As Drake prepares to release his new album 16Views From The 6 FIFA 23 coins, we root through the archive to remember what the Toronto Rapper was like four years ago, amidst the success of 16Take Care. This article originally appeared in NME on April 21, 2012.
When Sam Wolfson met one of the world’s biggest rap stars, he expected all ego and arrogance. He got that. But he also found Drake obsessing over sadness, alienation and the girls that got away.
A group of truanting school girls gape at the entrance of the five-star Corinthia Hotel in Central London. With each promising spin of the revolving doors, their breath shortens and shrieks crescendo. They’re so pent up with the excitement about the possibility of seeing Drake that there’s audible unclenching every time another pasty business man hobbles out.
Drake, of course, entered through the back door a few hours earlier and is now sitting pretty in room 321. Even here he can’t escape female attention. A journalist sits on the steps outside his room waiting for an interview. “I don’t want to do it”, she whispers to us, her knees clanging together anxiously. “I never normally get nervous, it’s just him, you know?”
“Just him” is one of the most confusing characters in music today. Last year he celebrated his second Number One US album, ‘Take Care’. The night before we meet he played the second of two sold-out nights at The O2, shows which are basically a warm-up for his headline slot in the UK Capitals Hyde Park this summer. On paper, 25-year-old Drake is a transatlantic superstar.
Yet he’s spent the past 24 hours in London acting more like a teenager bedroom-producer from Clapton cheap FUT 23 coins. “I’ve just been playing FIFA, eating Jamaican Food and listening to dancehall in little basements”, he tells us as we settle in his suite. This morning he was hanging out with 19-year-old Sneakbo, a boxfresh rapper from south London known for his pirate radio smash ‘The Wave’. “That’s just what I do. I don’t wana change just ‘cos I’m in The O2. There’s only about five rappers who could sell out there right now. I just happen to be the young boy there’s no point me trying to be older than I am.”
Once you have built up friend connections you will be able to invite others to your group.