You can’t tell the story of Drake’s career without Lil Wayne. Before signing to Young Money, Drake was just another underground rapper. He still made boom bap and was a hybrid of Kanye West and Phonte. But eventually, he would call the New Orleans legend a mentor and a brother, helping him reach superstardom. Frankly, he would’ve never signed to a label in the first place had it not been for his love and respect for Wayne.
“If I could’ve found a way where he would’ve benefited off of an indie deal, or we could have done something different, then yeah, maybe I would’ve done something different,” Drake said of Lil Wayne in 2011. “But the way it’s worked out, I feel like he’s proud and he’s happy, and that’s all that matters to me.”
But how did Wayne know that his signee was going to become one of the biggest rappers in the world? In an interview with Lil Dicky and Benny Blanco, he recalled hearing Drake do nothing but rap. But once he heard a hook and learned that he could sing too, Wayne knew he could turn him into something special.
“I was like, ‘Who’s on the hook?’ And they was like, ‘That’s him.’ And I was like, ‘That’s the guy? That’s him singing? Why he ain’t do more of this?” he told Blanco and Dicky. “It was instant. Like, come on, man… there was no one doing that s**t.”
Lil Wayne Recalls The First Time He Heard Drake’s Music
Elsewhere in the conversation, Wayne talked about using teleprompters during his performances. For most rappers, they tend to memorize their verses over the years and rap them accordingly. Typically, it’s just the big hits, plus whatever they recently made.
The problem for Lil Wayne is that he’s made so many songs in his career, they all start to blur together. Admittedly, he’s forgotten some of his biggest hits too. But there’s one tip of the trade to help jog his memory that he learned from Drake first.
“I got that from Drizzy. He asked me to come out one night… I had to pop out from the middle of the stage, and I saw there were TVs. I started looking at them s**ts and saw my lyrics. I was like, ‘You could do this? This is awesome,’” Lil Wayne recalled. “Ever since I seen them, I’ve never not had them. I don’t care if we doing a Bar Mitzvah, I need it.”
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The post Lil Wayne Recalls the Exact Moment He Knew He Had to Sign This Hip-Hop Icon: ‘No One Doing That S***’ appeared first on VICE.
