One man’s trash, another man’s treasure… well, you know the drill. The old truism came to life when a cleanup worker found a notebook containing Drake lyrics at a Toronto furniture factory belonging to the rapper’s grandfather. According to TMZ, the spiral notebook was recovered in 2002, when Drake was a teen actor just a year into his stint on Degrassi. It contains lyrics for various songs across a dozen pages. As far as the notebook’s legitimacy, it contains multiple signatures which appear to match the one Drake currently uses.
TMZ reports that the worker who found notebook is now selling it on a site called MomentsInTime.com, and that a representative for the website confirmed its authenticity. Whether or not it’s truly Drake’s notebook hasn’t been confirmed by Drake or his representatives.
As for our read, the signature does indeed resemble Aubrey Graham’s, and the lyrics are as earnest and corny as you might expect from a young Drake. The pages available online show the rapper in the process of developing his trademark self-assured wordplay. “I wrote the book / I prolly should a read it myself,” he boasts in a line that’s reminiscent of many Drake groaners from early in his career—case in point, “She call me the referee ’cause I be so official,” from his 2009 single “Best I Ever Had.”
Elsewhere, he pays homage to Biggie with a teen dating instruction manual called “10 Mack Commandments.” “Number 1/ show up for your date kinda late,” he writes, “if she say be there at 6 / then be there at 8.” It’s easy to imagine the precocious teen actor scribbling these bars in-between readings on the Degrassi set, future fame just a twinkle in his eye.
Moral of the story—next time you’re digging through the trash and come across a notebook full of terrible puns, hang on to it.
