“This is for anybody getting 100 a show right now… keep going,” Drake reportedly wrote alongside a photo of the invoice from what may have been the “God’s Plan” rapper’s first live performance
Drake didn’t lie when he rapped about starting from the bottom.
Earlier this week, the rapper reportedly shared a post from Toronto-focused concert history account The Flyer Vault on his Instagram Stories, featuring an invoice that revealed he was paid a mere $100 CDN to perform an opening slot for Ice Cube at what was likely Drake’s first live performance.
The invoice detailed the concert, which was held Aug. 19, 2006 at the now-defunct Kool Haus venue in Toronto, and featured several redacted dollar amounts — including the 53-year-old rapper and actor’s payout for the headline show. For his opening set, Drake, 35, was paid $100 in Canadian dollars, which currently equates to about $72 in US currency.
Drake got paid $100 for performing at a show in 2006. Keep it goin ✨ pic.twitter.com/zQx78dmvqO
— Modern Notoriety (@ModernNotoriety) October 19, 2022
According to several news outlets and screenshots shared on Twitter, Drake later reposted the invoice and confirmed its validity. “This is for anybody getting 100 a show right now… keep going,” the “God’s Plan” performer reportedly wrote alongside The Flyer Vault’s post.
Drake often doesn’t shy away from recognizing the early stages of his career. Long after transitioning from actor to full-time rapper, he featured several cast members from Degrassi: The Next Generation — the Canadian teen drama credited with launching his career — in the music video for 2018’s “I’m Upset.”
He starred as James “Jimmy” Brooks on the hit series when the 2006 concert alongside Ice Cube went down, so the $100 wasn’t his only income. However, he told Complex in 2001: “A season of Canadian television is under a teacher’s salary, I’ll tell you that much. It’s definitely not something to go f—ing get.”
In July, Drake posted a set of throwback pictures on Instagram — one of a younger version of himself and the other of Jeff Bezos at a desk in his primitive Amazon office before it became the powerful shopping hub it is today.
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In the first picture, Drake looked back at the camera as he stood in front of a door marked 1503. According to Complex, the doorway belongs to an old apartment at 15 Fort York in Toronto, Canada, where Drake and his friend Noah “40” Shebib recorded most of his work for his mixtape So Far Gone.
The “Way 2 Sexy” rapper references 15 Fort York in his song “Know Yourself.”
“Gotta start somewhere,” Drake captioned the photos.
In the comments section, Bezos responded to the post with a reference to another of Drake’s hit songs. “Started from the bottom now we’re here,” he wrote back.
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