Not that he’s abandoned one-sided relationship talks. The most vivid one here is the fretful and class-concerned “Childs Play”:

You wildin’, you super childish, you go to CVS for

Kotex in my Bugatti, I took the key and tried to

hide it so you can’t drive it, and put on mileage

Then you find it, awkward silence

On “U With Me?,” which recalls his excellent “Paris Morton Music 2,” Drake looks for love on his phone: “I group DM my exes/I tell ’em they belong to me, that goes on for forever”; “three dots, you thinking of a reaction still.”

But love is, increasingly, about money, too. “Sell my secrets and get top dollar/Sell my secrets for a Range Rover,” he says on “Redemption,” then continues: “Who’s gonna save me when I need saving?/Since ‘Take Care,’ I’ve been caretaking.”

Drake is more preoccupied with cadence than most rappers, and of course, more able to make unexpected juxtapositions between rapping and singing than anyone else. And thanks to his flirtations with dancehall, Afrobeats and grime, he is as flexible as ever. That’s why the most exciting moments on “Views” may be structural: Drake rapping in gnawed-off chunks like 2 Chainz on “Hype,” or with streamlined Jamaican inflections on “Controlla,” or with the dead-eyed stomp of Chicago drill music on “Pop Style.”

Image The cover of Drake’s new album, “Views.”

“Views” is dauntingly long, and Drake still hears his inner narrative as biblical epic — take the album’s opener, “Keep the Family Close,” where he sings with resignation and pomp, “All of my let’s-just-be-friends are friends I don’t have anymore/How do you not check on me when things go wrong?” He typically ends his albums with what could be termed a talk track, an extended rumination on the state of his feelings. On “Views,” there are several such songs sprinkled throughout the album.

But there are risks to effectively becoming your own genre — understudies and comers will do what they can to follow what you’ve already done, but so will you. Overall, “Views” contains Drake’s most straightforward lyrics, and his emotional excavations aren’t as striking as they were a few years ago, when they had the sting of the new to them.