How do you deal with that when you feel like you’ve been misrepresented? Especially if it’s your first splash on this 106 and Park scale and you feel like they missed your essence.
I’ll tell you, I always feel like that was a great song. And at the time, i can’t say that it didn’t represent me. I’ve become the person that I am now, the music lover that I am now, the individual that dresses the way I do now, after meeting people like Oliver, and my engineer, 40, and my DJ, Future. After forming these relationships, I’ve become this person. So I can’t ever regret being that person prior to influence from certain individuals. It was me at that time. I won’t ever say I regret it. I can look back and say, “Well damn, now that I’m in this position and know this much more, I probably would have done it different.” But you can always do that, and if you ever beat yourself up over that you’ll drive yourself crazy. I wouldn’t say it misrepresented me. It was just a point in my life and I hope nobody ever faults me for it because I’m proud of it. I’m proud of my work. It just shows growth and that’s what an artist should do, is grow. If I had another song that sounded exactly like that and shot another video that looked exactly like that, then there would be a problem. Then you could throw the caution flags up like, “OK, this is not somebody to love.” But I’m growing, that’s what we do. I’m 22 years old.
How did you meet Wayne?
I met Wayne through a friend of mine, J Prince’s son, who I met on MySpace actually and we just talked back and forth. He was interested in my music for about about a year and a half, ever since the Trey Songs joint, he reached out. He always pressed Wayne to listen to the music and one day I guess when they had time when they were in Houston he played him about two songs, I think they got through about two-and-a-half songs. I think Wayne called me when I was in the barbershop getting my hair cut. He called me from Jazz’s phone so I thought it was Jazz. I picked up and I heard a completely different voice, I knew the voice right away but I didn’t wanna believe it so I’m like, “Whatever, man.” And he’s like, “Yo, this is Weezy,” and I’m [sarcastically] like, “Yeah, aight.” He’s like, “Yo, this is Weezy, can you get on a plane by tomorrow at 8:00am?” And I ended up spending a week out on the road with him.
And with “Ransom,” you must’ve been thrilled to hear him go in like that?
Just to see that Wayne was truly excited. And as things kept happening, like at the VMAs, the looks he kept giving me were on some “Yo Drizzy I got us!” That’s a powerful statement to start your verse with. When we heard that I remember we were in Atlanta, it was me and my engineer, and we just stopped the verse right after we heard that. I mean whatever he says after that, I know he’s gonna kill it, but the fact that he started the verse with my name and said, “I got us,” he formed a union with one sentence. I’m sure in five years I’ll realize how powerful that verse was. But now, I definitely see it, but we’ll realize what it really meant and him spitting his “Money to Blow” verse at the VMAs, he did something great for me which was, just let people know that he sees me as a peer and not as a project or something that he has to really make. He doesn’t have to make me. He kinda let people know that I’m already there, he just brought me to the light.
The song sounds like a battle…
I think you can tell from the amount of bars that we spit, it’s always sort of this undiscussed competition. But it’s a great competition. We’re not actually competing. We’re just two guys who like to rap and we have a lot of thoughts running through our heads. I usually do my verse first and send it to Wayne, and that excites Wayne and he does his verse. So, he does have the upper hand on me by hearing my verse, but that’s why he ends up jumping on a song and being aggressive as he does. I don’t send him 16 bar verses that are mediocre. I let him know like “Look, Tune”–I call him Tune–”I’m going in! Like you say all the time, I’m about to go in! I hope you hear what I’m doing.” It’s always fun to hear what Wayne does afterwards, it’s always fun to get that email back. Basically his verse let’s me know what he thought of my verse. And every single time it seems like he enjoys the verse and that he enjoys being on songs with me. And that alone is an honor. So when it came to “Ransom,” it was out of character for me because “Ransom” is not necessarily something you would hear me doing. When you hear the beat you wouldn’t say, “Oh, that’s Drake. He gotta rap on that.” I think what we do a lot is just pull one another into each other’s world. Sometimes i go into Dedication 3 land and Carter 3 land and then sometimes I pull him into So far Gone and Thank Me Later, where we just do abstract different stuff. But he still raps, like we did a song for his new album and it’s great. I’m singing and he’s rapping, it’s different. We recognize each other’s talents. I don’t know who isn’t a Lil Wayne fan, but obviously it goes without saying that I was a Wayne fan before I was Wayne’s friend and Wayne’s artist. To sit here and describe what an honor it was to go through this process is pointless. I read the comments on the iIternet too and people sort of go back and forth about that debate, you know, “well, who raps better?” and “is Wayne writing his verse?” So it’s great, man. It’s great to get people talking and that’s what we both love to do, just make music that gets people excited and gets people talking. That’s our goal.
But, the best feeling is to be on the tour bus and he’ll play the record and he’ll just be rapping the verses like they’re his. He’ll be rapping my verses like those are his words. Passionately, he doesn’t just say the words. He’ll stop what he’s doing and look to the sky and flash his ice, or whatever he’s wearing, and shake his dreds like he’s really passionate about the words I’m saying. I know that he enjoys the verse.
How do you deal with the conflicting views of your growth, from teen TV star to rapper to singer?
I just have to rest comfortably in my head with the theory that there’s always going to be people that like and people that don’t like. I can’t please everybody and therefore if it feels right and if it has a place and it makes sense then I’m gonna do it. I don’t sit in the studio and make 20 records a night. One, I don’t have that kind of work ethic, as far as writing. Writing does take me time because I put a lot of thought into it. I can’t make 15 joints in one night and then maybe one of them is special. I do what makes sense, so if I hear a beat and it inspires me I guarantee you that by the end of that night I’m going to get a record out of that beat that we use somewhere or means something to all of us. I rarely spend time on a record and it becomes a throw away record. Somebody who hears “Ransom” and then Googles me and sees a pictures of me in a jheri curl afro and a wheelchair might bug out for a second. but like i said, we all grow. I was 14, 15 years old and it was the right move for me at the time to be on TV. I did a lot of studying with a lot of acting coaches and I’m grateful for that because I plan to get back into acting as the music picks up. Everything happens for a reason and that show was a great stepping stone; I built a lot of strong relationships at MTV and people know me. But the greatest thing right now is that my fans don’t call me “Jimmy” anymore. They don’t say, “That’s the guy from the Degrassi.” They say that’s Drake. They may have not have heard all my songs, but they’ll find out eventually that I’m doing music is the most important thing. I’m getting a 100,00 plays on MySpace each day, [that] is important too. It’s important that I’m getting mixtape orders from Paris and Stockholm as I start to branch out with things like the Lykke Li song. People know me in places that I’ve never even dreamt of going. And with that being said, I hope that my fans grow with me. We were all young once, you were young too at one point and you enjoyed it, but it’s time to move on.
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