A lot has happened to Drake since URB interviewed the Lil Wayne protégé this past spring for our Next 100 issue. His track, "Best I Ever Had," hit number one on Billboards Hot Rap chart last week (and number 18 on the Hot 100 chart) making him the biggest new rapper so far this year. URB went back at grabbed the full transcript of our original interview with Drake, taken just a few months before he blew up:
URB: You said your family was from Memphis originally. Have you still got family over there? Do you spend time with them?Drake: Yeah, I did spend time there when I was younger. My parents were divorced when I was very young so my father went back to Memphis. I was there at a very great time, a very influential time. Around the ages of like 12, 13, 14, 15 even, like right before I started doing DeGrassi, I was there sort of just soaking it all in. It was around the time when Memphis actually had a dope movement, before Kia Shine had that "Krispy" song, they were actually hailing Yo Gotti, Kink, and Skinny Pimp. The artists were just making real hard shit. You know, Ball and G, Three 6 was doing their thing. It was great. It was that real Houston feel where everybody was just riding around to Memphis shit. That's the one thing about the South that I love that I incorporate a lot into my music. It's just that feeling, that excitement when something new drops, just to support an artist. I really drew a lot of influence from being there when I was younger. I like the culture a lot. I mean it was hood, it was hood as fuck, being around Orange Mile and Peppertree apartments. My family's all over Memphis so I've seen a lot of it, but it was a great time to soak that all in. And having contracts in Toronto, Canada, which is very multi-cultural and very safe, it was cool, it gave me two perspectives.
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW @ URB.COM
So Far Gone
