How to Drake It in America

Drake’s home is its own fantasia,   a single-level ranch that sprawls in  various wings over 7,500 square feet, from the game room to the gym to Drake’s  master bedroom with Jacuzzi. The pool is like a scene out of Waterworld,  with a bar inside a grotto, waterfalls, and a slide that drops thirty feet  through the rock. Someone leaps from the top of the waterfall into the pool  while another holds on to the cliff and does pull-ups. Hung everywhere, the  indoor-outdoor flat-screen TVs shine like mirrors. On the property are stables,  a mechanical bull, and a movie theater. There’s an air-conditioned doghouse and  a wine cellar. Drake bought the place for $7.7 million from a  restaurant-chain mogul who threw in all the furniture, too. When the front gate  opens to allow passage, a woman’s voice coos, “Access granted.” Drake’s   boys  call it Disneyland.

When not on the road, Drake splits time between here and Toronto—where he  grew up and his mother still resides—surrounded by his boys, a rotating  collection of about a dozen. At the kitchen island right now, a coterie of  flirty women chat with Chubbs and Spoon, CJ and 40 (Drake’s musical  collaborator, Noah “40” Shebib, who makes the beats and mixes all the songs).  Drake finds me taking in the scene. “This ain’t every day,” he says. “I really  don’t live some   crazy rapper life.”

I kind of believe him. Beneath the banter and joviality—beneath Drake’s  thousand-watt smile—one almost immediately senses a moodier seriousness, a  grown-up intention, though he admits, “Today I want my boys to have their fun.”  Still, with the weeks counting down to a (supposed) August release for his new  album, Nothing Was the Same, and a tour scheduled to follow, the pressure  has ratcheted up another notch, the crew have cinched a little tighter around  their leader, and Drake is trying to shield himself from all the distractions,  in order to prove himself once again.

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