"ND wasn't an egotist in the boastful sense, but (compared to someone like Thompson) he was unable to get past his own perceptions (which in his case were bound up with insecurities). He was all inwardness"

I don't what you mean. Are you talking about his lyrics? Or his personality? It sounds like you're saying a little of both.

I think 'unable to get past his own perceptions' is a bit meaningless. In a sense we're all unable to get past our own perceptions: they're ultimately all we have.

His lyrics were no more self-centred or solipsistic than, say, John Clare's poetry. Maybe you have no time at all for that whole vein of subjectivity typical of English Romantic poetry, which Drake would have studied at Cambridge. That in itself is understandable.

I'm never comfortable with the idea that just someone singing about recognisable, definite, named things is somehow more "outward-looking" than someone dealing in more abstract stuff. Taken to an extreme, it wilfully misses the whole point of what a metaphor is.