Express & Star

Reflecting on fatherhood, the powerhouse is here

Rap megastar Drake will bring his Assassination Vacation tour to the West Midlands with three nights at Birmingham’s Resorts World Arena on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

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Drake will play three nights in Birmingham

The platinum-selling, chart-dominating powerhouse will be supported by fellow Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter Tory Lanez and is fresh off the back of his sell out USA tour.

Life has changed significantly for Drake since the birth of a baby son. “I have a son, he’s a beautiful boy. Crazy blue eyes, baby blue eyes.

“You know he’s already in the pool like shooting the basketball. He’s gonna get to a certain age, I’m gonna bring him right to ‘Bron’s house and I’ma be like, ‘Yo, summer camp at Bronny’s house!’”

He hopes to give his child a better childhood than the one he endured, after his parents split when he was five and were unable to reconcile.

“I was really hard on my parents for giving me sort of a childhood that I had to wrap my mind around as I grew. I multiple times sort of suggested that they could have done a better job of whatever it was, co-parenting, sticking together, you know, not being so divided.

“As life takes shape and teaches you your own lessons, I end up in this situation where I don’t have the fairy tale, like, ‘Oh, Drake started a family with Rihanna and this is like so perfect’...it looks so good on paper,” the rapper continued. “By the way, I wanted that too at one time.”

Now he has challenges of his own.

“I am a single father learning to communicate with a woman who, you know, we’ve had our moments. I do want to be able to explain to my son what happened. But I don’t have any desire for him to like not love his mother or I don’t want like, I don’t ever want the world to be angry at his mother. Like, we have found ourselves in a situation and we are both equally responsible and now, like, I’m just really excited to be a great father.”

Drake initially rose to fame in the teen drama television series Degrassi: The Next Generation in the early 2000s.

He left to pursue his musical dreams and in 2007 dropped a debut mixtape, Room for Improvement. He released two further independent projects, Comeback Season and So Far Gone, before signing to Lil Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment in June 2009.

Drake’s debut studio album Thank Me Later debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was soon certified platinum. His next two releases, 2011’s Take Care and 2013’s Nothing Was the Same, were critically and commercially successful; the former earned him his first Grammy Award for Best Rap Album.

His fourth album, Views, broke several chart records and the dancehall-influenced album sat atop the Billboard 200 for 13 nonconsecutive weeks.

In 2018, he released the double album Scorpion, which also broke several streaming records, and housed the Grammy Award winning number-one single God’s Plan.