Drake can rest easy knowing Boi-1da isn’t jumping ship.
At Sunday’s Juno Awards (Canada’s version of the Grammys), the Toronto producer took home the International Achievement Award. As an in-house producer for OVO Sound, Boi-1da has crafted legendary Drake tracks like “God’s Plan,” “0 to 100,” “Miss Me” and many more hits across their nearly two-decade collaboration. So naturally, during his acceptance speech, Boi-1da made sure to give Drake his well-deserved props.
“I want to have a huge shoutout to my brother Drake, the greatest rapper of all time, the greatest artist of all time and he’s from Canada,” Boi-1da said around the 4:20-minute mark of the video below. “Drizzy Drake–that’s my brother. … Listen, me and Drake, we started this together, we did this together. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for Drake, man.”
He added, “All the sacrifices he made, all the doors he kicked down for a lot of people. So shout out to Drake, that’s my brother. Thank you for life, man. I love that guy.”
Boi-1da has been openly supportive of the 6 God throughout his career, but even more so during the recent Kendrick Lamar and Drake diss track battle. He called Ebro Darden’s opinion that Toronto lacks a sound “horse shit,” and dismissed West Coast rap as “ass.”
In a recent CBC interview, Boi-1da remembered first meeting Drake when the rapper was still on teen drama Degrassi.
“The very first day we met, we ended up doing our very first song together called Do What You Do, and it was a local smash,” Boi-1da told the outlet. “[It was] very exciting because I’d never had a song on the radio before, and that song was probably in high rotation on Canadian radio.”
