I just spent an enjoyable 20 minutes reading Drake’s Rolling Stone interview online. It’s a good four pages of Drake, who is very quotable, interesting and funny. You can read the piece here and I’m including some highlights below. But I only read the piece because Drake caused a lot of controversy yesterday by tweeting some complaints about the piece. In chronological order, he tweeted:

“I never commented on Yeezus for my interview portion of Rolling Stone. They also took my cover from me last minute and ran the issue… I’m disgusted with that. RIP to Philip Seymour Hoffman. All respect due. But the press is evil. I’m done doing interviews for magazines. I just want to give my music to the people. That’s the only way my message gets across accurately.”

[Via E! News]

Drake later deleted all but the “I’m done doing interviews…” tweet, probably because some people were interpreting the “I’m disgusted with that” to be about PSH getting the Rolling Stone cover. As for Drake’s claim that he never slammed Yeezus, RS is standing by their reporting and it seems like RS probably has Drake’s comments recorded.

Now, as for the RS interview… as I said, I enjoyed it. I know some stuff about Drake, but I learned more about him in this piece than anything I’ve ever read. He’s super-close to his mom. He’s obsessed with residential pools. He stalked the piece of real estate he now owns in LA for years before he bought it at a huge bargain. He renamed the property “The Yolo Estate.” He’s also a practicing Jew! Shalom, man. Some other highlights:

People that make fun of him: “There’s these GIFs about me, these stupid stereotypes people have of me as this overly emotional character that cries in his room every night. There are jokes because of Degrassi, because I’m Canadian, because I make music for women. There are memes of guys crying to my music.” He scowls, then shrugs. “I love it. I heart those photos when I see them on Instagram.”

He’s still into Rihanna: “She’s the ultimate fantasy. I mean, I think about it. Like, ‘Man, that would be good.’ We have fun together, she’s cool and sh-t. But we’re just friends. That’s my dog for life.” He says he doesn’t have a girlfriend. “I’m not after p–sy like I was three years ago, when I was trying to make up for all the years when no girl would talk to me. But I haven’t met somebody that makes everybody else not matter.”

He doesn’t think the Grammys are relevent: “It becomes more apparent how irrelevant our genre is to them. They were trying to utilize me to sell the show, requesting me to come and perform ‘Hold On We’re Going Home'” – his smash ballad – “but they didn’t nominate it for anything! They’re calling me, e-mailing me every day to do some elaborate performance and bring them viewers, but I didn’t get a nomination for Album of the Year. I didn’t get a nomination for Song of the Year.”

Macklemore posting his texts to Kendrick Lamar: “That s–t was wack as f—k. I was like, ‘You won. Why are you posting your text messages? Just chill. Take your W, and if you feel you didn’t deserve it, go get better – make better music.’ It felt cheap. It didn’t feel genuine. Why do that? Why feel guilt? You think those guys would pay homage to you if they won? This is how the world works: He made a brand of music that appealed to more people than me, Hov, Kanye and Kendrick. Whether people wanna say it’s racial, or whether it’s just the fact that he tapped into something we can’t tap into. That’s just how the cards fall. Own your s–t.” Drake felt slighted by the apology too. “To just name Kendrick? That s–t made me feel funny. No, in that case, you robbed everybody. We all need text messages!”

Hosting Saturday Night Live. “I hope it opens up some doors back into acting… I wanted to prove that there’s distance between me and the people you consider to be my peers. I have something special.”

His high school: “It was all white Jewish kids, and it was tough. I didn’t have the worst time, but I did have a hard time. I was always the last kid to get the invite to the party.” He says he’s “proud to be Jewish – not on some Orthodox s–it, but I celebrate holidays with my family.” Classmates, however, lobbed the word “schvartze,” a Yiddish slur against blacks, at him.

Working on his music in Toronto: “Hell must feel like how Toronto feels on any given winter day, and winter lasts seven months. It’s my favorite place in the world, but there’s this cold, gloomy, dark vibe. It produces a certain sound.”

When Drake hears a song he wishes he’d made: “I get physically sick,” he says, adding, “It doesn’t happen often.” It happened in 2011, when he heard Jay Z and Kanye West’s “Ni**as in Paris,” from Watch the Throne. “I was like, ‘How did I not think of that?’ – ‘Ball so hard, that s–t cray!’ It was real rap s–t, but it felt melodic; all the cadences felt so good.”

His friendships with Kanye and Jay-Z: “Kanye and me are friends; we’re plotting on getting some work done together.” As for the coolness a few years ago, “It was a lack of communication paired with natural competitiveness…When something monumental is happening in front of me” – i.e., the Throne album – “and everyone’s paying attention to that, you gotta say, ‘I’m still here.’ But those two are gods to me.”

The “slam” against Kanye: Drake says that he was ambivalent about Kanye’s last album, Yeezus. “There were some real questionable bars on there. Like that ‘Swaghili’ line? Come on, man. Even Fabolous wouldn’t say some s–t like that.” But Drake says he speaks from a bedrock of deep respect: “Kanye’s the reason I’m here. I love everything about that guy.”

[From Rolling Stone]

I’m just going to say it – I love Drake. I think he’s completely charming. I like that he’s in touch with his sensitive side and that he knows his own value as a performer. And I don’t even think the Kanye diss was even that bad…? Like, I’m sure Yeezington will be pissed about it, but when is Yeezus NOT pissed about something?

Photos courtesy of RS, WENN.