Cyrus Langhorne
Young Money's Drake has revealed Alicia Keys will be a confirmed guest feature on his upcoming Thank Me Later debut.
Seapking at a concert this week in California, Drizzy announced the news.
Drake confirmed Alicia Keys will appear as a guest on his forthcoming debut album during the Los Angeles stop of his Away From Home tour on Thursday night. The Toronto MC broke the news to the crowd as the opening notes of”Fireworks,” slated to be Thank Me Later‘s opening track, began to boom from the speakers. “This right here is the first song that you will here when you put that disk in,” Drake said of Thank Me Later, due June 15. “It’s a song with myself and Miss Alicia Keys, it’s called “Fireworks.” “Money just changed everything, I wonder how life without it would go,” he rapped. “From the concrete, who knew that a flower would grow/ Looking down from the top and it’s crowded below/ My 15 minutes started an hour ago.” (MTV)
Earlier this year, Drake talked about how his “Unthinkable” Keys collaboration came together.
“Alicia Keys, they reached out and she said she really wanted me to do something on her project but she wanted me to do me, not do an Alicia Keys record,” Drake explained in an interview. “And man, she gave me one of the best studio experiences in my life, like when I got there, instead of being like ‘All right, here’s the beat, get to work,’ [she said] play me your favorite songs and let’s battle. Let’s battle. You play me your favorite record, we’ll go one-for-one. You play me a record and I’ll play you a record. And everybody was in the studio and — it was turning into this heated party, we were all just loving music, you know? It almost like transitioned from great music to making a song, no one even noticed it but she started playing keys and I just started writing melodies and we came up with a song that I think could really be a big record for her song. I wrote most of the record and she produced it…It was probably one of the best moments of mycareer.” (Rap-Up TV)
Last January, Drake opened up about his ability to write R&B and hip-hop songs.
“With R&B, I know my sound. I know I make records to f*ck to,” he explained in an interview. “The way Jay and Wayne write rap, I write R&B. I don’t write lyrics down on paper. The other day, I was in the studio with Alicia Keys, and I wrote two songs just speaking to her. I wish I could write that way for rap. With my rap songs, there’s so much of me I have to give that I don’t know if I could ever just flow. The thing is, I’m a great rapper. There’s two elements to rap: having the thoughts, and then being a great rapper. I can really rap the sh*t that I write. My tone, my inflection. When I listen to myself on records, I don’t feel like I don’t belong there. When I listen to ‘Forever,’ with three of my heroes, I fit right in.” (Complex)
Drizzy recently said his debut album would feature under 20 tracks.
“It’ll probably end up being about 15. But it’s just, you know, I love doing R&B music, I really do. And I just always feel like to tie in hip-hop with R&B and to utilize R&B to glue it all together, that’s my trademark. That’s something that only I can do. And that’s why I will continue to do it. There might come a time where I might be like, “Yo, I just want to do an R&B mixtape, or I just want to do a whole [R&B] album,” but I don’t think so, man. I think that that is the makeup of me–melody and just the tone of my voice and all; I don’t think I could ever change that, so…” (XXL Mag)
Drake’s Thank Me Later is scheduled to drop Tuesday, June 15th.
Check out a recent Drake interview below:
