Ten years ago, college campuses were enthralled in Drake’s romantic verses and relatable sonic vignettes on his ubiquitous mixtape, So Far Gone. It was conveniently released the week of Valentine’s Day on Feb. 13. At the time, he dropped the free project without much commercial push.
Now, a mere decade later, the mixtape is climbing to its debut on the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart. Since its tenth anniversary, the project has garnered slots on prominent streaming services starting the week of Feb. 15, Billboard reports.
It’s projected that the compilation might debut at No. 5 on the charts next week, and can end the week of Feb. 21 with 45,000 album units. If Drizzy is able to receive this accolade, it will make this his tenth album that’s reached a top 10 slot on the charts.
In typical Drake fashion, when he was creating So Far Gone, he was grappling with a relationship that seemingly went sour, which served as his main source of inspiration. During a 2009 interview with Complex, he detailed the message behind some of the album’s songs.
“It starts with this monologue, ‘Lust For Life,’ of me crying out, in my head the things that I never say. The things that I was just thinking, that was my mindset. Then it goes to ‘Houstatlantavegas’ which is about what I felt about the girl I was with,” he said.
“I just felt that nothing was ever good enough, and she was always searching for more excitement and then we move into ‘Successful,'” he continued. “I say at the end of the song, ‘There are so many things I want to say but I just don’t know how to say it to you.’ I know exactly what I want to say, you know, I just want to be successful, but I don’t know if I can do it with you and then it goes into ‘Let’s Call It Off,’ which is the breakup.”
While it must have been heartbreaking, the end of that relationship kicked off his musical career. “And then coincidentally when I broke up with that girl a week later I went to Houston and met Lil Wayne and that’s where ‘November 18’ comes from,” he explained.
