At the Mexican place, we sit at a table on the outdoor patio, listening to a man with an acoustic guitar really beat up some easy-listening tunes. It's not Drake's first time here. In fact our waitress acts a bit chilly at first, taking Drake's order for a strawberry margarita, and when she leaves, he says, "Oh man, I kinda dated her cousin, and I think she might be mad at me." Other tables steal the occasional glance, and someone from the staff comes by and says, "I don't want to interrupt, man, but you are badass!"

"Thank you," says Drake politely, and when the guy disappears back to the kitchen, he says, "I hope he means that the good way."

Then, drink in hand, he addresses his feud with Chris Brown. "I hear he has everything he could want now," Drake says, alluding to the fact that Brown and Rihanna were, for the moment, back together. "I don't want my name to be synonymous with that guy's name. I really don't. I wish we could sit down, just like you and me are right now, and talk it out man-to-man. But that's not going to happen. I'm not confrontational, but if someone challenges, I'm not going to back down."

Still, none of it sits too well with Drake. "It's embarrassing, the amount of media coverage," he says. "Two rappers fighting over the woman. He's not even a rapper, but still, it's the last way you want your name out there. It distracts from the music. But he's made me the enemy, and that's the way it's gonna stay, I guess."

When I say he seems somewhat Zen about it now—after all the back-and-forth between them this past year, trading barbs on radio shows or blasting them out in song lyrics—he says, "If I think about it too much, I feel it wrapping around my foot, like I get a feeling it could end really badly."

I can't tell if he's worried for Rihanna's safety, whom he won't mention by name. Or about the lengths to which he thinks Brown might go to perpetuate the feud.

When I ask what he means exactly, he says, "Like, it gets really dark."

Then, in rare silence, he won't say more.

The pleasure of hanging with Drake is that there isn't a question he won't try to answer, openly and honestly, shifting easily and unselfconsciously between talk of the rap game, money, family, and love.

"I had lunch the other day with someone I extremely look up to," he continues. "Okay—I had lunch with Will Smith, and listening to him talk, it made me think I don't know what love is. He said something profound. He said love is when you become one and you need that person. It's not about wanting anymore, you need that person. Hearing that, I don't know if I've ever felt that way. I've held women in very high regard almost to the point where I felt like I needed them for a very long time, but I don't know if I comprehend it yet, and I'm okay with that.

"I've made a lot of music about love being the only thing I'm missing. I think this is the first album I've made saying, I'm okay. I'm enjoying it right now. Maybe this is my time to grind it out, make a run for it and add some memories with my boys.

"But listen," he continues. "If I wasn't doing this, man, and I was back home in Toronto, and I had my job that kept me in the city, my girl would be my life. I have a lot of friends back there, and their relationships have become the focal point, the high point of their lives. And that's cool. I just have new goals, new places to go, new people to meet. I live off a different high point every day."