The beat Drake took from under Big Sean’s nose: “I wanted to use it”
Producers often play their beats for multiple rappers, and if someone doesn’t act quickly enough, they might lose one of their career’s biggest songs. That was the case for Big Sean, who wanted a particular track on his Hall of Fame album but missed out to Drake.
Drizzy released his song ‘All Me’ as part of his Nothing Was the Same album in 2013. Produced by Key Wane and Noah ’40’ Shebib, the track was a chart success, reaching number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song is known for its recognisable hook, where Drake raps, “Came up, that’s all me/ Stay true, that’s all me/ No help, that’s all me/ All me for real.”
However, it was very close to being a Sean song. “[Drake] records a lot at his house in LA, and I was recording in LA for Hall of Fame, so we’ll kick it and exchange,” the Detroit rapper told MTV News. Key Wane had that beat, and it was funny because I wanted to use it for Hall of Fame and [Drake] wanted to use the beat too.”
“I had done a verse to [Key’s beat] and didn’t know [Drake] did a song to it. I sent him the verse and [Drake’s] like, ‘You bodied this shit.’ Then we had the song forever. He was like, ‘I already did my verse and 2 Chainz did his verse but we’ve gotta get the right chorus,’ and that took a while. But everything happened at the right time.”
During an interview with Vibe, Wane told his story of the song, revealing Sean first heard the beat through a tablet. “We was at a photo shoot for Sean’s clothing line and I played the ‘All Me’ beat for Sean on my iPad,” he explained. “He was fuckin’ with it, so originally, he was going to use it. But I don’t know what really happened after that point”.
He continued: “I was in the studio one night, listening to the record, perfecting it a little more, and I was like ‘Man, I’m trying to send this to Drake. He hit me back shortly and was like, ‘Yo, Chainz is snapping on it.’ He hit me about 30 minutes after I sent it to him. Drake was like ‘We on here going crazy!’ It was just too good of a beat to leave that shit laying around. So, I sent it out and I got a response and that was that.”
He added, “When the night everybody got informed about the record, the song wasn’t done. We couldn’t figure out a solid hook for it. Actually, we was supposed to put it out a while ago but we didn’t really have a solid hook. Everything else was straight. “
It wasn’t all bad for Sean, who still had a verse on the track and contributed to the song’s popularity. Sean collaborated with Drake again in 2015 on ‘Blessings’ from his Dark Sky Paradise album, with Kanye also appearing on an extended version.