We are all waiting for Drake to release his new album Certified Lover Boy which has been in the making for a little while now.
Drake’s good friend and longtime producer-engineer, Noah “40” Shebib recently stopped by Kevin Durant’s The ETCS podcast to talk at length about his career, working for the past decade with Drake, the Toronto superstar’s hit making ability, why he (40) does not work too much with other artists, when we can expect CLB to arrive, how much he loves the leaked song ‘Vital‘ and much more.
When it comes to Drake’s album, 40 says The Boy is always ready and he will drop whenever he wants to. “He’s always got it. Now does that mean he’s done? I don’t know.. He might make 10 songs next week, you know. But he’s got it. But when are you going to pull the trigger? I don’t know when you’re going to pull the trigger,” he said around the 1 hour 24 minute mark of the chat.
“If Drake wants to drop the album tomorrow, it’s coming out tomorrow. Drake can make the industry move,” he continued, adding that he doesn’t need a long rollout.
40 talked about Drake’s ear for and involvement in the production, adding that he doesn’t always take credit for it. “It’s him who’s got those ideas. It’s him who’s got those visions. Every f*cking time. You know? It doesn’t matter what we’re talking about. Sample ideas, pieces, loops, whatever, anything. He’s an incredible producer, but he’s just knows what the (shit’s) supposed to sound like,” 40 said.
“But he doesn’t take all the credit for it, and I’ve often given him production credit, uh, on (the song) ‘F*cking Problems’ it’s produced by 40 and Champagne Papi. And that was before he even had the Instagram handle. That was just like, a nickname we were calling him back then and So, I was just like, it was a joke. I thought it was funny. I was like, “Yo, bro, I’m giving you a credit on this. You crazy?'”
40 also spoke about inspiring a young Travis Scott to record music with the bare minimum equipment. “You can always figure it out. And me and Drake made So Far Gone on a little laptop in 2009 with a little M-Box and a little shitty TLM-103 microphone, and like, that’s it. You know, we didn’t have nothing. And we went and we made that whole album. It’s funny, Travis Scott told me this story one time. When I first met him, the first time I met was at Wireless Fest in London, I think. And he came to me, he was like, ’40, man. This one time you did this…’ ….’You did this post-‘ Excuse me. So you did this post on the OVO blog about all you need is this microphone, and an interface, and a shitty laptop, and like you can, you can get it done. Like don’t let no one tell you need more, you know, you don’t. That’s all you need. And he was like ‘man, you, you posted that and I went and I showed it to my mom, and, and I-I told her like, yo, you, we gotta buy this mic and we gotta buy this and that, trust me this is all I need and I begged her for it and, and she bought it for me and look- look-look what happened, look what happened, you know?’ … and he’s sitting there like telling me this shit in wireless. I’m like wow, f*ck, crazy. You know?”
You can listen to the podcast below. It’s also available on Apple and Spotify.