New Article: Drake Interview On Complex Magazine (2011/2012 Cover Story)

Drake isn’t happy. Not in an existential way or anything. He’s not upset about the direction his life is heading, or about the subliminal potshots rappers keep sending his way. Nah, he’s unhappy with how his photo shoot for this magazine is going down. Which is surprising because it’s a bright, unseasonably warm October afternoon in downtown Toronto, and things were going so well.

We’re perched on the roof of the posh Thompson Hotel where Drizzy’s being photographed overlooking his city like a feudal lord surveying his kingdom. To his left are cranes modernizing the largest city in Canada. To his right is the Rogers Centre, the convertible stadium seen in his “Headlines” video.

Suddenly Drake tells the photographer to stop and calls for his manager, Oliver El Khatib, 25, co-captain of the creative team October’s Very Own. Canceling a cover shoot at this stage would be a serious waste of time and money, but Drake doesn’t give a fuck. He wants things done his way or not at all.

Drake doesn’t want to keep shooting with this photographer. He’d rather get Hyghly Alleyne & Lamar Taylor—the same young Toronto dudes who shot the “Headlines” video—to finish the job. Never mind the fact that the first photographer is also a young cat from Toronto who’d been approved by Drake’s management and publicists.

“I’m not going to take that shit,” Drake says when I ask him later what went wrong at the shoot. “Nah man, I work too fucking hard for that. So does everyone around me.” Drake doesn’t often yell, even when he’s riled up. When he wants to emphasize a point, he focuses his stare and slows his speech so it’s clear. “Not to hate,” he says, “and to whoever I snatched that opportunity from, I apologize. But this is about what we’re trying to build here.”

What Aubrey Graham, 25, and his OVO crew are trying to build here is— excuse the cliché—a Toronto movement.

I just feel like I'm really good right now. I've never felt like that before.

“For Drake we have these budgets where we can do videos and shoot photographs by whoever the fuck we want, the hottest guys in New York or L.A.,” Oliver explains. “But I’d rather take Hyghly and Lamar, two kids who are 20 years old... I’d rather build up their portfolios and help them get on and do this video. So now they’ve done ‘Marvin's Room’ and ‘Headlines,’ and hopefully they can do more videos. They shot all Drake’s album artwork.

“We have this little fun factory in Toronto where there’s music being made, there’s art being done, videos being made, we’re starting to work more on our clothing,” Oliver says. “It’s kind of fun, you know? We’re giving opportunities to kids who deserve it... It’s different because everything we’ve done has worked.”

“There used to be a conversation in the Toronto hip-hop scene,” says producer Noah “40” Shebib. “You would [ask] on a regular basis: Who do you think is goin’ to do it? Do you think it’s even possible? Do you think a Canadian rapper could ever blow up in America? That conversation doesn’t get had anymore.”

Since breaking into the mainstream with So Far Gone, the 2009 mixtape that became his hip-hop baptism, Drake has positioned himself as one of music’s premier players. This coup was facilitated by his alliance with Lil Wayne, who damn near kidnapped the young Canadian, taking him on a nationwide tour before throwing him on numerous tracks. When Weezy reported to Rikers Island in March 2010 for an eight-month bid, Drake and his fellow Young Money/ Cash Money signee Nicki Minaj stepped up as the label’s primary breadwinners. His moody, emotionally honest debut, Thank Me Later, hit No. 1 on Billboard, selling 447,000 in the first week, and birthing three Top 20 hits.

Drake’s introspective, self-effacing lyrics—usually delivered in clever, succinct couplets—reveal the inner machinations of many dudes in their mid-twenties: the quest to live life to the limit, not just survive a nine-to-five; the balance of carnal desires with sincere compassion for women’s feelings; the struggle to act responsible when all you want to do is blow your paycheck on lap dances, liquor, and weed.

With gangster rap in decline, and Kanye refashioning the parameters of rap stardom, Drake arrived right on time. But his success has made him one of the most polarizing figures in music. Lil Wayne anointed him the best rapper alive, and he’s rhymed alongside some of the greatest—Bun B, Jay-Z, Jeezy—yet some insist that Drake isn’t hip-hop; that he’s too soft; that he sings too damn much; that he doesn’t sing enough—and should stop rapping; that he wears silly outfits.

“They nitpick at everything,” he says, shaking his head. “I can’t do anything. All they want me to do is dress so they can make fun of me. Otherwise, it’s hard for them. I don’t give people many reasons to dislike me. They have to find shit. They’re like, ‘Aw man, sweaters! He wears sweaters too much.’ Like, what?”

No other good rapper—because, let’s be honest, Drake’s one of the best doing it— draws the same amount of love and ire. It’s enough to drive a person crazy. For every three who applaud him—Nas has likened Drake to “fresh water on dry land”—there’s one looking to shoot him down.

"If someone wants to bring a problem to me, it's strictly based on their immense amount of hate for me."

Most recently it was Pusha T, the newest G.O.O.D. Music recruit, throwing thinly veiled jabs (“The swag don’t match the sweaters”) in a freestyle over Drake’s Jai Paul–sampling “Dreams Money Can Buy.”

Which is not to say that Drake doesn’t play the same game. When he dropped “Dreams” last May, he ruffled feathers with the line “I feel like it went from top five to remaining five/My favorite rappers either lost it or they ain’t alive.” Since he once said he’d cry if Jay-Z died, it’s safe to assume Hov would make his top five. But when pressed, Drake neither confirms nor denies whether Jay and Kanye were targets.

“It wasn’t meant to be a shot at the five rappers that I love,” he says. “I’ve never even sat down and pieced together a top five before. I just feel like I’m really good right now. And I’ve never felt like that before. I’ve always felt reluctant to say anything like that, but I’m very confident in these new raps that I’m about to give the world.”

Drake’s also very confident in the strength of his YMCMB team. When he says, “They trying to bring us down/Me, Weezy, and Stunna,” he may be referring to “H.A.M.,” the first single from Watch The Throne, on which Jay-Z took unnamed rappers to task for having “baby money,” and not even as much as his lady. Lil Wayne wasn’t the only listener who took that as a reference to Cash Money CEO Bryan “Baby” Williams. Five months later on DJ Khaled’s summer banger “I’m on One,” Drake proclaimed that “the throne is for the taking” before advising listeners to “watch” him take it.

Careful listeners may have noticed that Kanye West (who’s worked with Drake in the past) employed the “hashtag flow”— which Drake popularized—on “Otis,” the biggest single from The Throne’s recent album. Many wondered who he was referring to when he said: “Niggas talking real reckless / #Stuntmen / I adopted these niggas, Philip Drummond them.”

The cold war heated up when Wayne returned fire on “It’s Good” from Tha Carter IV. In the song, which also featured Jadakiss and Drake, Weezy presumably talks about kidnapping Beyoncé. Jada declared neutrality immediately after the song leaked, stressing that he had no idea what Lil Wayne was going to say. His denials sounded reasonable enough, but what about Drake? “I’m his soldier,” he says, affirming his loyalty to President Carter.

Still, Drake does his best to remain diplomatic—sort of. “Rapping is about being young and doing your thing and being fly,” he says—the implication being that if older rappers catch feelings, so be it. “I’m sure people took it that way and that’s good, man. That’s great. Wake the fuck up. I hope it makes you go harder. I hope it makes you get mad at me and write a song with me in mind. I hope Kanye’s verse on ‘Otis’ was with that in mind. Everyone tried to tell me ‘Oh Jay is going at you.’ I don’t hear it, but I hope it was man, that song is fucking incredible. Making each other go harder, that's what this shit is about.”

The very fact that rappers with more mileage in this game see Drake as worthy of dissing is noteworthy. If the adage “never shoot down” holds any weight, Drake should interpret all this verbal turmoil as high praise. No one’s taking the time to go at Wiz Khalifa’s neck, or to chop Big Sean down to size.

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STORY BY DAMIEN SCOTT / COMPLEX MAGAZINE