The album's expositional content is interpreted by critics in relation to contemporary society. "Newsday"s Glenn Gamboa views that Drake's "emotional self-doubt and realizations about [...] success", along with the album's melancholy mood, "capturtoday's zeitgeist of uncertainty and diminishing expectations." Music journalist Ann Powers cites Drake's "predicament — the inability to locate oneself within everyday power relations" as "one that's afflicted existential antiheroes throughout modernity." She denotes his point of view as that of a "biracial upper middle-class kid [... from a position of privilege that few rappers would occupy", and finds his subject matter culturally significant, stating "melancholia is that of the overly sated [... But Drake's relentless focus on the point where money empties out happiness isn't merely autobiographical. 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." 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.