In June 2010, Drake would put out his smash debut album, Thank Me Later. Since then, between studio LPs, mixtapes, “playlists,” and full-length collaborations, he’s released at least one major project a year. That doesn’t include the dozens of one-off hits and guest verses and “SNL” hosting gigs and general undefined ubiquity. Scorpion, presaged by the massive singles “God’s Plan” and “Nice for What,” is out this month. And his beef with Pusha-T had us all Googling “secret Drake love child photos.” Basically: Since showing up, he’s never really gone away.

Willingly or otherwise, due to professional obligations or otherwise, I’ve almost certainly spent more time thinking about Drake in the last decade than I have about any non-nuclear-member of my family. (Sorry, Uncle Ricky, I will call you right after I’m done writing this.) I do feel a certain sense of pride, bizarre and unearned as that is, for the monolith he’s become. And that he may be quietly entering the very early beginnings of his late-empire phase doesn’t escape me, either. As Drake finds himself embroiled in the biggest crisis of his career, I wonder what he’s thinking. Did he really believe he’d be able to dictate his fate forever?

That meal is memorable to me still, but not because anything particularly illuminating happened. I’d never, ever claim to understand something about Drake because of it. It’s just that he had no perception to tend to back then. Or, at least, the perception hadn’t ossified into a shell. And that’s impossible to imagine now.

To Drake die-hards, Oliver El-Khatib, the dude who texted me to come outside the hostel, is a legit celebrity now: He even gets his own sultry GQ photo shoots. As Drake’s manager and the keeper of the OVO flame, he helps his famous boss evince a sense of ineffability. Together, they’ve accomplished a grinding sense of destiny. Together, they’ve set us up to believe that loving Drake or hating Drake is immaterial, because either way Drake will just produce more bangers forever. Everything thorny that Drake and his art can, purposefully or otherwise, represent or reflect—from questions of class to questions of cultural appropriation to questions of racial identity—ultimately gets crushed down by the weight of his successes. It’s a hermetically sealed operation, with victory the only option.

But once, he got a request for an interview from a “hipster Jewish” publication and impulsively he said, “Fuck it, let’s get sloshed.” In the many years since, Heeb shut down its print edition. Actually, it happened before my piece even published! There was supposed to be a photoshoot; one of the publicist’s only requests was that Drake be able to “control his own styling.” But in the end, my article—my first-ever profile—ran online only. (In a beautiful sign of the times, the editors included a bit below the story: “To find out more about Aubrey ‘Drake’ Graham, check out his MySpace.”)

The ensuing reader comments were appropriately on-brand for the Heeb readership. Like: “I really do hope he follows his mom’s desire and marries a nice Jewish girl—and I really hope that girl is me!” and “I’m a Black Jewish Canadian mom with a beautiful son of my own. Drake’s story is a 1-in-a-billion fairytale. If he continues to be proud of who he is, the success will always follow.”

We know now how the story goes. He did not marry that one Jewish girl. But he did succeed and succeed and succeed until—at some point, maybe around a half-a-decade ago—he became totemic. He’s not unassailable, of course. He gets assailed all the time. But he does increasingly feel like less a person than, for lack of a better word, a brand.

I don’t mean that to be as dismissive as it sounds. I’m quite happy all of his vulnerability now is performative and contained. I, for one, believe his music has only gotten better as it’s gotten chillier and chillier. And I have a lot of love for him still. Not the same unexamined love I had for him that one endearingly goofy night in Toronto. But a whole lot of love still.