On Tuesday September 8, Twitter began to speculate that a mythical FBGOVO mixtape, uniting Drake and Future, was on its way. The hype was kickstarted that morning, when Angela Yee suggested a collaboration between the rappers was imminent, on Power 105's The Breakfast Club. "What, when Drake and Future..." Yee said, in response to a remark from co-host Charlamagne Tha God, who wondered if Meek Mill would still be playing a lot of Future's music in the club "in a few months"—this was after Yee read Meek's apology for telling his DJ not to play music by Future during a Labor Day performance at Fool's Gold Day Out.
Today, Yee posted a tweet suggesting that she wish she hadn't spoken:
— Angela Yee (@angelayee) September 11, 2015There have been hopes for a joint Future and Drake project since at least November 2014, when producer Mike WiLL Made It dropped an extended version of Future and Drake's Honest collaboration "Never Satisfied." On a newly revealed verse, Drake rapped: Me and that boy Future could probably start a group/ On some K-Ci and JoJo shit, have these bitches loose.
Rumors escalated this Wednesday after an unclear tweet from DJ Skee—whose record on truthful secrets is extremely mixed. Later, a more assertive tweet from someone who claims to be working for Skee aligned with Yee's remarks:
Damn 2 people are about to break the internet tomorrow with this mixtape coming out of left field...
— DJ Skee (@djskee) September 10, 2015
Super secret Drake & Future mixtape drops tomorrow. Yeah I'm telling secrets 👀
— Mike Chehadé (@ChehadeTheKing) September 10, 2015With time to kill, on Thursday night Twitter began freaking out about what a Drake and Future tape would sound like. Then an image of a "cover" started appearing everywhere.
The cover art appeared to originate with Twitter user Itzbizkit:
Drake x Future secret tape ??? pic.twitter.com/LnWohYaeiP
— ITSBIZKIT (@itsbizkit) September 10, 2015In a phone call with The FADER, Itzbizkit would neither confirm or deny whether the image was real or not. When asked if he made the image himself, he said "no."
OB O'brien, an OVO affiliate and onetime Drake collaborator, posted the image to his Instagram late Thursday night, only to take it down five minutes later:
The image of the owl appears to be an edit of a stock photo of an owl from the website Deviantart.
