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Drake’s ‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late’ was originally meant to be a free release

Drizzy had planned to release it as a free mixtape on DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz series, but his label, Cash Money, overruled him.

20th February 2015

Last week Drake ‘did a Beyoncé’ and dropped a 17 song mixtape completely out of the blue, with no warning. ‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late,’ which features guest spots from the likes of Lil Wayne, Travi$ Scott and PARTYNEXTDOOR, subsequently broke Spotify’s streaming records and sold a cool 500,000 copies in its first week.

It turns out that Drake never intended to put out his mixtape as a paid-for release. In a new interview with HipHopDX Kyle “KP” Reilly - the founder of free mixtape website DatPiff - revealed that they were due to release ‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late’ as a free download as part of DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz series. Drake was up for it, but “just hold on…we’re going retail” said his ironically named label Cash Money, who overruled him.

“Originally we were in talks to release it for free,” KP said. “However the label was not in favor of that and they struck an agreement to release the project the retail route and it would count towards one of his albums.”

“It was a mutual decision since he wanted to give it away,” he added. “[The label] said, ‘Hell no,’ not in those words, so they ‘agreed’ to do it this way as a middle ground and it would count towards his Cash Money deal album total.”

Incidentally Lil Wayne - who also appears on ‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late’ - is currently suing Cash Money for $51 million dollars, along with pursuing contractual freedom from the label.

Watch Drake’s new short film, ‘Jungle’ below: