With this being the last part of our brief interview with Drake, I can say it’s perfect timing. If you watched what I watched from XXL earlier today you’ll know definitely what I mean. In the video Drizzy talks about the freshmen list as well as “returning the favor” to the magazine and when asked about his recent spread with GQ, he speaks on his relationship with Jordan Brand and shows off his Air Jordan Anniversary 9’s “like a basketball player.”

And if you didn’t catch the last interview, check it out here.

Via ImFlashy

With what seems like the weight of the world on his shoulders, Drake still strolls into a room with the confidence a newly crowned winner. HipHollywood caught up with the rap phenom in Atlanta at the Sprite Step Off competition and he revealed that he can’t quite step, but he can cut a few moves. “I can’t step, but I can slow dance…if I find the right slow dancing partner.”

Drake spends quite a bit of time in Atlanta and reveals that it reminds him a lot of his hometown. “I love everything about Atlanta. I just shot a Complex cover here. I love lights, and Atlanta at night is beautiful. The women are beautiful, the food is good. The condos are nice. It’s a great place.  I’m always looking for elements of Toronto whenever I go somewhere because that’s my favorite city.”

With Canada’s musical presence practically taking over the U.S. music charts, Drake is nothing less than excited about his fellow musicians staking their claim in the industry. “Me and Melanie [Fiona] used to play at a restaurant back in the day. We used to be in a band together. I used to rap over piano with no drums and she used to sing. We used to entertain people having dinner.”

He lights up like a proud papa when asked about Melanie Fiona’s Grammy nominations. “For me to see her nominated for a Grammy, hear her single all the time and hear her album, I’m extremely proud. I’m always proud to see Canadians – Michael Buble, Avril Lavigne, Justin Bieber, everybody’s doing so great.”

With such overwhelming success, some forget that superstars weren’t always stars. Nor is it an easy road to conquer. Drake’s often considered a “rich kid from Canada,” referring to his upbringing and long stint as a child actor on Degrassi: The Next Generation, but he reveals that money was running out near the end of the his acting gig and options were low. “I love seeing young people do anything productive.  I’m a guy from Toronto, who at one point in my life was lost and didn’t quite know what I would do with life. I was acting, and it was sort of coming to an end on this particular show. I was just trying to figure my own life out.”

Drake credits Lil Wayne with helping him find his way. He recounts several naysayers claiming that he should have taken a different route, possibly signing with Jay Z, but Drake insists that he too loyal for that. “No one would have even known who I was if it wasn’t for Lil Wayne showing that initial interest in me. I’m a Young Money soldier.”

Via HIPHOLLYWOOD

Here is part 1 of a brief interview that we had with Drizzy, who performed at the Sprite Step Off Show in Atlanta this weekend. We spoke to him on his upcoming debut, Thank Me Later and what we can expect. The significance of the video is when he references a certain legend in Hip Hop that he studied for the album. Also we would like to thank the lovely ladies Danielle and Becky Billions as well as the homie Adam for your assistance. And if you’re wondering, that’s Ludacris who he is shaking hands with.

‘Kanye West shaped a lot of what I do, as far as music goes,’ the young MC says of working with the superstar producer/rapper.

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Sunday night, Drake took the stage with his mentor and current Rolling Stone cover star Lil Wayne for a highly anticipated collaboration with Eminem at the Grammys. After the big show, the 23-year-old rapper was exuberant about the appearance, but somber about Weezy’s upcoming prison sentence, which is expected to begin on February 9th.

“For me and Wayne, it was just such a full circle moment,” Drake said of the Grammys. “We started out this year on a mission for him to bring up some new artists under his label, Young Money. It’s very rare that an artist is successful in that, bringing up somebody and having the world recognize somebody else that they believe in,” he added (Drake received two Grammy nominations this year). “We had a great moment onstage. I gave him a big hug and told him I loved him. It was amazing.”

Lil Wayne is expected to serve eight to 10 months of his year-long sentence on gun possession charges, and though his associates tell Rolling Stone there are plans in place to keep Weezy in fans’ minds during his time in Rikers — via everything from jailhouse Twitters to videos for his proteges — Drake says Weezy’s absence will be felt hard. “I think you’ll miss everything about Wayne. I don’t think there will be anybody like Lil Wayne ever again in hip-hop. He paralyzes a room when he walks into it, his wordplay, the excitement that he brings to his music,” Drake told RS. “I think that for eight months a lot of us will have to work a lot harder to keep hip-hop as exciting as it’s been for the last two years.”

As for how he thinks Weezy will hold up in prison, Drake said, “He’s a strong-willed guy. I can imagine it would take a toll on anybody. I just hope that he comes out for the better.”

Via RollingStone

Hip-hop sensation DRAKE has calmed down his wild live performances because he doesn’t want to aggravate his shattered knee.

The Best I Ever Had hitmaker had to sit out of a tour last year (09) after badly injuring his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in a stage fall – and he doesn’t want to put himself through the pain again.

He says, “It’s not gonna be the same Drake jumping on speakers and and running to each side of the stage… I’m gonna have to get a little Jay-Z influence on my performance style; hopefully my records will be powerful enough to carry the show.”

But Drake, who performed with Eminem and Lil Wayne at Sunday’s (31Jan10) Grammy Awards, admits he isn’t bitter about having to sit out of his tour just as his career was taking off – he believes everything happens for a reason.

He tells Complex magazine, “I was going so hard that the only way I could have ever slowed down was for something extremely painful to happen.

“I’m just glad I only tore my ACL and didn’t get shot or stabbed or anything.”

Via vamban

When we first interviewed Drake a year ago, he was the new kid on the block who had just dropped a little mixtape called So Far Gone. But after owning 2009 with an unexpected string of hits, Drizzy is now the man to beat. It’s only right that Complex features Drake on the cover of our first issue of 2010. It’s the dawning of a new decade!

The February/March issue officially hits stands on February 8, but we’re giving you a chance to read the full story now. Check the link below to hear Drizzy speak on his relationship with Wayne, competition with newcomers like J. Cole, getting inspired by ex-girlfriends, and the details on his debut Thank Me Later.

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“So Far Gone being named the Mixtape of the Year means a lot to me,” Drake said in Toronto. “It was a risk we all took as a team to put out a mixtape that I’m exploring so many different genres of music — from the Santigolds to the Lykke Lis to Peter Bjorn and Johns, to even myself going from rapping to doing records that sound like old Jodeci songs. It was a mix of all the things that make up my character, and for people to embrace it the way they did and for MTV to name it the top mixtape of 2009 means the world to me.” Read the rest of this entry »

Drake knows. He knows that his debut album, due out this spring, faces stratospheric expectations. “I feel like people are gonna get it and pop it in,” the 23-year-old Toronto rapper says, “and, no matter what it sounds like—I could make the most beautiful arrangements of hip-hop in the last 20 years—and people will still be like, ‘Nope, he didn’t do it.’” That’s why he named the record Thank Me Later. Eventually, he believes, everyone will come around.

Why the hype? Blame lady-killing single “Best I Ever Had” (46 million MySpace streams and counting) and a slew of free online tracks for establishing Aubrey Drake Graham as a star without an album, the first pop artist to rap and sing with equal skill. He’s now so intensely watched that, when he hurt his knee earlier this year, “Drake’s Knee” got its own Twitter account.

The former child actor figures he missed out on a million-and-a-half, maybe two million bucks by staying on the sidelines for the last few months. Oh well. He’s still “comfortable financially.” Apparently his deal with Lil Wayne’s label, Young Money, helps. “You get it off the deal,” Drake says, “and of course you go from doing shows for whatever you can get to people start offering real money. Wayne gets real money. I don’t get that. But even so, shows start climbing from 10 thousand to 20, 30, 40, 50, 60—whatever.”

The album, when it finally comes, won’t exactly be rock-inspired. But Drake does love Grizzly Bear, Kings of Leon and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and he’s rhymed fiercely over a Coldplay hook. “What I wanna do,” he says, “is sorta keep the element of those dark, sexy chord progressions that you hear in those indie-rock songs and bring it out more sonically with a more powerful drum sound. ’Cause my life has graduated from a very grey, gloomy point to a moment that’s very triumphant. And I want the music to represent that.”