If you follow T-dot hip-hop, you’ll know the name Drake as
referring to something other than a boutique hotel. A former regular on
Degrassi: The Next Generation, the MC and Forest Hill native (real
name: Aubrey Graham) has been bubbling under on the local scene with
good reason — his flow is tight and he swaggers like nobody told him
actors can’t rap. Now he’s following in Kardinal Offishall’s Tims as
the next Canadian MC to get a high-profile co-sign from an American
superstar.
Getting props from Lil Wayne was a three-stage
process: one, a handful of collaborations with Wayne such as “Ransom”
leaked onto the internet, letting everyone know just who had been
consorting together (though in a MySpace blog post, Drake denied having
signed to Young Money, Weezy’s imprint); two, having Wayne refer to
Drake in an interview with UK DJ Semtex as one to look out for — “I got
this rapper from Canada his name is Drake, he’s real big”; and three,
actually going so far as to perform one of Drake’s verses (from “Money
To Blow”) at the MTV Video Music Awards over his “Misunderstood” beat
before segueing into “A Milli.” It doesn’t get more legit than that.
His
mixtape called So Far Gone was reportedly supposed to drop in August;
he’s still got a ways to go, but it looks like pretty soon, people will
be asking Drake whether that hotel is named after him. (www.octobersveryown.blogspot.com; www.myspace.com/thisisdrake)
MP3 OF THE WEEK
A
Tribe Called Quest, “Georgie Porgie”: This unreleased nugget isn’t the
kind you’ll cherish — it’s a torrent of homophobic speech from your
favourite backpacker icons that starts with Phife saying “In the
beginning there was Adam and Eve / But some trying to make it look like
Adam and Steve” (hello Jerry Falwell!) and it goes downhill from there.
A lot of rappers casually put down gays, but few went so far as to make
songs about how much they hate them. Hey, do you think the Beastie Boys
knew? (http://tinyurl.com/62wmnc)