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In a new GQ Magazine cover story, rapper Drake revealed the words of wisdom he received from After Earth star — and onetime rapper — Will Smith.
“I had lunch the other day with someone I extremely look up to,” Drake told the magazine. “Okay — I had lunch with Will Smith, and listening to him talk, it made me think I don’t know what love is. He said something profound. He said love is when you become one and you need that person. It’s not about wanting anymore, you need that person.
“Hearing that, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that way,” he continued. “I’ve made a lot of music about love being the only thing I’m missing.”
The Canadian rapper also discussed his feud with Chris Brown. The two were within shouting distance during a fight last year at New York’s W.i.P. nightclub, where Drake and his entourage were also present. Supposedly the clash was over Brown’s on-and-off girlfriend Rihanna, and while Drake has not been accused of taking part in the brawl, beef continues between the hip-hop stars.
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Drake hopes to see an end to that. “It’s embarrassing, the amount of media coverage,” he said. “Two rappers fighting over the woman. He’s not even a rapper, but still, it’s the last way you want your name out there. It distracts from the music. … But he’s made me the enemy, and that’s the way it’s gonna stay, I guess.”
He added that the feud, and Rihanna’s involvement, worries him. “If I think about it too much, I feel it wrapping around my foot, like I get a feeling it could end really badly.”
The rapper is slated to drop his third studio album, Nothing Was the Same, later this summer. First single “Started From the Bottom” is already his 30th Top 10 hit on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart, an achievement matched only by R. Kelly and Lil Wayne. He told GQ about another track: album opener “Tuscan Leather,” a Whitney Houston sampler named for a Tom Ford fragrance said to smell like cocaine.
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But while working on the album, he said, partying and girls haven’t been on his mind. “You know the way fighters don’t f— before the fight?” he said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m so focused on training my body and getting my mind right to create this album that sex isn’t one of my main priorities. If someone is around that I know and trust, I’m down. But I’m not going to end up with some stranger at this party.”
He hopes to recapture his earlier records’ buzz with Nothing Was the Same. “You constantly ask yourself: Will I ever be able to excite people the way I did when the Internet was going crazy, back when you first felt like you had a piece of Drake that no one else had?”
He added, “I ain’t gonna lie: I want to be the one you listen to this summer.”
Twitter: @THRMusic
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