Drake Recalls 'Getting High' Right Before His 'Degrassi' Audition Due to His 'Desire to Be Accepted'
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"Maybe I'm still high, maybe I'm in some coma. And this is just, like, me playing out my ideal life," the rapper said as pondered his life and its possible trajectories
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Drake as Jimmy on "Degrassi: The Next Generation"Drake is looking back on his Degrassi beginnings.
The rapper, who got his start as a teen by playing Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi: The Next Generation, revealed in a voice memo on Instagram Wednesday that he “got high” right before his audition for the Canadian teen drama series.
“Someone asked me the other night what my biggest fear is, and I've never really had a good answer for it, but my answer was that all this is for nothing,” he began in the video post. “The idea that one day life ends and it just all goes black.”
Drake, 36, said the question sent him into a “deep spiral of thought” about how “surreal” life is, which then prompted him to think back on his career beginnings.
“I go back to this day when I was like 13 or 14. I had an audition for a TV show that ultimately shaped my life,” he explained, referring to Degrassi. “Before my audition, I went to this kid's house. And I, out of, I guess, a desire to be accepted, I would succumb to peer pressure, and I got high with these kids right before my audition.”
The four-time Grammy Award winner admitted that he occasionally wonders if his life would've turned out differently had “something bad” happened that day, and whether his life and all of his career success was actually just a figment of his imagination.
Related: Started from the Bottom: See Drake Reunite with His 'Degrassi' Costars
“You know, maybe I'm still high, maybe I'm in some coma. And this is just, like, me playing out my ideal life,” he pondered. “That concept has stuck with me for a lot of years.”
He added that his life "feels like reality, it feels tangible” to him, but admitted, “I definitely wonder sometimes."
Before his thriving music career, Drake starred on Degrassi from 2001 to 2009 as Jimmy, a basketball player whose life changes forever when a classmate shoots him and leaves him paralyzed from the waist down.
The series, which ran for 14 seasons from 2001 to 2015, focused on the students of Degrassi Community School as they grapple with relationship woes, friendship fights, disorders, drug and alcohol addictions, gambling problems, pregnancy scares and more.
In 2018, the Take Care artist paid tribute to his Degrassi days by turning the music video for his song “I’m Upset” into a Next Generation reunion.
In the music video, Drake and his former costars — including Shane Kippel (Spinner), Miriam MacDonald (Emma), Lauren Collins (Paige), Cassie Steele (Manny), and Nina Dobrev (Mia), among others — walked through the school halls for their class of 2007 reunion. Ephraim Ellis, who played Rick, the student who infamously shot Jimmy, also made an appearance.
The video ended with the show's catchy theme song, including new shots of the cast spliced with archive footage from the original show.
Drake also made reference to Degrassi in 2021 when he reacted to Steele’s "Buss It" challenge TikTok, in which she recreated her Degrassi character’s iconic blue thong look. Drake commented, “Fit is museum worthy tbh Santos.”
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Degrassi: The Next Generation can be streamed on Max.
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