Hip hop artist, Drake. Photo: wiki commons.

GQ – The backyard of Drake’s mansion is indistinguishable from the set of one of those late-night Lifetime soft-core romance flicks. Waterfalls gush all around, surging over enormous boulders. Bronze animals—lions, elephants, giraffes!—checker the lawn, glimmering in the last light of the San Fernando Valley sun. A giant fire, fit for a king from Middle-earth, burns in an outdoor fireplace, and a flat-screen TV plays Sixteen Candles.

In the foreground of this lady-fantasy tableau sits Drake, who has the six-one body of a well-built man but the dodgy eye contact of a teenager. (At first, anyway.) He awaits me on a couch with more chintz pillows than I can count, wearing baggy jeans and Jordans, his simple gray T-shirt accentuated by two long diamond-rope necklaces, lest I forget that he is 25 sittin’ on 25 mil. At the ready are a bottle of chilled white wine and a pitcher of ice, for tonight we shall drink wine spritzers, his favorite beverage and also mine.