Drake Takes Notes From Nas

Even though Drake came up empty handed at this year's Grammy Awards, the Canadian-born rapper remains celebratory of his accelerated success and confident in his talent. This past weekend during Sprite's Step Off Show in Atlanta, Drake spoke on transitioning from creating mixtapes to his forthcoming solo debut titled 'Thank Me Later' and the direction he's taking for the album. "You can expect it to be bigger and sound happier. It's going to sound more victorious because that's where I'm at in my life," Drake told Imflashy.com while backstage at the event.

With a host of super-producers like Pharrell, Timbaland, and Kanye West already on board to produce on the Young Money/Universal Records release. Drake admits that he's spent a sizeable amount of time working on perfecting his craft and pushing his musical abilities. "I feel like I got a lot got better at rapping, I went back. I really studied Nas, to be honest, because he used to be one of those people who I used to listen to and not really understand how he did it," Drake explained. He continued to break down what exactly made him take such an affinity for the Queens, NY bred emcee. "I always wanted to understand how he painted those pictures and his bar structure. So I really went back and studied Nas and Andre 300 and came back with this album."