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.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"