Drake at 40: twelve songs that show what his borrowed scenes got back

Drake turns 40 today, and his hometown explains a lot of what follows. Toronto is the city he has sold to the world for 16 years, and in April 2027 it will even host the finale of the Headies, Nigeria's biggest music awards. In the 2021 census, Statistics Canada counted 314,795 people of Caribbean origin in Toronto, 140,870 of them Jamaican. Patois was in the school corridors and on the buses long before it was in his verses.

So the borrowing was never a secret, and arguing about whether he borrows is a waste of a birthday. The better question is the one any scene asks of a visitor with a bigger audience: what did we get back? Credits are public. Chart runs are public. Who got paid, who got billed and who got cut can mostly be read straight off the record.

Read that way, the Drake catalogue makes one clear point. The songs that left something behind in Kingston, Lagos, Johannesburg or London were the ones that put a local voice on the record under its own name. The ones that took only the rhythm, the slang or the accent left very little. Here are twelve songs, in order, that show both.

Postcards (2010 to 2015)

1. "Find Your Love" (2010)

The first time Drake went to Jamaica on record, he went as a tourist. The song is dancehall-leaning R&B produced by Kanye West, Jeff Bhasker and No I.D., three Americans. The video, shot in Kingston in April 2010 by Anthony Mandler, puts the island to work as scenery: a dancehall club, a gangland plot, and the singer Mavado cast as the gang leader. Mavado got a cameo. Jamaica got a backdrop. That was the whole exchange, and it set the baseline for everything below.

2. "Ojuelegba" remix with Skepta (2015)

Wizkid released "Ojuelegba" on his 2014 album Ayo: a song about walking the streets of a busy junction on the Lagos mainland while chasing a record deal, produced by Legendury Beatz. Skepta played it to Drake after they met at Wireless Festival in July 2015, and the remix premiered on OVO Sound Radio within days. This time the visitor walked into someone else's song, on someone else's terms, and kept the title. It is the template for the best entries here. (Ojuelegba also turns up in our map of Fela's Lagos.)

The Views year (2016)

3. "Controlla" (2016)

The version that leaked on 29 March 2016 had Popcaan on it. The version on Views did not. Drake swapped the Jamaican singer's verse for one of his own and added a sample of Beenie Man's "Tear Off Mi Garment," with the Jamaican producers Supa Dups and Di Genius among the credits. It reached No. 16 in the US. Beenie Man got a sample credit. The young Jamaican star who had sung on the leak was gone from the biggest album of the year. Hold on to that. This list ends with him.

4. "One Dance" (2016)

The high-water mark, and the clearest case for the thesis. The hook is Kyla's 2008 UK funky song "Do You Mind," in Crazy Cousinz's remix, slowed down by the South African producer DJ Maphorisa. Wizkid is on it too. Kyla has said she thought the first call from Drake's team was an April Fools' joke; they had come for a sample and ended up asking her to sing. She and Crazy Cousinz got writing credits, as did the London grime DJ Logan Sama. The song spent 10 weeks at No. 1 in the US and 15 straight weeks at No. 1 in the UK, and Wizkid became the first Nigerian artist to top the Hot 100.

5. "Too Good" with Rihanna (2016)

Popcaan does reach Views, sideways. "Too Good" is built on vocal samples from his song "Love Yuh Bad," and he is credited as a writer. It went to No. 3 in the UK and Australia. That is a real royalty, and a better outcome than "Controlla." It is also the clearest picture of a halfway deal: his voice is on one of the year's biggest songs, chopped into texture, and his name is in the small print rather than on the cover.

Return visits (2017 to 2020)

6. "Come Closer" by Wizkid featuring Drake (2017)

The ledger works both ways, and here Drake pays. "Come Closer," produced by the Nigerian producer Sarz and recorded in the same 2016 run as "One Dance," is Wizkid's single from Sounds from the Other Side, released on 31 March 2017. Drake is the guest. It went platinum in the US and the UK and triple platinum in South Africa. The co-sign worked the right way round: a Lagos star's own record, his name first, carried by Drake's audience.

7. "Get It Together" with Black Coffee and Jorja Smith (2017)

Black Coffee's "Superman," from around 2010, was a major South African house hit, sung by Bucie. On Drake's More Life playlist the track came back as "Get It Together," with Black Coffee billed as a featured artist and Bucie's voice replaced by the British singer Jorja Smith. Bucie kept a writing credit. Burna Boy sings an uncredited outro. In South Africa the response was split: pride that Black Coffee was on the record, irritation that its voice was not. Both reactions were fair.

8. "War" (2019)

A UK drill song by a Canadian. The London producer Axl, credited as AXL Beats, made the beat, which he described as a softer-tempo drill track, and Drake rapped over it in a borrowed London accent and London slang. It reached No. 52 in the US. Critics called the accent a step too far, and the pattern is plain from the credits: one London producer named, the scene's rappers absent. A sound that grew up on south London estates became a costume.

9. "Only You Freestyle" with Headie One (2020)

The fix arrived months later. "Only You Freestyle," produced by M1onthebeat, is Headie One's single, the lead from his debut album Edna, released jointly by Relentless Records and OVO Sound. The Tottenham rapper's name comes first. It went to No. 5 in the UK, a drill record by a drill rapper with Drake as the guest. Compare it with "War" and the whole argument fits in one year.

Credit and its limits (2021 to 2026)

10. "Fountains" with Tems (2021)

Tems sings on Certified Lover Boy's "Fountains" under her own name, a Lagos singer who had released her debut EP in 2020. A year later, "Wait for U" by Future and Drake was built on her song "Higher" from that EP, with Tems credited as featured vocalist and writer. It went to No. 1 in the US and won Best Melodic Rap Performance at the 2023 Grammys. In 2025 she won Best African Music Performance for "Love Me JeJe" on her own. Not all of that is Drake's doing, but the credit ran in her name every step.

11. "Calling My Name" (2022)

Honestly, Nevermind was Drake's dance album, with Black Coffee among its executive producers and as co-producer of "Texts Go Green." It moved 204,000 album-equivalent units in its first US week. "Calling My Name" samples "Oye Ohene" by Obrafour, one of the founders of Ghanaian hiplife. In April 2023 Obrafour sued in federal court in New York for at least $10 million, alleging that Drake's team had asked several times to clear the sample and then released the song before he could answer. We have found no public ruling. Either way, a credit chased through a court is the opposite of a feature.

12. "Amazing Shape" with Popcaan (2026)

Ten years after "Controlla," Popcaan is back on a Drake album under his own name. He signed to OVO Sound in December 2018 and released Great Is He there in 2023. On 15 May 2026, Maid of Honour put him on "Amazing Shape," a song that borrows from Beenie Man's 1998 hit "Who Am I (Sim Simma)," and the same album credits the Montego Bay producer Mxssivh on "New Bestie." "Amazing Shape" entered the Hot 100 at No. 76: Popcaan's first entry on that chart, at 37, sixteen years after "Clarks" with Vybz Kartel made him a star at home.

What the ledger says

Put the twelve side by side and the money and the names line up. Kyla, Wizkid, Tems, Headie One and, in the end, Popcaan each came out with a credit, a chart entry or a career door opened. Mavado's cameo, the London slang on "War" and Obrafour's sample came out with almost nothing.

For any scene that takes the call from Toronto next, from Accra to Durban to Port of Spain, the lesson on the record is a simple one. Ask for the feature, not the sample. A visitor who sings your song under your name can lift a career. One who only borrows the sound can leave you chasing the credit.