A notebook owned by Drake—before he was a superstar and just Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi—is being sold for $32,500, TMZ reports.
The notebook is comprised of old verses from 2002 to 2005 and is being sold by memorabilia company Moments in Time. The item was originally discovered in a dumpster close to Drake’s grandfather’s old furniture factory in Toronto, where Drake reportedly worked at one point. The notebook also includes his signature.
The notebook has 20 to 25 pages of verses, full songs, and random thoughts from Drizzy during his Degrassi days. According to TMZ, one of the verses reads:
Girls lie and you make it evident you affected
Another one of Drake's notebooks went up for sale last summer, which contained Drizzy's handwritten lyrics for his 2006 mixtape Room for Improvement. The notebook featured several songs that ended up on the project, including "Try Harder," "Special" (entitled ''Extra Special'' in the notebook), "Do What You Do," "A Scorpio's Mind," "City Is Mine," and "Bad Meaning Good." In June, Nate D. Sanders Auctions had began the bidding at $8,000.
Later, rapper Nickelus F tweeted that some of the songs included in the notebook as listed by Nate D. Sanders Auctions were his, such as "Military Brat Freestyle," which appears on his 2007 mixtape Cut the Check; "Light That Fire" became Room for Improvement's "AM 2 PM"; and "Grind Freestyle" is also his. In his statement to Complex, he wrote:
"'Light That Fire' was a song I had did and sent him to listen to and he ended up returning it to me months with a verse and new hook and it became 'AM2PM.' So it’s probably his verse that he has written in there," Nickelus F told Complex. "'The Military Brat' he never got on. As for the other records the 'Grinding Freestyle' was a joint of mine that I sent him where I did a quick lil freestyle over the MF DOOM 'Accordion' beat and about a year later he sent me that joint back with a verse on it dumbing out."
He added, "But all and all that’s a dope piece of history they have there! He was hungry and really wanted it back then."
While Drake has been nominated for a number of Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year and Best Rap Song, the Toronto native has reportedly turned down the Recording Academy's request to perform at this year's show. Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino also declined to fill performance slots.
"The fact of the matter is, we continue to have a problem in the hip-hop world," a Grammys producer told the New York Times. "When they don’t take home the big prize, the regard of the academy, and what the Grammys represent, continues to be less meaningful to the hip-hop community, which is sad."
