Even as the house fills with half-naked ladies, Drake remains off to the side, observing—in the TV room or up in the studio, what he calls the Safari Room, for its painting of a lion on the wall—puffing on his hookah, worrying with 40 over every little mix and mumble and what its final effect will be. He’s putting music “in the box,” he says, in his computer here in the Safari Room, where the tracks remain a secret as yet. Sometimes he’ll pull out his BlackBerry and start thumb-typing, not a text but some new lyric he’s heard in his head. He collects the fragments by day and stitches them together at night.
Outside, the pool party is thumping as the sky darkens, Future and Kendrick Lamar on the stereo, several stacks of pizza boxes, drinks galore. Drake hangs around the edges of his own party but eventually moves through the crowd like Gatsby, saying his hellos, chilling, laughing, like anyone his age.
A little while later, though, he’s huddled with 40 on the steps outside the Safari Room, both of them nodding their heads, going over something intensely. The party is climbing to that point where all responsibility will soon be abdicated. The music blares. Some dude puffs his chest and dives again from the top of the waterfall. Without announcing it, Drake disappears back to the studio. He’s felt something and wants to get it down, in hopes you’ll feel it, too.