Drake given Rolls Royce Phantom he once rented as birthday gift

The hit-making rapper/singer celebrated his 35th birthday last weekend with a star-studded list of party guests.

Believe it or not, there was a time when Drake wasn’t a big music star. In fact, more than 10 years ago, he and a friend once rented a Rolls Royce Phantom to drive around town to convince people he would make it big.

Well, he did make it big and that friend, DJ Future The Prince, remembered that Phantom too, and bought Drake the exact same car for his birthday this year.

The four-time Grammy-winner celebrated his 35th birthday on Sunday. He posted an old video on his Instagram of himself, young and fresh-faced, sitting in the rental back in his native Canada. “Back in 2007 we used to finesse this Rolls Royce Phantom rental to convince people in the city we were destined to make it,” Drake wrote. “I used to scrape together 5k a month somehow to keep up appearances.”

Drake wrote that he used the car to see friends in Ottawa and drove it to his first show in Montreal. He even had the car while he and his collaborators, including longtime producer Noah “40” Shebib, were in the midst of recording his 2009 breakout mixtape. “Park outside 15 Fort York while me and @ovo40 and @oliverelkhatib would be upstairs cooking what would eventually become So Far Gone,” he continued.

Rap superstar Drake released “Certified Lover Boy,” his sixth full-length studio album, early Friday morning. (Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images)

Although he says it tightened things up for him economically, the act was an affirmation of future success in the music business. “Even though I don’t recommend putting yourself in financial trouble for material things I realize now that this was just my way of extreme manifesting. I needed to see it and feel it and have it to believe that I could see and feel and have anything I wanted,” he wrote.

“Today in 2021 my brother @futuretheprince tracked down the exact car I use to stress over and gifted it to me…it’s mine now. Manifestation complete.”

His birthday celebration doubled as a Halloween party at Goya Studios in Los Angeles that had Drake dress up as a cowboy and featured a long list of stars, including Chris Brown, The Migos’ Offset, Future, Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard and French Montana.

The party was titled, “Chico Amante” which translates to “lover boy,” a reference to his recently released album, Certified Lover Boy. It featured a big box full of cocaine-style bricks with the party’s title on them; the party’s theme drew from the Netflix crime series Narcos.

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