Drake Featured As One of VIBE.com's 60 Rappers in 60 Days

VIBE.com kicked off its “60 Rappers in 60 Days,” and its 22nd man is none other than Drake Drizzy Rogers. Riding the buzz from his “So Far Gone” mixtape, bracing for the official album tentatively titled “Thank Me Later,” and anticipating being signed to a major record label, Drake talks about his career. All eyes are on him. Read an excerpt from his interview below.

VIBE: How do you approach making an album as opposed to a mixtape?

Drake: It’s like putting a puzzle together. I never make a song and then that night be like, Oh yeah, this is gonna be my single. You got to let people decide that for you. Not necessarily one or two people in a room, but I mean songs can pick up that you would never think would pick up. Like Andre 3000 just shot a video for “Prototype,” you know what I mean? You never know. Anything can be something that people want to listen to. As far as knowing ahead of time, there’s definitely records that are going to give you a special feeling. There are records that are undeniable.

Do you stress over picking potential singles?

You know on this mixtape that I put out, as far as singles, I had a song on there called “Best I Ever Had.” And it’s just the song that everyone loves, you know, unanimously. Everyone wants to sing it. I just happened to get the right chorus that people just don’t forget. When we were making it, we listened back to it and we were like, “Yeah, this is gonna be something special,” just as far as people picking up on that song and really knowing all the words to the hook and stuff like that. I used to obsess about that. That’s how you can take five, six years to make an album, you know?

Who are some other people you’d like to bring on board?

Andre 3000, that’s one of my idols. Kanye and Andre are really my idols and the other rapper … My favorite rapper is Phonte from Little Brother. Those are the guys that I really hope I get a chance to play them the record and have ’em all give me all their blessings.

Why haven’t you signed to a label yet?

The situations take time, you know? To get signed overnight, I’m so glad that didn’t happen to me two years ago ’cause I needed those two years to really build on everything — my talent, my image, my life, everything. I needed two more years of being unsigned and sort of figuring things out to really know what I wanted to do.

Read the whole interview at www.vibe.com/news/interviews/60rappers/2009/06/60_rappers_in_60_days_drake/.