The history between Drake and Rap-A-Lot Records CEO J. Prince has been spoken of a lot lately, as Prince was apparently the main factor in Drake not releasing his "career ending" diss track towards Pusha T and Kanye West. Luckily for Prince, this news also happened to take place in the middle of his press junket for his upcoming memoir: The Art and Science of Respect: A Memoir By James Prince.
Drake was initially discovered by Prince's son, Jas, who helped him move forward to become one of the biggest hip-hop stars off all time. Drake's respect for Prince is such that he allegedly would allegedly hold off on his response to Pusha, so it's understandable that he also helped contribute to Prince's memoir by writing the foreword.
While the book won't be released until June 22nd, the foreword has already been released. In it, Drake speaks on his experiences after meeting Prince, the lessons that he's learned from him, and the parallels between what they have both accomplished in their careers.
If you're not the reading type, Drake has also recorded his intro to the memoir as well, which Prince posted on his Instagram. In the caption, he writes, "You can tell a good tree by the fruit it bears. That's why I'm proud to be Pops to both of these young men @champagnepapi and @jas.prince . I had no idea Drake would evolve into the superstar he is today but Jas did. Now we shall continue to deal with all haters and weapons that plot against us. 'After all its Gods Plan, even when the enemies fall in my hand."
Check out the whole foreword from Drake below:
I honestly don’t remember meeting James Prince. It was years ago and a lot of life has happened since then. What I do remember is like scenes from a movie, being in Houston, on our way to a nightclub escorted by a motorcade; seas parting everywhere we went. Waves, handshakes—all blatant signs of respect and admiration and maybe even fear to be honest.
But it all equaled up to a man straight out of all my favorite movies about power, loyalty and respect. My story from Degrassi until now has been pretty well documented. Everyone has heard how Jas Prince found me on MySpace, reached out, brought me to Houston and introduced me to Lil Wayne. But not much has been said about the things I witnessed from the Prince family during those early years in that city.
There’s a common thread throughout the careers of mine and many others. And that is that no one becomes great on our own. Not even me or Pops. You know me, Jas, Jr., Baby Jay, those are my brothers, so I call him Pops. He’s a complicated man, and it takes time to learn how to read him, even for me. Through our ears, he reinforced the importance of being self-contained, how to build a team, and how to respect and value their unconditional support to the movement that you’re creating.
Our parallels became clearer and clearer. At a time where Toronto was as unlikely to succeed as a former car salesman out of Houston, at a time where rap was either East Coast or West Coast, here we both are. He helped pave the way by building a Third Cost the same way we established the North.
The challenges of creating a movement from scratch are indescribable. Everyone is different and no one has the cheat codes. We’re all just feeling our way through, relying on instinct, using whatever tools we’ve been given. And what James Prince did, from rap to boxing, was build a movement. And he did it for his city.