Anthony Paul Jefferies, the 31-year-old Toronto native best known as Nineteen85, was working at H&M in 2009 when OVO maestro Noah "40" Shebib first brought him into the studio with then-burgeoning star Drake. Since then he has produced some of the rapper's most inescapable hits, including 2016's "One Dance," "Too Good," and "For Free." He also serves as one-half of the mysterious R&B duo and OVO Sound signee, dvsn.
For the past few months, Nineteen85 -- who funded his early musical dreams to buy a navy blue Fender guitar working as a paperboy at 12 -- has been keeping his hands full with Drake’s More Life project, slated to drop this year. “More Life is interesting because this is [Drake] right on the peak of his biggest project yet [with Views], doing his biggest tour and still having so many good ideas that he just wants to put out without making it a big ordeal,” he explains. “That's why he's trying to call it a playlist because he has a bunch of people in a space, hanging out.... He's so aware of what everybody else is doing musically that he likes to introduce new music and new artists to the rest of the world.”
Ahead of the 2017 Grammys -- where he's up for producer of the year -- Jefferies shares the stories behind some of his biggest hits.
