On the tenth anniversary of So Far Gone, Drake revealed that his seminal and career-launching mixtape will be available on streaming for “the first time ever” on Thursday, February 14. In a lengthy Instagram post, Drake shared an updated graphic of the iconic mixtape cover, its little boy looking down instead of up, presumably admiring all the money and hearts he’s accumulated in the last decade. The post caption features Graham thanking the tape’s numerous collaborators (Noah “40” Shebib, Boi-1da), associates (Oliver El-Khatib, Niko) and mentors (Bun B, Lil Wayne).
The most surprising addition to the thank you note is his gratitude to Kanye West. Graham and West had a contentious 2018 that played out both on their records and on Twitter. Kanye infamously tweeted a screenshot of a text that read, “Drake sent in a clearance request for ‘Say What’s Real’. Do you want to clear,” which ruined today’s surprise that the song — which features Drake putting his own spin on Kanye’s 808s & Heartbreak opener — would be getting a new release. Thankfully, it seems that the two are on more steady ground now.
“Kanye West a decade ago I rapped over your beat cause you just made the best shit and even though you stay wildin on twitter these days I will never forget what you contributed to the game and my career,” Drake wrote on Instagram.
Sparse, emotional and cold, So Far Gone defined a generation of rap coming to terms with the internet. In a 2009 Complex interview, Drake described the reason he made the project.
“It’s basically a story. It starts in January 2008 when I was kinda confused like, What am I really doing? I gave up acting all together to really do this music thing, and I was really truly confused. It’s way different than acting, there aren’t people to depend on, you really have to build your own thing basically from the ground up, you know, so in January not only was I confused about my career, I was also in a very destructive sort of us exhausting relationship with a female and it was just a bad headspace for me to be in. So that’s where the tape starts.”