Drake's new single arrived on the Internet with Cliff's Notes: an open letter from the man himself. "I feel sometimes that people don't have enough information about my beginnings," he wrote. "Started From the Bottom" doesn't exactly fill in the blanks – we learn Drake used to argue with his mom and sometimes borrowed his uncle's car. The real statement is the revamped sound: Drake raps in a higher register over a spare, staccato beat built around a nattering 808 and piano loop. But the result is a duller Drizzy – his rhymes lack his usual wit and flair. The dude seems defensive – unnecessarily, and to the detriment of his music.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.