It was spring 1998. DMX was the hottest cat in hip-hop and released his SoundScan-murdering debut LP It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot. That winter, X came right back with another scorcher, Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood.
OK, speed up 12 years. We all know about Drake’s popularity. His debut, Thank Me Later, came out this past spring, and believe it or not, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Drizzy could come right back with another album just in time for Christmas.
“Drake’s crazy,” Young Money president Mack Maine told MTV News last week. “He’s doing a mixtape right now. He called me one night, like 2 in the morning. He has the intro done for the new album. We was discussing dates where he should come back. That’ll be soon. And this mixtape, he’s gonna put that out quick. His formula is crazy. He works fast. I can’t give the secret away to the formula. He’s a musical genius. The way he and [producer] 40 put things together is crazy.”
When we asked Mack if Drake was putting out another LP before next summer, he simply said, “Real possible! What we discussed, definitely, what me and him discussed.”
Such a quick turnaround between Thank Me Later and its follow-up is a simple case of supply and demand.
“It makes sense,” Mack said. “Like DMX and those guys [at Def Jam]. They dropped two in one year. I think 50 [Cent] did two in one year. If it wasn’t a year, it was right around that time. [Drake’s] hot like that. Why not? Give them what they want.”
When asked if Drizzy would have an album in the marketplace in time for it to be a stocking stuffer around the holidays, Mack Mizzle smiled and advised us to “expect the unexpected.”
Regardless of when the new LP comes out, all signs point toward Drake’s R&B mixtape, It’s Never Enough, to come this year. There has been a smattering of Drake records popping up randomly on the Internet recently, such as “What If I Kissed You.”
