Drake releases a new album in order to fulfill contract

Justin Tobolsky, Eastside Staff

Canadian and Grammy-winning rapper, Aubrey Drake Graham, also known as Drake, recently released his latest album If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. Drake dropped this new album on Feb. 13 with 17 new songs.

Many guest appearances are featured in his album including Lil Wayne, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Travi$ Scott and more. Without warning, Drake released If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late to over 20 million fans. Anticipating the fans even more, Drake tweeted a link to a 17 minute video called “Jungle,” which is the name of one of his songs, prior to actually releasing his album.

Many thought that the video alluded to a mixtape and thought it was an album. The actual story behind the release of the video is simple and very clever. Drake’s label, Cash Money Records, has a contract for Drake saying that he can only leave Cash Money after he releases four albums.

One of Drake’s closest friends, Lil Wayne recently had a falling out with Birdman, who is one of the founders of Cash Money, which resulted in Lil Wayne leaving the label and pursing other interests.

Subsequently, Lil Wayne brought along Drake to leave Cash Money, but he had to release one more album in order to officially leave. Now, Drake is no longer signed to Cash Money, and since this new album was a ‘follow-up,’ he still has to release one more album later this year.