Speaking over the phone from Los Angeles, Larry Jackson, who joined Apple in June 2014 after years as an A&R executive at Interscope, said that Drake’s relationship with Apple began in November 2014. Jackson met one of Drake’s managers, Future the Prince, at a dinner thrown by Lebron James’ manager Rich Paul. Jackson questioned OVO’s methods of releasing Drake’s songs on Soundcloud and then putting up the most popular ones up for sale on iTunes. This allegedly began some deeper thought in Drake’s camp about having some alternative means of distribution.

According to Jackson, the idea for an OVO radio show on Beats 1 came before Drake’s much-talked-about deal with Apple was made. But by the time Jackson and his Apple Music team were preparing to announce Apple Music, they decided that Drake would be the person who would best “personify and embody the modern musician and how they put their music out online in particular.”

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Before the first episode of OVO Sound radio aired in July, El-Khatib and Drake made a “dummy run” episode and sent it to Lowe and Jackson. “We were like, ‘This is absolutely perfect,’" Lowe told The FADER over the phone from London. “It's not talk breaks and distractions, it's just amazing music.” Since the show’s launch, OVO has had total control over their show and sometimes sends in the finished version of a week’s episode only 30 minutes before air, Jackson and Lowe said. Similarly, for weeks before its release, What a Time to Be Alive was kept almost completely secret. Releasing it on iTunes and Apple Music the minute after its play on OVO Sound Radio was over, Jackson said, was “a very hard magic trick to pull off.”

In late August, Jackson got a call from Drake and Future the Prince about a new project Drake working on with Future in Atlanta. (This wasn’t unusual—Jackson said he now speaks with someone from OVO every day.) “Somehow they knew I was having a really shitty day,” Jackson jokingly said. “And they said, ‘OK, we got something to make your day better. They started talking about the concept, and I loved the idea.” Apple was thrilled with the idea of premiering the project on Beats 1, and Jackson said that Drake was happy with that arrangement as well. “They realized that we had created a really powerful platform with this radio show and how big the numbers are on it, and that it would be absurd to do something else with it,” Jackson said. (Apple declined to reveal any ratings or listener numbers, but Hits Daily Double reported that the album was streamed 29 million times on Apple Music in the U.S. during its first 72 hours of release.)