To be completed
[Zane Lowe + Drake]
Alright, this is it right? We are rolling and we're recording, let's begin. This is a very special broadcast of OVO Sound Radio right here, Beats 1, Apple Music. Long time coming man. Long time coming man...long time coming, an exciting time, an exciting night for obvious reasons. Any way, man, here we are in the Safe House this is kind of...I suppose the official home of OVO Sound, this is the heart now of OVO Sound, here in Toronto, OVO house based in Toronto. Uhm...It's 40's spot, where the music gets made.
40's...uh what do they call it, like a brain child, brain child? This is 40's creation from the ground up...I mean I was here, man, when there were no walls. I was here when there was no...not even a hint of a studio, or any...and uhm, he saw it through to the end. I mean, incredible execution on a vision that he had from the very...very early on. I know he's always...he's always enjoyed living in the same space that he works in. So he's been able to build this...build this complex that we utilize to get the job done, yeah.
When you walked in here for this first time, because I always thinking like....rooms you can catch a vibe pretty quick Yeah And you know 40 obviously build this, you were there for the process...and when, you know, he called you in for the first session...did you, did you catch a vibe? Did you record something that first night?
I was here, uhm, I was here a few times as you know...I was here when this room first started functioning and everything else wasn't built. I think....I think maybe the first...one of the first things we did here that got released was probably "Back to Back" ironically enough, but I think that was kinda when we were kind of....That's how you, uh, that's how you broke the bottle on the bow? Haha that was like one of the first... On that track? That was like one of the first thingsWow. that we actually recorded and it...and it...Tangible energy from the get-go.
I mean, you know, just... Get it done. execution, man, just following suit. I watched 40 execute so I had to come in here and execute too, that's it. How many visitors really...I mean I know there's a lot of people in here tonight for obvious reasons, because, you know, we're tryna capture something. You know...but, uhm, you know, when it's, when it's... business time, how many...how many visitors generally roll through here? Cause the vibe I get is you guys keep it pretty...pretty light.
Yeah, I don't really. I'm not really into, like, a whole bunch of people and distraction, uhm...I have, you know, I have respect for everybody and their craft in whatever they do. So I expect the same thing when people come in here, I don't want a bunch of hustle and bustle, talking and...loud you know. And...and the other thing that's tough when you invite people in the studio...is they're obviously coming to watch something happen. Right.
And...and it doesn't always happen every night. You know...it's not like every night is some magic moment. I mean, there's nights of frustration, there's nights of nothingness, there's night of just...you know, uh...these little tactical, uh, things. That clinical, surgical edits and stuff that...it gets you know Housekeeping. Right. I pretty much gauge the, uhm... characters that are allowed to sit in here based off of how they conduct themselves on those type of nights. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I think I have a pretty immediate, immediate team that is able to sit in here and I...I...I...I don't want to notice you, and that's not to be offensive, I just don't want to know that you're here. I want to be able to...to get up and just go in there and spill you know. Not worry about people's feelings Yeah. or tensions or any of that, that makes perfect sense, you know. Today unless...you change your mind Laughing the album's done It's done. 40 sent it while the game was on. It's crazy, I mean we're literally watching the Raptors while 40 was...you know... Mhm. I think the line was from Noel was "right now we've been finished for seven seconds." Yeah hahahahaha.
Vincent like came in, he was like "but nah, I sent the...I sent the email seven minutes ago, we've been finished for seven minutes." And he want to his computer and he was like "ah, I never sent it." The game clock was kinda measuring the album clock too you know, it's synonymous tonight. Oh man the world clock has been measuring the album now...and, and to a certain extent that's your fault. Cause back on August the 6th in 2014 you announced the name of the record. Yeah.
Now...now I have...I spoke to your friend Skepta about announcing records prematurely. Mhm. And he was pretty straight about it, he wish he hadn't done it. He felt the pressure of announcing Konichiwa way up front, added additional pressure to him. I mean...you did it almost two years before you delivered the record. How did it work for you making that announcement, you know... in 2014?
I think the...the announcement was more than just the album title, it was just a shift in the city. You know, that we, uh...we saw an opening there. You know, it was, it was, the name took on a life of it's own. Uhm...and now the city is obviously referred to as, as what it is...Yeah. Uhm...and yeah, I mean...I...we're...me and Oliver are always, are very cautious about that. Uh...we never wanna prematurely announce anything, but I kinda feel like, like it's crazy that you say two years cause t really doesn't feel like two years. I mean, yeah, I just had this plan to finish this album and then...but I, I remember I was like "oh man, well you know, I'm gonna do a mixtape."
Just cause I'm just like at this place, where I'm..I'm in this hotel every night, I just wanna make rap music, and I always, always wanted to make a, a project with Boi-1da. Uh...just like, exclusively like his... his brand of music, like just hard ish, like uh...trying to snap as much as I could and get as many joints as I could in, in a short amount of time. Uhm...and so that's kind of, you know, I was really adamant about finishing that mixtape first and then I said, okay then I'll move on. I mean, when we...when we do these albums, and especially if it's me and 40...it's never not been me and 40...but, when me and 40 lock in. We really lock in ...yeah. and we take it very seriously and it's not... it's not like some rush job, you know? We...we, we'll sit there and, and we...like I said some nights we don't even come here and make music some nights we just talk yeah... we talk and we listen and you know, we try and figure out, what...what the direction is and what...what works for me... It seems to me, that might be a distinction because you blur the lines so successfully, it helps in the evolution of mixtapes. They've been around in existence for a long time and yet when you started to do and some of your peers started to do it at a similar time, these mixtapes were becoming blockbusters in their own right. They weren't just moving the streets anymore, they were actually moving the sales and the charts and you were touring off the back of these things.
Well, well that was it, I went...I wnt on a full-blown tour off of If You're Reading This It's Too Late.... It's crazy. ...and it went straight to iTunes and I feel like that's like a...that's a hundred percent a possibility, same thing we do with a lot of the OVO Sound artists, you know, it's like, why not? You put all this time and they're all original sounds, why should shouldn't it be able to be...you know, I understand, I understand...the...the joy of getting a free body of work from somebody, but you know, this is like one of the only platforms we have left to like generate interest and income and all these, you know, these...get the attention and make it that easy to access... and focus... as opposed to going to ten different places to try and find it once links are being you know...so I mean... It's focusing your audience, isn't it ultimately? Yeah and that's really what it's about right now, is, is...and that's, I mean not to shamelessly plug but even...you know, what we've been doing with Apple Music and stuff like that...it's like you know, just focusing the audience and giving them a place to go and hone in on this one hub to go get everything.
Uhm...but with that being said, you know, I...I finished that tape and I was really happy with it a lot of the songs got bigger than expected and we had to go do some shows... I wondered that...I wondered, you know, if it...I mean I know you dropped it in the early hours in the morning and it was just like "Wake up surprise, here's a Drake record" and everything else, but i know how I felt about that album and millions of other people do as well and that record has become, in many respects, a modern-day cla**ic...and I wondered if that caught you off guard?
Uhm...yeah I definitely...I definitely always just treated it like a mixtape. I...I was never...you know, even the difference between this album and that is like...the...the time we spent on the transitions, the layering of the production, the...the changes...just, just...sonically even, the time that 40 and Gadget put in...uhm, you know...this was just a tape that we did in my hotel room at the end of the day...Laughing so, I mean, it's...it's great that people love it, I mean, I always just looked at it as a bridge to get to where we're...we're at today. And then...and then from that, I mean, I ended up going to Atlanta and sitting with Future for six days and he's just a... a monster ...he's a machine, it's crazy, I've never seen anybody with that much of a catalog...like I mean, songs that I still think about to this day that I heard in that studio, that I'm like "when is that coming out?"
Oh, I've seen him...I've seen people loading projects