The verse Drake wrote in 11 minutes: “He went so crazy”
A lot of time can be spent trying to perfect a verse. Hours in the studio piecing together metaphors and triple entendres, attempting to make history and be a part of hip-hop folklore for years. But sometimes, the best verses come without much second thought, instead just flowing out of a rapper when inspiration takes over. That was the case for Drake with a verse in 2022.
With his appearance on Jack Harlow’s ‘Churchill Downs’, Drizzy delivered one of his best performances of the past half-decade. The song, named after the Louisville horse race track that hosts the Kentucky Derby, finds the Toronto rapper getting introspective about his life, with references to his son and struggles he’s gone through.
He raps in his verse, “Cold hearts and heated floors/ No parental guidance, I just see divorce/ Therapy sessions, I’m in the waiting room, readin’ Forbes/ Abandonment issues I’m gettin’ treated for/ How much water can I fit under the bridge before it overflows?/ My son’s gotta learn that forgiveness is a lonely road/ The cribs on his will like motor homes/ N*ggas love to try and test us like they know what we on.”
During an interview, Lil Yachty revealed that Drake recorded his verse in just over 10 minutes. “I actually talked to Drake about that verse,” he said on an episode of Off the Record. “He said he did that shit in like 11 minutes. He said he did that in front of Jack. That verse, he told me that. They did it when they were out there in the islands. He did it right in front of him.”
Harlow was so impressed with Drake’s verse on ‘Churchill Downs’ that he needed to improve his lyrics. “I wanted to add to it, the moment he did it,” he told The Breakfast Club. “He went stupid. I feel like that’s one of my best verses. But he went so crazy that I was like, ‘Yo, I’m gonna have to add bars or everyone’s gonna say he bodied me on my shit.’
“I actually feel like it comes from a place of respect almost, because they had to get into that bag. I don’t know how I could ever feel disrespected because what are you supposed to tell somebody, you know? … Some of his bars meant so much to me, that I could tell he was, like, tipping his hat to me in a way that made me feel great.”
Drake and Harlow met for the first time at a party in Atlanta in 2019. Crossing paths led to them collaborating years later. “He was walking across the party and saw me, and he just came over to me,” Harlow said. “And at the time, I was like, pretty wide-eyed, I didn’t have a big record at all. But he was tapped in on me, he was like, ‘Yo, you got some hard shit.’ He told me that, it meant the world to me.”
He added, “We’ve seen each other since over the years. When I had a show in Toronto, he came to the show, I went back to the crib. We’ve gotten to know each other, and then the Turks trip, we took a vacation together. I was looking into his earlobes, it was the cleanest I’ve ever seen.”