The album features guest appearances from the Weeknd, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, Birdman, Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Stevie Wonder, Lil Wayne, and André 3000.

Alongside prominent production from the album's executive producers Drake and 40, further contributors include T-Minus, Chantal Kreviazuk, Boi-1da, Illangelo, Jamie xx, Supa Dups, Just Blaze, Chase N. Cashe, and Doc McKinney.

Prior to Take Care, Drake released Thank Me Later, which experienced positive critical success, but left him feeling disjointed about the album's musical content.

Expressing a desire to reunite with 40, his long-time producer who featured in parts on Thank Me Later, the duo worked extensively on the new album once recording sessions began in 2010.

It incorporates several elements that have come to define Drake's sound, including minimalist R&B influences, existential subject matter, and alternately sung and rapped vocals.

Despite leaking online nine days before its scheduled release, Take Care debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 631,000 copies in its first week.

[9] Canadian singer The Weeknd stated in a 2013 interview that half of the tracks he had written for his 2011 debut mixtape House of Balloons did happen to end up on Take Care.

[17] He even appeared on 9th's documentary The Wonder Year and expressed his desire to make a number one hit with him,[18] however, in an interview about a month prior to the slated release date, 9th said that he was not on the album.

Several artists were confirmed as collaborators with Drake on Take Care consist of Stevie Wonder, Kendrick Lamar, Chantal Kreviazuk,[24] André 3000, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj and Rihanna.

[34] The music is typified by an atmospheric sound,[35] muted textures, slow tempos,[36] subtle chords,[37] melodic synth tracks, low-end grooves,[38][39] and sparse, ambient arrangements.

[3] Noah "40" Shebib contributed to most of the album's production with murky beats, dark synth layers, atmospheric keyboards,[40] moody guitar sounds,[36] smooth piano, muffled drums,[28] dramatic flourishes,[4] and low-pass filters.

[4] His production for the album is characteristic of the Toronto hip hop scene, which experienced a mainstream breakthrough with Shebib's work with Drake, producers Boi-1da and T-Minus, and singer-songwriter the Weeknd, all of whom contributed to Take Care.

Club comments that the album is "crafted primarily around the oblique production of Drake's native Toronto—all rippling synths, distant pulses, and purposeful empty space".

[28][36][38][44] NPR writer Frannie Kelley notes "minimalist reworkings of TLC's minor-key soul and [...] trancey rhythms that land somewhere between paranoid Sly Stone and smoked-out Maxwell".

[36][47][48][49] Drake's not the first to ponder such dim realities ... Take Care, however, raises the stakes by fully dwelling in that discomfort zone where not just sex, but every personal exchange — with admirers, among friends, within a family — starts to feel like a financial transaction.

[50] Drake's lyrics on Take Care address failed romances, missed connections,[28] relationship with friends and family,[41] maintaining balance with growing wealth and fame, concerns about leading a hollow life, the passage of young adulthood,[50] and despondency.

[37] Juan Edgardo Rodriguez of No Ripcord denotes women as "the main force in his songs – he's consciously aware about what it takes to love them, but simply decides to thrust aside the guidelines because he's on an entirely different stratosphere from any female average joe.

[33] Newsday's Glenn Gamboa views that Drake's "emotional self-doubt and realizations about [...] success", along with the album's melancholy mood, "captur[es] today's zeitgeist of uncertainty and diminishing expectations.

It's emblematic of our moment of crashed markets and occupied streets, and it speaks to a generation beginning to question whether the All-American, celebrity-endorsed credit card lifestyle will make them anything but bankrupt.

"[33] Pitchfork Media's Ryan Dombal compares his "unrepentant navel-gazing and obsession with lost love" to Marvin Gaye's 1978 album Here, My Dear, adding that Drake's "penchant for poetic oversharing" makes him "an apt avatar" for the Information Age.

[28] Drake's songwriting is characterized by wistful introspection,[38] existential contemplation,[41] and minimal boasting,[40] with lyrics that convey frankness,[28] vulnerability, melancholia, and narcissism.

[39][40] Kazeem Famuyide of The Source explains his conflicted persona as being "arrogant enough to know his place as one of the most successful artist in hip-hop, and comfortable enough to realize his own faults in his personal life.

"[54] Jon Dolan of Rolling Stone writes that Drake "collapse[s] many moods – arrogance, sadness, tenderness and self-pity – into one vast, squish-souled emotion.

"[30] Kevin Ritchie of NOW notes "an overwhelming sense of alienation, and sadness" on Take Care, calling it "an idiosyncratic, aggressively self-conscious and occasionally sentimental album".

[66] The album's lead single, "Marvins Room" impacted urban radio on June 28, 2011; peaking at number 21 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

[83] John McDonnell of NME dubbed it "an affecting masterpiece" and commended its "delicate, mellifluous sound and unashamedly candid, emotive lyrics.

"[85] Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal found Drake's "technical abilities" to be improved and stated, "Just as his thematic concerns have become richer, so has the music backing them up.

"[28] Andy Hutchins of The Village Voice called it "a carefully crafted bundle of contradictory sentiments from a conflicted rapper who explores his own neuroses in as compelling a manner as anyone not named Kanye West.

"[33] Jon Caramanica of The New York Times called it "an album of eccentric black pop that takes" hip hop and R&B "as starting points, asks what they can do but haven't been doing, then attempts those things.

[101] On January 31, 2012, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of one million copies in the United States.