Akon hasn’t been active in music lately. He’s been putting a lot of his effort into his Lighting Africa initiative, which aims to provide certain rural areas of the country with electricity. But he took some time to speak with Montreality on a wide range of topics. One of them was the success of Drake right now.

The “Locked Up” singer says Drake is winning right now in 2015 and believes no other MC can compete with him. “He’s a poet to me,” he says. “The way he delivers certain lyrics. He mixes reality and real rapping in one. And then he adds melody to where people who [are] not really familiar with that culture can sing along to it. He’s a 360 artist.”

Akon reflects on a time when Kardinal Offishall brought him some records from Drake, but he wasn’t impressed with them at the time and passed on signing him to his label, Konvict Muzik. This was before he released his biggest hit “Best I Ever Had.”

“I honestly did pass on him because at the time, he didn’t sound like what he sounds like today,” he says. “The ‘Best I Ever Had,’ it wasn’t even close to what that sounded like. I think he was at a position where he was finding himself. And I kind of heard it in the music, but ultimately, as time goes, people develop and they get better and they become the best because of things like that.”

Kardi also spoke about the opportunity to sign Drizzy in a sit-down with RapFix Live in 2012.

“The biggest one that he passed on, I told him about Drake early,” he revealed. “I said, ’Kon, this kid is a T.V. star… and this kid is crazy.’”

Watch the rest of the interview with Montreality below.

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(Photo: Isaiah Trickey/FilmMagic)