[DJ Semtex]
When we hooked up years ago, you were supposed to come on the show, it didn’t happen but we connected the day after and did a legendary interview in Hyde Park. I said it felt like you’re gonna make history
[Drake]
It’s been a while, that’s kinda how we ended up here. When I got here [London], I was just like in my room, just tryna find my lineage of coming to London and just trying to figure out where it all started. And I just watched that Hyde Park interview and I’m watching this kid, it’s me but to me it’s just a kid that’s just trying to talk, trying to answer questions in the best way possible. Just the fact that we were just walking around, just me, you, a microphone and a camera. I was like “man I should hit Semtex up, man we should talk again”. I feel like that was a good conversation, we covered a wide spectrum of things and I think it’s been a long time since somebody’s been able to sit down and do that with me, and that’s how we’re here
[DJ Semtex]
How’s it feel to go from doing mixtapes, So Far Gone was the mixtape that really broke, before that Lil Wayne mentioned you in an interview with me, and I started following you and it’s just grown. From there you’ve been non-stop, its crazy…
[Drake]
Yeah that was an amazing time for all of us… still doing it with the same people. It was just… our landmark for that project is 15 Fort York, which was “40” and Oliver’s apartment and we really started that project there. Then it moved to the Beverly Hills Hotel in LA, when we were first just getting around Wayne, I know Wayne mentioned me in the interview, but the real turning point for me was when Wayne went on stage at the MTV awards and rapped one of the verses from ‘Money To Blow’. Instead of doing his own verse he just impromptu rapped one of my verses. And at that time, people are like, people from back home who really didn’t….. I mean it was just a tough thing to believe like, “I know he says he’s over there but is he gonna come home with a Lil Wayne record, is this gonna really happen” at that time people were like “ok he just rapped Drakes song, if he gets a Wayne record this is outta here”
That was when I was able to come back off those trips with Ransom. I went back home with Ransom, which was the first time I had ever got a Lil Wayne verse. From there I had a bunch of songs that I had recorded at the studio called Hot Beats and Wayne just got on all of them like ‘Stunt Hard’ and ‘Forever’ was one of them, early early. Then we started crafting that first project and using the input of two people who again I still work with to this day and my music wouldn’t be what it is without them, that’s Oliver and ‘40’ – you know it’s funny cos we’re sitting here talking and they’re back in Toronto executive producing ‘More Life’. Oliver’s executive producing it and ‘40’ is obviously always involved, but kinda just a full circle moment for us, cos Oliver had so much input on ‘So Far Gone’ so I was like “man it would be nice to do something with me and you again”, so I gave him that task and he’s at home piecing it together. So yes it was a great start and from there it just became a wild journey that I guess we’ll talk about
[DJ Semtex]
A lot to talk about – ‘More Talk’…
Since we’re right at the beginning, I was in Amsterdam with Lil Wayne….and he tells me – Yo he’s been writing on ‘Detox’ that was like the mythical album, you gotta be about your business to be involved in that, or to be in the studio. How did you end up from doing a tv show to working with Dr Dre, writing for him on Detox? It’s taking it back…
[Drake]
Its taking it back, I’m not usually that good with the ‘taking it back moments’ but I actually remember this one vividly. But yeah, I was on the show and while I was on the show, I started getting less and less character time, because of the fact that everybody was taking a notice to just the fact that I was more focused on music. And at the time I actually had a studio that was right by the film studio for Degrassi, so I ended up working out a deal with the after hours staff where I would leave work, go home get my stuff – Degrassi was all the way in the east end, which is Scarborough that’s like an area of our city. I’d go home all the way back to the city, get my stuff, come back to the studio, I would record and around 4/5am I would sneak back into Degrassi, they’d let me in and I would go to sleep in my dressing room. Eventually they found out what I was doing and they got really upset. During that time I was crafting all these songs, and I had a song that Omen produced – it was me and Mickey Factz and somebody else was on it I think. So Dre had heard the song and he had hit me like, “man I need proof that you wrote this” (laughs), so I had to fax him the lyrics of the song, I had to send him a fax message, from my moms fax machine in her bedroom I sent him a fax
You know at that time, Detox was going on, it was more like he had just a camp of people, I guess churning out ideas and just trying to spark something. I was flown out to record at Record One, which is a legendary studio. Yeah I was in there for a while, I did a lot of work, me and ‘40’, always brought ‘40’ with me, that was like a stipulation in my career, I wouldn’t move without ‘40’, so brought ’40’. Got to meet a lot of great people, obviously got to work with Dre, and it kinda all came to an end, when I.. Dre brought me into his office and said “Man you’re doing really good work” and he gave me a $10,000 cheque, and it was the most money I’d ever had in my life and at the time I was in a relationship. So I got the money and I called my girl, and I flew my girl down to L.A and was like “we can get a hotel this is crazy”, it was just a joyous moment for me. And I had missed studio or I had done something wrong, I had let my mind deviate from work and I had missed something, and next thing I know I was sent home and that was kind of it. It was a huge life lesson for me and I still have that… Actually when Dre came out at the Forum, I brought him the $10,000 cheque cos I had saved the actual hard copy of it, even though I got the money for it, they let me keep a copy of the cheque
So yeah that was kinda my dealings with that very early on, and I had heard rumblings, like oh all these people are here and I had met Snoop, and I kinda wrote this song, that ‘40’ still has somewhere for Dre and Snoop. We listened to it not to long, couple years ago, its kinda hard. But yeah it was a great experience, a great learning experience for me and ‘40’, it brought us closer and it just taught us about how this shit really works and I think that set us on our own path
[DJ Semtex]
So lets fast forward to 2015/2016, VIEWS one of the most successful albums, the tour you did in America was the most successful tours. How do you feel about what you achieved with VIEWS and the reaction? It’s a very pivotal point for you, going from writing for Dre and being on a TV show all the way up to …
When we hooked up years ago, you were supposed to come on the show, it didn’t happen but we connected the day after and did a legendary interview in Hyde Park. I said it felt like you’re gonna make history
[Drake]
It’s been a while, that’s kinda how we ended up here. When I got here [London], I was just like in my room, just tryna find my lineage of coming to London and just trying to figure out where it all started. And I just watched that Hyde Park interview and I’m watching this kid, it’s me but to me it’s just a kid that’s just trying to talk, trying to answer questions in the best way possible. Just the fact that we were just walking around, just me, you, a microphone and a camera. I was like “man I should hit Semtex up, man we should talk again”. I feel like that was a good conversation, we covered a wide spectrum of things and I think it’s been a long time since somebody’s been able to sit down and do that with me, and that’s how we’re here
[DJ Semtex]
How’s it feel to go from doing mixtapes, So Far Gone was the mixtape that really broke, before that Lil Wayne mentioned you in an interview with me, and I started following you and it’s just grown. From there you’ve been non-stop, its crazy…
[Drake]
Yeah that was an amazing time for all of us… still doing it with the same people. It was just… our landmark for that project is 15 Fort York, which was “40” and Oliver’s apartment and we really started that project there. Then it moved to the Beverly Hills Hotel in LA, when we were first just getting around Wayne, I know Wayne mentioned me in the interview, but the real turning point for me was when Wayne went on stage at the MTV awards and rapped one of the verses from ‘Money To Blow’. Instead of doing his own verse he just impromptu rapped one of my verses. And at that time, people are like, people from back home who really didn’t….. I mean it was just a tough thing to believe like, “I know he says he’s over there but is he gonna come home with a Lil Wayne record, is this gonna really happen” at that time people were like “ok he just rapped Drakes song, if he gets a Wayne record this is outta here”
That was when I was able to come back off those trips with Ransom. I went back home with Ransom, which was the first time I had ever got a Lil Wayne verse. From there I had a bunch of songs that I had recorded at the studio called Hot Beats and Wayne just got on all of them like ‘Stunt Hard’ and ‘Forever’ was one of them, early early. Then we started crafting that first project and using the input of two people who again I still work with to this day and my music wouldn’t be what it is without them, that’s Oliver and ‘40’ – you know it’s funny cos we’re sitting here talking and they’re back in Toronto executive producing ‘More Life’. Oliver’s executive producing it and ‘40’ is obviously always involved, but kinda just a full circle moment for us, cos Oliver had so much input on ‘So Far Gone’ so I was like “man it would be nice to do something with me and you again”, so I gave him that task and he’s at home piecing it together. So yes it was a great start and from there it just became a wild journey that I guess we’ll talk about
[DJ Semtex]
A lot to talk about – ‘More Talk’…
Since we’re right at the beginning, I was in Amsterdam with Lil Wayne….and he tells me – Yo he’s been writing on ‘Detox’ that was like the mythical album, you gotta be about your business to be involved in that, or to be in the studio. How did you end up from doing a tv show to working with Dr Dre, writing for him on Detox? It’s taking it back…
[Drake]
Its taking it back, I’m not usually that good with the ‘taking it back moments’ but I actually remember this one vividly. But yeah, I was on the show and while I was on the show, I started getting less and less character time, because of the fact that everybody was taking a notice to just the fact that I was more focused on music. And at the time I actually had a studio that was right by the film studio for Degrassi, so I ended up working out a deal with the after hours staff where I would leave work, go home get my stuff – Degrassi was all the way in the east end, which is Scarborough that’s like an area of our city. I’d go home all the way back to the city, get my stuff, come back to the studio, I would record and around 4/5am I would sneak back into Degrassi, they’d let me in and I would go to sleep in my dressing room. Eventually they found out what I was doing and they got really upset. During that time I was crafting all these songs, and I had a song that Omen produced – it was me and Mickey Factz and somebody else was on it I think. So Dre had heard the song and he had hit me like, “man I need proof that you wrote this” (laughs), so I had to fax him the lyrics of the song, I had to send him a fax message, from my moms fax machine in her bedroom I sent him a fax
You know at that time, Detox was going on, it was more like he had just a camp of people, I guess churning out ideas and just trying to spark something. I was flown out to record at Record One, which is a legendary studio. Yeah I was in there for a while, I did a lot of work, me and ‘40’, always brought ‘40’ with me, that was like a stipulation in my career, I wouldn’t move without ‘40’, so brought ’40’. Got to meet a lot of great people, obviously got to work with Dre, and it kinda all came to an end, when I.. Dre brought me into his office and said “Man you’re doing really good work” and he gave me a $10,000 cheque, and it was the most money I’d ever had in my life and at the time I was in a relationship. So I got the money and I called my girl, and I flew my girl down to L.A and was like “we can get a hotel this is crazy”, it was just a joyous moment for me. And I had missed studio or I had done something wrong, I had let my mind deviate from work and I had missed something, and next thing I know I was sent home and that was kind of it. It was a huge life lesson for me and I still have that… Actually when Dre came out at the Forum, I brought him the $10,000 cheque cos I had saved the actual hard copy of it, even though I got the money for it, they let me keep a copy of the cheque
So yeah that was kinda my dealings with that very early on, and I had heard rumblings, like oh all these people are here and I had met Snoop, and I kinda wrote this song, that ‘40’ still has somewhere for Dre and Snoop. We listened to it not to long, couple years ago, its kinda hard. But yeah it was a great experience, a great learning experience for me and ‘40’, it brought us closer and it just taught us about how this shit really works and I think that set us on our own path
[DJ Semtex]
So lets fast forward to 2015/2016, VIEWS one of the most successful albums, the tour you did in America was the most successful tours. How do you feel about what you achieved with VIEWS and the reaction? It’s a very pivotal point for you, going from writing for Dre and being on a TV show all the way up to …
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