“‘Are we crazy?’ And it took a while…it takes a while.”Throughout the year, The Recording Academy (the folks behind The Grammys) hosts a series of conversations with artists from all over the country. Last week, the Nashville chapter held a Q&A with Drake, whose fascinating background and radio hits (such as this summer’s “Best I Ever Had”) have thrust him into the spotlight as the genre’s up-and-coming artist to watch. We sent guest writer and Recording Academy member Andrew Tritter to the program to take down what he could from the Academy’s conversation with the rapper who is poised to take over 2010
Versus Magazine: This is not your first trip to Nashville, correct?
Drake: No, it’s not. Nashville is a great city and my father lives in Memphis, so I used to drive down here all the time in this Mercury Cougar [laughs]… and that’s where I got a lot of music knowledge, actually. My dad used to give me 30 minutes to play hip hop on the 24 or 25 hour drive — he’d let me put on rap tapes and then he’d make me listen to Marvin Gaye, The Spinners … that really penetrated my mind as a young kid. So, yeah, the whole state of Tennessee is very valuable to me.
VM: Your father’s side of the family was very musical — how did your father and that side of the family influence your music?
Drake: My dad was always a musician. My first time performing I was really young, probably like eight or nine, and he had taken me out when he wasn’t supposed to (because he had a gig and he was looking after me), and he thought it would be interesting to bring me up on stage to sing the one song that I knew, which was “Ride, Sally Ride.” So I ended up on stage performing with my dad, and everyone in the place thought it was the cutest thing in the world. I don’t remember much about my childhood, but I remember that night.
Also, the culture of Memphis … see, Toronto is very multi-cultural, it’s a booming city. So to go between Toronto and Memphis and get the different types of music, the different food, the different feeling … coming from Toronto, I always wanted to see more.
VM: Was there any music on your mom’s side of the family?Drake: Yeah, but it was classical pianists and things of that nature. But my mom… my mom used to force me to say things as colorfully as possible. She would never let me get by with saying, ‘Well, that food was good.’ No, I had to say, ‘That food was delicious,’ or something extravagant. My mom was responsible for a lot of the way I write, the way I choose to say things. That’s where the music comes in on my mom’s side.
VM: How did it come about that you ended up on Degrassi?Drake: I was in eighth grade and there was this kid in my class whose father was an agent. My biggest problem in school was that I was an attention-seeker, so I was always trying to make people laugh in class. And this kid was like, ‘You’re funny, you’ve got timing. You should meet my dad, my dad’s an agent. You’re mixed, and you have a presence about you.’ So eventually in grade nine I took him up on his offer and went to meet his dad, and his dad was completely like the opposite: “I don’t think [this kid] really has anything to offer…’ [laughs]. I thought I was gonna walk in there and be a star, and he was like “Nah, you don’t really have it.”
I used to go to a predominantly white school. I was actually the closest thing to a black person at my school, and it was a very painful process and time. Kids don’t always understand. The Jewish community was very wealthy, they kept to themselves. It wasn’t necessarily that I was black that bothered them, it was that they didn’t understand me being black and Jewish. And also from an early age I was doing print work [modeling]. I used to have embarrassing catalogs come out … I remember one time this kid invited me to a party. And I never used to get invited to the parties, and I’m talking this was a party, you know what I’m saying. So this kid Chris invited me, and his family was super wealthy, and this girl I liked was gonna be there. So I went out and got this nice little Perry Ellis sweater, and I showed up and there was this picture of me on the door in a Power Rangers costume, from like a Wal-Mart photo ad. And I realized they invited me so they could make fun of me. But I was too embarrassed to call my mom to pick me up, so I actually walked an hour and a half home from this party, because I didn’t want her to think I didn’t have a good time. Suffice to say I really did not like going to that school, and I wanted to go somewhere where there was more variety.
So anyway, grade nine was a hard year. I had met with an agent before, and he set me up with an audition for this show called “Degrassi” … and, funny, I’ve never told this story before but I had actually smoked Marijuana for the first time before I went to the audition, [laughs] so, it was going to be fun. I was in the bathroom splashing water on my face and all this stuff. But that actually led to me actually leading a very clean cut life! [laughs] But I guess that got me a little looser and I gave it my all, trying out for this role of a white football player. A few weeks later while I was in school my mother called my phone and said, “They’re changing the role to a black basketball player.” And I remember everybody at school was in this little courtyard signing yearbooks, and I walked away and I never said goodbye to anybody. I just left. And that was my first step toward finding myself as a person. I got a little more confident.
VM: And what did you feel that a major label deal would offer you that you couldn’t have already?
Drake: I fought the whole label thing for a long time. I used to sit around and just be like, “Let’s just put it out ourselves, let me remain the underdog, and just keep putting out these records on this independent scale.” The problem with that is, it’s very unrealistic as an artist to do that. I’m still in control of everything, I do everything, we do everything, I’m very hands-on. But at the same time, when it gets to a certain point you need the machine that is a label. And we got on that scale thanks to Wayne. Wayne did a lot for me from the very early stages. The foresight he had just meant the world to me, the biggest sign of respect that I’ve ever had. So the choice [as to which record label to sign to] … it was a no-brainer to me.
VM: There were a couple interviews where you said the money wasn’t the most important thing. And obviously you’re very in control of your career, and it just strikes me that you’re very smart in that a lot of people in the position that you’re in will just sign away everything just to have that shot.
Drake: I always saw the value of what we can build on our own. We did “So Far Gone” by ourselves, really. My managers hadn’t even heard of it until it was out two days later. It was important to me to keep that grassroots feel. All I really wanted was creative freedom, and a lot of people could not offer me that, so I took the situation and considered that. There is nobody that can come to me and say, “We need this album on this day,” there’s nobody that can come to me and say, “The cover has to look like this,” “You have to dress like this,” there’s nobody that can tell me what to rap about or what shows to go to, there’s nobody that can tell me anything. If you have an opinion, of course I will listen to it, but there’s no one that controls my position in this game. And that way, if I make a mistake, I get to look at myself in the mirror and go, “You gotta pull it together.” Because I don’t like being able to say, “It was that guy’s fault.” I want to learn from my mistakes.
VM: Tell us about the music and why it is what it is for you. Why aren't you a gangster?
Drake: I wear knitted sweaters.
No, I think it all started with a genius by the name of Kanye West, who made the choice when there was nobody doing anything in that lane. He made the choice to make a brand of witty, intelligent rap that referenced the hood, that referenced things like dope wars but never … he never claimed anything other than what he truly was. It was the first time I ever felt like, here’s someone who’s not a thug, that I genuinely connect to. That I believe in, you know. Because there’s thugs that I believe, you know, like, I believe Young Jeezy, because I know Young Jeezy and that’s my big brother. I believe his stories. These guys that rap about their lives, they are rapping about truth, things they’ve really done, it’s just there are very few of them that can really make you connect to it if you’re so far removed from that lifestyle. Kanye really opened up the door for people in our generation. -
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