TORONTO, Canada — Canadian rapper Drake said Friday he is taking a break from music — just hours after dropping his latest album — in order to focus on recurring stomach issues.
“I probably won’t make music for a little bit, I’m gonna be honest,” he said on his SiriusXM radio show Table For One, adding: “I need to focus on my health first and foremost… I need to get right.”
“I’ve been having the craziest problems for years with my stomach,” he explained.
The 36-year-old Grammy Award winner had just released his latest studio album “For All The Dogs.” Long-awaited, it features Bad Bunny, J. Cole, SZA, Lil Yachty and a Frank Ocean sample.
His five-year-old son Adonis drew the artwork for the cover and was featured in a music video for a new single off the album called “8AM in Charlotte.” He also raps on the track “Daylight.”
Drake’s hiatus has forced the cancellation or postponement of several upcoming concerts in the United States, according to his website and Ticketmaster.
But Friday and Saturday shows scheduled in Toronto, where fans were already seen lining up, appeared to still be a go.
Drake mentioned that he would also meet unspecified commitments.
“I got some other things I need to do for some other people that I made promises,” he said.
Otherwise, he said, “I’m gonna lock the door in the studio for a little bit,” Drake said. “I don’t even know what a little bit is. Maybe a year or so, maybe a little longer.”
The multi-platinum-selling artist has often invoked his Jewish background throughout his musical career.
Last year, he released a music video for the song “Falling Back” that features him as the groom in a wedding officiated by an Orthodox rabbi in a black hat. There was nothing orthodox (or safe for work) about the wedding itself, though, which features 23 brides.
Also last year, on a mixtape, he rapped, “I should probably go to a yeshiva.”
Drake has also posed with a Kiddush cup and Sabbath candles for the cover of his 2012 album “Take Care,” and staged a different Jewish tradition – his own “re-bar mitzvah” – in the music video for his single 2011 “HYFR” (he also re-staged his bar mitzvah in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch).
