Drake shown his love for Aussie band Hiatus Kaiyote by sampling them on his More Life record, and now the band have spoken out about it, saying that he’s been a fan of them “for a while”.
The Canadian rapper samples Hiatus Kaiyote’s ‘Building A Ladder’, from their most recent record Choose Your Weapon, on the More Life opener ‘Free Smoke’, allowing frontwoman Nai Palm’s vocals to be the first thing you hear on the record.
She’s now spoken to Billboard about how the sample came about, saying, “At first, my social media blew up because he was opening his tour with it. He’s been a fan of our shit for a while. It’s kind of beautiful.”
Drake’s management then arranged the sample with the band, going through their label manager Salaam Remi.
“Someone hit him up and asked him about it being on the record,” Palm says. “Then we did a conference call with [Drake’s] producer and his management, and they played it to us over the phone.”
His team were scared of the music leaking, so Hiatus Kaiyote were only allowed to hear the song over the phone and the audio quality was “pretty rough”.
Palms admits that she’s only heard “bits and pieces” of More Life as she’s waiting for the hype to die down, but apparently she’s up for connecting with Drizzy in the future.
“Even though he’s mainstream, he’s referencing real shit, and he’s really clever about it. He seems like a really genuine, rad person who still has a good head on his shoulders,” she says.
This isn’t the first time the band have been sampled on a major release. Their track ‘Molasses’ was sampled on Anderson .Paak’s Malibu closer ‘Without You’.
No doubt even more people will come knocking following this Drake co-sign.
