keep the Family Close,” one of the many songs on the album which function as autopsies for relationships past. Maybe there was something there? Probably not, he concludes, comparing a certain woman to a Chrysler designed to fool passersby into thinking it’s a Bentley.

A lot of the songs on “Views” find Drake running through his relationship woes, recounting arguments at the Cheesecake Factory or dead-end discussions about trust, wondering if he was so “good” that it was inevitable that he would be taken for granted. “Views,” like much of Drake’s music, is relatable because of its vagueness, balancing tales of betrayal and self-loathing with winning celebrations of loyalty and friendship. “Weston Road Flows” is a reminiscence of more carefree days; the title track, built on a swelling gospel sample, follows the pressures of fame—“The paranoia can start to turn into arrogance / Thoughts too deep to go work ’em out with a therapist.”

For Drake, redemption lies in his city and in his past, as well as in his brotherhood-above-everything approach to the good life. On the delightful “With You,” he and the singer PartyNextDoor take turns playfully begging their lovers to come back, though it seems as if they would rather hang out with each other. For the listener, redemption comes from Drake’s knack for producing motivational anthems. It’s humbling to think how many birthdays, graduations, and promotions have had his music as their soundtrack.

Drake understands how people live with music, how it helps us get through life, whether it’s a breakup, a court date, or an unusually long jog. One of his most endearing habits has always been the way he weaves other people’s music into his own. “I think I’d lie for you / I think I’d die for you / Jodeci ‘Cry for You,’ ” he sings, over deconstructed dancehall chirps, on “Controlla.” Elsewhere, he samples the vocals of a Mary J. Blige song from the nineties and a Ray J track from the aughts, as if the album were an index of the music that accompanies life’s heartbreaks.

“You send the ‘Are you here?’ text without an invite,” he sings, on the satiny “U with Me?” “That’s that shit that I don’t like.” Here he is paraphrasing the Chicago rapper Chief Keef’s 2012 hit “I Don’t Like.” Drake turns the original’s sociopathic stomp into something sweet and breezy, before retreating to more cocksure footing. “How’s that for real?” he raps, finishing the song with a gruff surliness. If you were to cook Drake’s music down to its essence—the intimacy, the effortlessness of its craft, the absurdity—you would probably get this song: a narrative about texting with an ex-lover, veering back and forth between vulnerability and passive-aggressive nagging, and managing to make that moment when “three dots” appear in the text window seem epic.

Last July, Drake found himself in a tiff with the pugnacious Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill. Though Drake had appeared on Meek’s album, he seemed uninterested in helping him promote it. What started as a minor snub metastasized into a referendum on the current state of hip-hop, as Meek accused Drake of hiring a lesser-known rapper named Quentin Miller to write his rhymes, a charge that might once have been a career-ender. Drake quickly responded with a pair of withering dis tracks, as well as “Hotline Bling,” a single that did little to resolve questions about Drake’s originality. “Hotline Bling” bore a close resemblance to “Cha Cha,” a minor hit by the Virginia rapper D.R.A.M., sparking an additional discussion of whether Drake was just a stylish fraud.

But old, meritocratic notions of authenticity have never vexed Drake. After all, he is a former child actor from Canada whose grittiest raps seem to portray a life that was never his, and who has been largely responsible for rebranding his home town, Toronto, as “the 6,” a reference to the city’s area codes as well as to its six original boroughs. Instead, he has succeeded by pursuing ubiquity, particularly when it comes to understanding and embracing the unpredictable rhythms of the Internet. “I do my own propaganda,” he raps on “Hype,” something that’s evident whenever you see him gesticulating courtside at a Toronto Raptors basketball game, or goofily dancing to an up-and-coming artist he may want to claim as a protégé, or releasing videos, like the one for the color-washed “Hotline Bling,” and album art, like the cover of “Views,” that seem tailor-made for recirculation as memes and GIFs. Even his lyrics seem engineered to be tweeted or used as hashtags.