Drake on the Hate & Being Un-Photogenic

XXL recently published some unreleased excerpts from their upcoming interview w/ Drake. The full piece hits stands this month. Here are a few snippets:

XXL: How many songs are on Thank Me Later?

Drake: It’ll probably end up being about 15. But it’s just, you know, I love doing R&B music, I really do. And I just always feel like to tie in hip-hop with R&B and to utilize R&B to glue it all together, that’s my trademark. That’s something that only I can do. And that’s why I will continue to do it. There might come a time where I might be like, “Yo, I just want to do an R&B mixtape, or I just want to do a whole [R&B] album,” but I don’t think so, man. I think that that is the makeup of me—melody and just the tone of my voice and all; I don’t think I could ever change that, so…

XXL: I’m waiting on the Drake Gangsta Grillz.

Drake: [Laughs] I just find that boring, you know. There’s certain people where it’s impressive, like with Lil Wayne, to hear him freestyling over other people’s beats for an hour is impressive because it’s just like, Yo, this guy never runs out of clever shit to say, but for me, people might want to hear it, but it’s just not something that I really want to give you. I’d rather just give you something that lasts a little longer than that ’cause those mixtapes never really last much longer than six months. When the songs become played out, and…

XXL: Well, it’s different now. It’s like Dedication 2 and Dedication 1 and Jeezy obviously, Trap or Die…

Drake: Yeah, but even so, do you listen to those on a constant basis or would you rather put in an album where somebody’s giving you original compositions and moments that maybe apply to your life as opposed to listening to like… I don’t know? I know to listen to freestyles over songs that maybe I’m just sick of, even though somebody kills it, there may be one or two or three that really, really, I love, but other than that, I’d rather just listen to like somebody’s music.

XXL: How do you respond to the hate?

Drake: I don’t respond. I cut myself off from outlets where I would be able to say anything anyway, but it’s really not my style to really say anything to people, you know. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, man, honestly, the music feedback I don’t really trip off of ’cause I know everybody likes their own thing so I don’t really trip when someone doesn’t like my music because what you’ll tend to do is there’ll be 40 people that say, “Oh, dope song,” and then there’ll be one guy that’s like, “Yo, this dude’s overrated, fuck Drake,” and that’s the one you’ll pay attention to. That one guy will make you feel like everybody’s online dissing you so it’s easy to get caught up in the trap of the feedback. But to be honest that’s not even the stuff that bothers me, man. You want to know what really bothers me?

XXL: What?

Drake: What really bothers me is that fact that all my life, I always get caught in the worst, most unphotogenic poses ever. Now people follow me with cameras and are just clicking away and I always feel like I just look mad different in pictures. I hate seeing pictures of myself online when I’m leaving a spot or whatever; I just always get caught laughing ’cause I’m always outside making jokes or whatever with the people, but I always end up looking so stupid like that’s the shit that I’m always like, “Man, I wish that didn’t happen,” you know? But as for people’s opinions and shit like that, it’s all good. That’s what’s going to happen. You know people are entitled to their opinion and it takes a certain type of individual to really come online and give their opinion of your music, positive or negative. I don’t know if you do it, but I can’t say I’ve ever gone online and posted underneath someone’s song, and be like, “Dope song, son.” Or, “That shit is wack.” I’ve never done that before. It’s just a certain community of people that really feel like that’s their outlet and I know that me and my friends aren’t any of them so I don’t know who those people are and I can’t really take their opinion too close to heart just because I’m not really sure what those people are made of and if their opinion’s even valid so I just kind of keep it moving.

XXL: If it all ended today, if it got taken away, what would you want people to take away?

Drake: It can’t end yet. It can’t end yet because the story’s not done. —Benjamin Meadows-Ingram

Photo Credit NahRight

(((Shot-Out to my girl Shou Ling who is in Crazy in LOVE w/ Drake. Love being an understatement. Love you boo!)))