Drake Complex Interview

Drake did a pretty interesting interview with COMPLEX magazine. Here are a couple of excerpts from the interview.

Complex: Many people don’t know too much about your outside of your role in Degrassi. Were you always into music?

Drake: As far as music goes, it’s always been a major part of my life. My uncle is Larry Graham played bass for Prince, my father, Dennis Graham, wrote for Al Green. [He helped] write “Let’s Stay Together” and “Love & Happiness.” My dad drummed for Jerry Lee Lewis. I’ve always been around great music. My family being from Memphis, Tenn, growing up around all the hip hop—Thee Six Mafia, Kingpin Skimmy Pimp, early Yo Gotti, shit like that was kinda what really influenced me.

How I got into rapping was, my dad was in jail for two years and he shared a cell wit this dude who didn’t really have anyone to speak to. So, he used to share his phone time with this dude and at the time I was probably 16 or 17, this dude was like 20-22, and he would always rap to me over the phone—it was Poverty, that was his rap name. After while I started to get into it and I started to write my own shit down. And after a while, he would call me and we would just rap to each other. And after my dad got out I kept in touch with dude and kept writing my shit down and eventually I learned from meeting people who were into music, too, the art of making a song and I accepted the fact that I wanted to be in music.

Complex: Talk to us about So Far Gone. What was the idea behind it?

Drake: It’s basically a story. It starts in January 2008 when I was kinda confused like, What am I really doing? I gave up acting all together to really do this music thing, and I was really truly confused. It’s way different than acting, there aren’t people to depend on, you really have to build your own thing basically from the ground up, you know, so in January not only was I confused about my career, I was also in a very destructive sort of us exhausting relationship with a female and it was just a bad headspace for me to be in. So that’s where the tape starts.

It starts with this monologue, “Lust For Life”, of me crying out, in my head the things that I never say. The things that I was just thinking, that was my mindset. Then it goes to “Houstatlantavegas” which is about what I felt about the girl I was with. I just felt that nothing was ever good enough, and she was always searching for more excitement and then we move into “Successful.” I say at the end of the song, “There are so many things I want to say but I just don’t know how to say it to you.” I know exactly what I want to say, you know, I just want to be successful, but I don’t know if I can do it with you and then it goes into “Let’s Call It Off,” which is the breakup. And then coincidentally when I broke up with that girl a week later I went to Houston and met Lil Wayne and that’s where “November 18″ comes from.


Check out COMPLEX MAG to read the rest of the article.