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)

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