Credit: Instagram/Kanye West

Drake may have been on a quest to beat Michael Jackson’s chart record over the years, but he hasn’t shied away from being inspired by the King of Pop. In fact, one of his hits from If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late takes direct influence from one of his classic songs.

‘Energy’ was released as a single following his 2015 mixtape and reached as high as number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100. Produced by Boi-1da and OB O’Brien, the song is packed with throwback samples, including Eazy-E’s ‘Eazy-Duz-It’, Three 6 Mafia’s ‘Ridin Spinners’, Hot Boys’ ‘I Need a Hot Girl’ and Original Concept’s ‘Knowledge Me’.

For the music video, Drake has credited Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’ as inspiration, wanting to take those visual effects to another level. Speaking to Zane Lowe after it dropped, he described his video as “shocking” and “beautiful.”

“I was like, ‘Man, you know, effects have come such a long way. I bet we could do something crazy with this,'” he said. “Everywhere you go, there’s always someone who wants to pull you down and even celebrity friends of mine or people that I don’t know. I want people to rewind it a bunch of times and go and tell someone else to watch it.”

‘Black or White’ appeared on Michael Jackson’s 1991 album Dangerous, with its music video directed by John Landis, who was previously behind his iconic video for ‘Thriller’. Drake’s video for ‘Energy’, on the other hand, was directed by Fleur & Manu, and saw Drizzy transform into a number celebrities including Floyd Mayweather, Kanye West, Barack Obama, LeBron James and O. J. Simpson.

Drake paid tribute to Michael Jackson in 2009 following his death, saluting the pop legend’s status as an entertainer and reminiscing on memories of MJ when he was a child. “[Seeing] Michael Jackson, for me, was one of the first times that I really [felt] the power of an entertainer,” he told MTV. “I remember having Moonwalker — I remember having that on [VHS] cassette and I remember how religiously I used to watch it.”

He continued, “I used to feel like, as a kid, it was the most amazing place for me to escape to, because it was this world that Michael created. He was the first artist that I ever experienced that really… you’d get lost in Michael Jackson, in his music, the imagery. Now that I’m older I can look back and be like, ‘Wow.’ You know, he was one of the most consistent entertainers of all time.”

Although his death was a big loss, Drake felt that the amount he gave to the world was something to celebrate instead of being sad about. Late last year, with ‘First Person Shooter,’ he tied Michael Jackson as the male solo artist with the most number-one songs in Hot 100 history.

Drake actually worked with Michael Jackson posthumously on ‘Don’t Matter to Me’ from his Scorpion album. MJ sings on the hook, “All of a sudden you say you don’t want me no more/ All of a sudden you say that I closed the door/ It don’t matter to me/ It don’t matter to me what you say.”