Jim Jones reveals why he passed on Signing Drake.
Before his successful Rap Career, Drake was an actor on the show “Degrassi: The Next Generation” where he played a role of a boy in a wheelchair. He then kicked off his music career with his debut mixtape “Room for Improvement” in 2006, followed by two more projects before linking up with Lil Wayne to get signed with Young Money Entertainment. However, Dipset rapper Jim Jones had a chance of signing the Toronto rap star before Weezy, but he passed on it because of his role on “Degrassi”.
In the latest interview, the Harlem rapper reveals that Alan Grunblatt, the current president of MNRK Music Group told him about the “CLB” rapper. “Drake definitely ran across my desk. I got a call from Alan Grunblatt. I was on a tour,” he recalled. “Alan was like, ‘I got this guy named Drake, uh, he’s an actor, he’s on Degrassi.’ I’m like, ‘Who the f**k is Drake on Degrassi?’ He let me hear him rapping like this boy could rap his a*s off.”
“I’m like, ‘Boy, what do you mean? What am I going to do with boy? He’s an actor, he’s in a wheelchair on like… what is it, Disney Channel?’ I’m like, ‘Boy, I don’t know how to make this work out’. Once again, I just wasn’t seeing past what I seen in front of me.”
He continues, “Weezy [Lil Wayne] was smart enough to do so, and I remember being on another tour in the back of the bus and hearing Weezy and Drake rapping, and Drake saying something about Princess Diana and it’s going crazy. I’m like ‘Wow, life is crazy. This ni**a is dead nasty, f**k what he look like.’”
Jim Jones has already stated that he will not be able to sign Drake. In December 2020, the Harlem icon mentioned it when he mentioned that he had also passed on J. Cole. “A little light-skinned kid coming to the studio every day rapping like Drake, and at that point it was Drake [and] ni**as didn’t know what to do with no Drake. Drake was just a phenomenon at that point. Sh*t, you can’t have two of them right now. As you see, it took him a few years after that to kind of find his place and what he wanted to do. He ain’t rapping like Drake no more, but when he was in my studio, he was.”
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Watch the interview below.
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