Writter Ivory Sherman explains… Drake’s new music video was not very good and for such a talented artist, he needed a better video.

Rapper Drake’s video for his first single, “Best I Ever Had,” was released on July 1 and it’s his first single from his third mix tape, “So Far Gone.” I admit that I have recently become a Drake music fan. I have supported Drake since he was on “Degrassi” so I decided to support him with his music. But his new music video may have changed my mind. The music video is not good. It is not because it was poorly produced but rather the theme of the music video does not correlate with the message of the song.

In the music video, Drake is coaching a woman’s basketball team. Their uniforms are pink and skintight and they lose to the opposite team (who are not wearing skintight uniforms). My problem with the video is not that the camera is using its slow motion feature to highlight that these women are well endowed. My problem with the video is that it does not match with the song but most importantly, Grammy-winning artist Kanye West produced it. Kanye West is a talented music artist and producer, but he did not do a good job on Drake’s video (everyone has their bad days, right?).

I would like to know what Kanye was thinking about when he believed that a women’s basketball team would go great with a song called “Best I Ever Had.” I expected to see Drake on a college campus talking to a girl on his cell phone saying, “Sweat pants, hair tied, chillin’ with no makeup on/that’s when you’re the prettiest, I hope that you don’t take it wrong.” Instead, I saw women with huge breasts wearing skintight uniforms asking Drake, “But I thought I was the best you ever had?”

Final Thought: Drake is a new and upcoming artist but his music video should have been better. Best I Ever Had? More like the worst I’ve ever seen. I hope that the next music video will be better and it would also help if it would make some kind of sense.

Source: The Celebrity Cafe

The performance, put together prior to the shocking death and subsequent tribute to Michael Jackson, became a subject of much scrutiny — mainly aimed at BET earlier this week.

The scrutiny, due to the fact that Lil Wayne’s daughter and other teenage girls were on stage while the rapper was using immense profanity and sexually tinged lyrics, has now been addressed in Drake’s fresh interview with Complex Magazine.

In his sit down with Complex, Drake takes on the backlash, stating:

“That, actually—to be honest—was a terrible idea that I’ll never do to myself again. But I was being pressed from different areas to perform, and I think what really happened at the BET Awards is with the passing of Mike, the climate really changed, as far as the award show goes. I don’t think it called for us to perform “Every Girl” and “Always Strapped,” and I think it was an award show filled with tributes and music and these genuine heartfelt speeches. And to sort of climax out of a very tongue-in-cheek point, and then people misconstruing Wayne’s daughters and her friends coming out on stage.”

While addressing the BET performance, Drake also confirms that he did indeed injure himself and was thus sitting on the stool for that reason alone. But it is Drake’s response to a question that involves BET’s planning (Watching it at home, the BET Awards seemed to be a mess. Did it seem that way in person?) that is most interesting:

“Well, I can only speak for my portion of it. I had asked for something very specific for my performance and none of those were met, as far as production value, so… I understood my situation, as far as sitting in one place, and figured there was a way to make it interesting. But when I looked around and noticed that none of that was going on, I kind of just realized that it was going to be a loss for me. But at the end of the day, it is what it is.”

For any parents and other viewers offended by the performance, Drake says “To anyone who was offended, my personal apologies, it wasn’t intended to offend anybody.”

Source: Sohh

Complex: Everyone’s been waiting on this video. Can you take us through the making of it?

Drake: Yeah. The video is directed by Kanye West. Basically we decided, as opposed to taking ourselves super serious, we just wanted to have some fun with it. Myself, being a young man, a young single man at that, I kind of wanted to be real about the way I function with women at this current point in my life. Which is, I don’t have one woman that I call my girl. There’s different girls in my life that play different roles and I see at different times, but collectively they kind of make up the roster of happiness for me [Laughs].

Complex: Understandable. So what’s the concept?

Drake: The concept of the video is, I’m a coach at a high school and the girls of my life are all on my high school basketball team. Throughout the video you see us prepping for this big championship game, and my team ends up losing. You see the looks on their faces at the end of the video, but the moral of the story, I guess, is win or lose, you can still be the best to somebody. When women see the video and see all the breast and ass, hopefully they don’t take offense. Hopefully they see the real meaning.

Read the full interview here.

‘My loyalty lays with Wayne,’ heavily courted MC says.

Drake stayed down and stayed loyal: No more is he the hottest free agent in music, Drizzy’s recording contract is done! He has artistic freedom and big backing.

“To go independent is — like I said in a prior interview — it’s a funny term,” Drake told MTV News on Tuesday, addressing the deal that finds his albums being released on Wayne’s independent Young Money label (which is affiliated with Cash Money Records) and being distributed by the major Universal Republic. “Because it’s almost impossible to go fully independent. This was basically like the closest thing I could get to my own independence, to sort of continuing to be that guy to the fans that, you know, is trying to prove something — trying to prove that it can be done. So with that being said, I signed directly to Cortez Bryant and Gee Roberson, my two managers, and their company Inspire. It’s a joint venture with Young Money, so that’s the deal. I know there’s been a lot of stuff on the Internet about different entities, but that’s the people involved in the main record deal. And then it’s distributed through Universal, so it’s great, man. You know, if we can sell some records I think it could be a pretty legendary situation.”

Although Drake decided to stay with his managers (who also manage Lil Wayne), he said he loved the courting process.

Read the rest here

Drake released his debut video, “Best I Ever Had,” video to little fanfare today from female fans and industry alike, “I am appalled as a female in the music industry. I was a huge fan of his music before I saw this. He’s not your typical hip-hop artist so why would he film a typical late night BET video. Trash I call it,” says an employee from Giant. Fans are upset at Director Kanye West, “man kayne f**ked diz (this) man video up…bet if it was jay-z video kayne wuld (would) make sure it was on point,”

What do you think of the new music video?

After coaching Team Drake in the clip, the newly signed MC outlines his bigger game plan.

Drake’s new video for “Best I Ever Had,” directed by Kanye West, premiered Wednesday night. In it, Drizzy coaches a basketball team of well-endowed female lovelies, clad in revealing pink uniforms, who face a more focused and skillful squad of women. Coach Drake doesn’t seem heartbroken that his hoopers won’t exactly draw comparisons to the Dream Team.

“Some of us younger men, we refer to our affiliation with women like a roster,” Drake said, explaining the clip’s concept to MTV News. “You have key women in your life when you’re single and doing your thing.”

“Best I Ever Had” is the first video from his debut LP, Thank Me Later, which he aims to release later this year, now that he’s signed to Lil Wayne’s Young Money label. Of course he does. He’s red-hot right now, thanks to the mixtape So Far Gone.

“I just gotta get this tour knocked out,” he said earlier this week, smiling about going on the road as part of the America’s Most Wanted Music Festival, which will feature Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy Tell’em and Young Jeezy. “I am working on [the album] right now. I’ve actually started. I was in the studio with Pharrell, and it’s basically a pretty lax process for us.

“Basically, So Far Gone worked,” he continued, talking about his strategy for the highly anticipated LP. “So, let’s just try to do it again. You know, let’s try and act as if we were making a second disc to So Far Gone.”

Source: MTV

Drake was a special guest today on the MTV talk show to talk his new deal, Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne, and even a pre-ceaser cut clip from Degrassi : The Next Generation. Jump to 3:23 to take a sneak peak at the clip for the Yeezy directed, “Best I Ever Had.”

Thanks to Rap Radar