Of course with the release of a new album comes all types of deep introspective interviews, and your boy Drake always gives us plenty to discuss.
Take his little chat with The Daily Beast, for example, where, once again, the topic of his heart-ing Rihanna was once again the topic…
“I came straight from Toronto, just a kid that was trying to get out of my mom’s house, and the first person I meet is a girl that’s the biggest person you could possibly meet at my age,” said Drake. “So I meet her and it was just mind-blowing. I couldn’t believe she’d even want to talk to me.” He paused for a moment, adding, “I read some interview where they painted me as so sad and heartbroken, but we’re cool. I was never torn apart by that situation.”
Really? But just last month you were… oh, never mind. And then, we discovered just how real “Tough Guy Drizzy” can get.
Still, the story has persisted in the media, sparking recent rumors that Brown elbowed Drake in the head in retaliation.
“I respect Chris Brown. I’d like to call myself a friend—I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that,” said Drake. “But I definitely didn’t get elbowed in my face. Somebody would’ve got knocked the f–k out.”
That made us giggle a little… And then we checked out his cover feature for the December/January issue of Complex Magazine and realized this is really how this dude talks when he drops his Aaliyah aspirations.
“I don’t give a [fawk]. I want to move through life in the most non-confrontational way possible, but I’m not a p****. Don’t ever get that mixed up.
“My father taught me: ‘Don’t fear any man. Don’t ever fear another person.’ I don’t get myself mixed up with stupid [isht]. I get a lot of love. I don’t feel tension. I stand 6’2”. By no means am I the most threatening guy in the rap game, but there are very few people who will come up and say that isht to me in person. It’s always all smiles. That’s one thing I do not fear, anyone in this game. Nobody. Especially none of these guys that are paid to talk [isht].”
Well, alrighty then Aubrey. Flip through and check out some more interesting quotes and photos from Drake’s Complex jawn, including the real deal about the next two famous women who will probably end up in his music.
On the women in his life…
Drake may only have one artist under his wing, but the number of women he’s associated with grows by the day. He’s talked at length about his heartbreak with Rihanna and his love for Nicki. Though he tries to keep mum, it’s impossible to tamp down speculation. He was recently snapped playing tennis with Serena Williams. Surely there’s more to their pairing than a couple of aces, right? Drake smiles and gives a ready-made response: “I really, really love and care for Serena Williams. She’s incredible. That’s someone I’m proud to say I know. She’s definitely in my life and I’m in her life. It’s great to watch her play tennis. Very impressive.”
When asked about Quincy Jones’s Harvard-educated daughter (and star of Parks & Recreation) Rashida Jones, Drake pauses, then offers: “Rashida has a beautiful, beautiful spirit. So talented, so funny. I met her at Rihanna’s birthday party. I was DJing and she liked my set.”
His game just rewinds, huh?
On his critics…
“They nitpick at everything,” he says, shaking his head. “I can’t do anything. All they want me to do is dress so they can make fun of me. Otherwise, it’s hard for them. I don’t give people many reasons to dislike me. They have to find shit. They’re like, ‘Aw man, sweaters! He wears sweaters too much.’ Like, what?”
The [“Headlines”] video’s most talked-about image was Drake draped in all-black Nike apparel, surrounded by two groups of ominous-looking dudes in black hoodies. Blog commenters derided him for renting some thugs to make himself look tough.
But the guys in question are not some newly assembled goon squad. Most come from two of Toronto’s worst neighborhoods, Malvern and Galloway, which have been warring for the past few years. “There’s a lot of people lost in that situation, and through having mutual friends in both of those hoods, we were all able to come together, shoot that video, and immortalize that moment,” says Drake—visibly perturbed that he has to explain himself. “I don’t brag about my hood stories. Everybody’s like, ‘Get the fuck out of here with that shit,’ but I’ve done a lot for the streets out here.”
“Everybody knows Drake isn’t hood,” says Niko, his right-hand man and confidant. Neeks, as the crew calls him, is a quiet, bespectacled dude who met Drizzy back when he was pushing his first mixtape, Room for Improvement. Neeks says Toronto rap used to be much more street-oriented. Kardinal Offishall, Saukrates, and Choclair were the big names. “Drake came and flipped it and said everything that a hood guy can’t say. I guess that’s why people liked him.”
Drake has no delusions of himself as a gangster. He knows he’s at his best when paring down real-life events and emotions other rappers would never tackle. “Any musical sound is real to me,” Drake says as another round of drinks hits the table. “It doesn’t matter if it’s from like Lana Del Ray all the way to Future from Atlanta or ASAP Rocky. Sonically, you can do whatever you want. That’s the beautiful thing about music: you get to make a choice. The more you can start pinpointing pieces of your actual life and start pulling it into your music, people will be like, ‘Damn, that’s something I’ve only thought about, but this guy put it into a song.’ ” He mentions the drunk-dialing ditty “Marvin’s Room” as one example of a song drawn from his daily life.
But if music is a blend of reality and artistic license, where does Drake’s talk about catching bodies fall? “Who’s going to catch a body with all these [n-words] rapping about murder?” he asks. “Who’s really putting a body on a gun?” C-Murder and Gucci Mane come to mind, but I say nothing. “When I say, ‘You’re going to make someone around me catch a body like that,’ that’s something you can ask them about.” He points to his boy Chubbs—the one who’s “in love with street [isht].”
“Everybody wants to poke and jab at Drake because they don’t feel like he will throw back,” says Chubbs, who met Drake nearly four years ago. “But nobody around here is going to let something happen to him at any time, especially me. I’m not ever going to let nothing happen to him. If it’s going to happen it’s going to happen to me first.”
On throwing shots at The Throne and Hip-Hop beef
When he dropped “Dreams” last May, he ruffled feathers with the line “I feel like it went from top five to remaining five/My favorite rappers either lost it or they ain’t alive.” Since he once said he’d cry if Jay-Z died, it’s safe to assume Hov would make his top five. But when pressed, Drake neither confirms nor denies whether Jay and Kanye were targets.
“It wasn’t meant to be a shot at the five rappers that I love,” he says. “I’ve never even sat down and pieced together a top five before. I just feel like I’m really good right now. And I’ve never felt like that before. I’ve always felt reluctant to say anything like that, but I’m very confident in these new raps that I’m about to give the world.”
Drake’s also very confident in the strength of his YMCMB team. When he says, “They trying to bring us down/Me, Weezy, and Stunna,” he may be referring to “H.A.M.,” the first single from Watch The Throne, on which Jay-Z took unnamed rappers to task for having “baby money,” and not even as much as his lady. Lil Wayne wasn’t the only listener who took that as a reference to Cash Money CEO Bryan “Baby” Williams. Five months later on DJ Khaled’s summer banger “I’m on One,” Drake proclaimed that “the throne is for the taking” before advising listeners to “watch” him take it.
Still, Drake does his best to remain diplomatic—sort of. “Rapping is about being young and doing your thing and being fly,” he says—the implication being that if older rappers catch feelings, so be it. “I’m sure people took it that way and that’s good, man. That’s great. Wake the fuck up. I hope it makes you go harder. I hope it makes you get mad at me and write a song with me in mind. I hope Kanye’s verse on ‘Otis’ was with that in mind. Everyone tried to tell me ‘Oh Jay is going at you.’ I don’t hear it, but I hope it was man, that song is fucking incredible. Making each other go harder, that’s what this shit is about.”
Check out the full article here…
