Drake has revealed that the music video for his 2011 hit “Headlines” had some unlikely inspiration.
Posting on his Instagram Stories on Thursday (March 7), the 6 God uploaded the cover of The Table of Nonsense, an early 2000s album from Canadian rap group The Empire.
AD LOADING...
Notably, the artwork features a very young Noah “40” Shebib, who has since become one of Drake’s most frequent and trusted collaborators.
Drizzy captioned the photo: “@ovo40 this flick is incredible I think I bit this swag for sure.”
AD LOADING...
In a separate post, he uploaded a screenshot from the video for “Headlines,” which features a similar shot to the album cover.
He then confirmed he used it as inspiration, writing: “@ovo40 yup, there it goes.”
The Table of Nonsense was released in 2003 when 40 was just 20 years old and went by the stage name Mr. Shebib.
The album was later uploaded to Bandcamp by Empire rapper Adam Bomb so that streaming era fans could hear and download it.
AD LOADING...
Shebib has previously celebrated his time with the group and made it known how much they influenced him.
Alongside a picture of the same album cover that Drake was inspired by, 40 wrote on Instagram in 2015: “My original rap crew circa 2000, these guys taught me how to make records when I was 17.
AD LOADING...
“Craven Morehead, Talksick, Adam Bomb, Joker aka Joe Keezy, Tek Man, Mr. Shebib, Scandalis, T.R.A The Rhyme Animal, Nickel Bagz, P.I.L, Dj Shortcut, Meziah, special shout outs to Friday, Skinny The Nutcracker and Quackas.”
“Headlines,” which was co-produced and co-written by Noah Shebib, featured a video directed by close collaborators of The Weeknd, La Mar Taylor and Hyghly Alleyne.
Shot in Canada, the video featured cameos from The Weeknd as well as various producers associated with Drake including 40, T-Minus, Boi-1da and Kromatic.
Parts of the video sees the Toronto rap star sat at the head of a table puffing on a cigar surrounded by his friends in a clear homage to the cover of The Table of Nonsense.
AD LOADING...
The song itself — taken from Drake’s 2011 album Take Care — was also a huge success, cracking the top 20 of the Billboard 200 and being certified 8x platinum by the RIAA.
