Wayment, chile! Akon revealed that he had the chance to sign Drake at some point, but he apparently passed up on the opportunity because according to Akon, Drake sounded like Eminem at the time.
Now Akon played a huge hand in putting some of your faves on including Lady Gaga and T Pain, and Drizzy Drake could’ve apparently been a part of the Konvict Muzik family as opposed to the Young Money family—can you imagine?!
“Kardinal Offishall brought him [Drake] to me in 2005, I think it was, or 2004,” Akon tells DJ Vlad in a recent interview. “It was right before [Drake’s song] ‘Best I Ever Had’ blew up, because at the time, it was more mixtape-ish. At the time, believe it or not, Drake sounded more like Eminem. With that demo I heard, it was sounding more like Em.”
He added, “You can see the difference between that demo, and ‘Best I Ever Had’. It was completely different.”
A bidding war for Drake then ensued with different record companies following this, and Akon recalls not having a million dollars, which was the lowest bid at the time.
“That’s when Kardi was like, ‘I told you this n—a was going to be the sh–!’,” Akon recalled. “I said, ‘Well, sh–, reach out [to his team].’ He said, ‘You can, but the lowest bid right now is a million.’”
Akon seemingly doesn’t have any regrets, however, he said Drake is worth every single penny.
“Out of all the artists today, to me, [Drake] is worth every single f—ing penny. That mother—er’s genius, he’s revolutionary what he’s done.”
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