Every artist goes through a development stage before finding their voice-- even the biggest artist in the world needed some time to figure out what direction he wanted to go in.
Before dropping "Best I Ever Had," Drake already had a lot of label attention. Everybody wanted to sign him but, from his demos, he was giving some people the wrong impression. Most notably, Akon actually passed on signing him in 2005 because he thought that the Toronto native sounded too much like Eminem.
"Kardinal Offishall brought [Drake] to me in 2005, I think it was," said Akon during the latest portion of his interview with VladTV. "It was right before 'Best I Ever Had' blew up because, at the time, it was more mixtape-ish, you know. At the time, believe it or not, Drake sounded more like Eminem."
Akon goes on to note that the difference between Drake's breakout single and the demo he had got ahold of is stark. Akon says that nobody had signed him by that point and that the lowest offer was $1 million, which Akon was not down to match.
During the interview, Akon also speaks about his signing of Lady Gaga and why he eventually sold her contract to Jimmy Iovine for millions of dollars.
The answer should be obvious, but, do you think Akon made a mistake in not signing Drake?