Drake & Nicki Minaj
As dope as the 2010 XXL Freshman class was (J. Cole, Wiz Khalifa, Big Sean, Nipsey Hussle, Freddie Gibbs) two glaring omissions were Drake and Nicki Minaj. Granted, they weren’t the big superstars they would become yet, they still figured that they were too big for the cover at the time. Drake went on record saying that him declining the cover was a form of “returning the favor” to XXL for not putting them on the cover when they were actually freshmen putting out their very first albums. The both of them would later cover the magazine together.
