He encouraged artists to love and compliment each other.
Drizzy cleaned up at the 2019 Billboard Music Awards, taking home 12 awards the 17 categories he was nominated. The rapper made Game Thrones fans proud when he mentioned Arya Stark in his acceptance speech after he won the Top 200 Album award, recognizing her for “putting in that work” during the Battle Winterfell.
“Thank you to everybody who gave me their time, their energy, stayed away from their family and friends while we were trying to complete this,” he said. “I always had a dream doing a double album and I finally did it so now I’ll never do it again.” Drake also thanked Billboard and said he needed a glass champagne before adding, “Hey, shout-out to Arya Stark for putting in that work last week. Ay!”
When Drake returned to the stage to accept the Top Male Artist award, he gave a nod to ScHoolboy Q who recently said in an interview that Drake gets hate for no reason. Q called Drake “one the greats” and said, “If Drake is trash, you n*ggas stop giving him 50 billion streams, you get what I’m saying? ‘Cause y’all all listening to it, bruh, it’s too many streams…You just don’t wanna say it.”
On the BBMA stage Drake said, “This one means a lot to me because it’s an artist award and I just wanna say that we just got back from tour recently in Europe. We spent a lot nights talking to each other. We spent a lot nights conversing. We’ve obviously had an unfortunate series losses within our business. I just want to encourage everybody to let other artists know how you feel about them. Let them know that you love them, respect them, while we’re all still here.”
“You know, ScHoolboy Q said something really nice about me the other day,” he added. “I had to sit there and debate whether or not I was going to reach out to him and obviously I didn’t feel like being that guy that’s too cool. So, I reached out to him. I let him know it meant the world to me. To each and every one you that we do this together. We do this every year. My brother right there, Offset. Shout out to my brother. Came on tour with me, showed me love. My brother Quavo]. To all us, you know we put in a lot work together. This is our thing so we gotta protect it. So I just encourage you tonight, just show somebody some love. Tell somebody you love their music and love what they do.”
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The OVO rapper also beat out his competition in the following categories: Top Artist, Top Male Artist, Top 200 Artist, Top 100 Artist, Top Streaming Songs Artist, Top Songs Sales Artist, Top Radio Songs Artist, Top Rap Artist, Top Rap Male Artist, Top 200 Album, Top Rap Album, Top Streaming Song (Video).