DRAKE SPEAKS TO NY TIMES ABOUT HIS CAREER, BEING ROBBED, DATING RIHANNA & MORE..

The New Orleans rap star Lil Wayne heard Drake’s music

in the summer of 2008 and invited him out on the road.

“I sat in the same place on the bus for a week,” Drake

recalled. “I was scared.” Wayne only found out about

Drake’s acting past when he landed on “Degrassi”

while flipping channels on the bus’s television.

DRAKE & LIL WAYNE

In short order Drake became a key part of Wayne’s touring madhouse, and whenever there was downtime, in a studio or hotel room, he worked on songs. The outcome was “So Far Gone,” his third mixtape and one of last year’s best-received hip-hop recordings. It’s one of the most ambivalent, melancholy documents of rap success ever released, which is odd, because it was recorded long before Drake’s turn in the limelight.

SUCCESS BREEDS JEALOUSY & ENVY

In May 2009 he was robbed at gunpoint in a Toronto restaurant. He cooperated with the police investigation, in what some perceived as a violation of hip-hop’s no-snitching ethos. The black gossip Web site MediaTakeout.com posted a snapshot of a page of the criminal complaint under the headline “Caught Snitchin!!! Rapper Drake Testifying Against Men Who Robbed Him!!!”

“I feel unsafe in Toronto at all times,” Drake said. “I’m a one of one. There’s no one else you can hate as much as me if you hate money, or you hate success.”

RIHANNA & DRAKE

On “Fireworks” there’s a verse about Rihanna, who asked him last year to write a song for her new album; the two soon began seeing each other regularly, though they never publicly confirmed their brief relationship.

“I was a pawn,” Drake said. The song he wrote for her never got released. “You know what she was doing to me? She was doing exactly what I’ve done to so many women throughout my life, which is show them quality time, then disappear,” he said. “I was like, wow, this feels terrible.”

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