Drake’s team already shut it down, and now Keshia Chanté is backing them up. The Canadian singer says the rapper is not the father of the son she’s expecting, and she sounds a little puzzled that anyone thought otherwise.
The rumor mill started spinning on Tuesday, Oct. 6, when Chanté announced her pregnancy. She hinted that the baby’s father works in the music industry, and that was all the internet needed to start pointing at the most famous musician she’s ever been linked to.
The connection isn’t random. Chanté and Drake are longtime friends who dated years ago, back before either of them was a household name in Canada.
Drake has called her the “first girlfriend I ever had in my life,” which is the kind of quote that tends to resurface whenever her name trends.
Drake’s rep moved fast, denying the rumors to TMZ. On Wednesday, Chanté addressed it herself in an interview with Toronto news channel CP24, and she didn’t leave much room for interpretation.
“He is not the dad,” she said of Drake. She added that the two had actually discussed the speculation, saying, “We were talking about it yesterday,” and then, “like, ‘Why is this happening?’ I don’t know. But no, he’s not the dad.”
That detail says a lot about where things stand between them. Two exes laughing off a paternity rumor together suggests the friendship is still very much intact, even if fans were eager to write a different storyline.
Chanté also offered a bit more about the actual father, though she stopped short of naming him. She described him as someone she “love[s] dearly” and confirmed he works in music. “He’s also a public figure, so I’m excited to see my son be this little musical, magical person,” she said.
For longtime Canadian R&B fans, Chanté needs no introduction. She released her self-titled debut album in 2004 as a teenager and went on to pick up Juno Awards, building a career that ran parallel to Drake’s early rise out of Toronto.
Some of the speed of this rumor probably traces back to Drake’s own history. He publicly confirmed in 2018 that he had a son, Adonis, with French artist Sophie Brussaux, after Pusha T made the child a centerpiece of his diss track “The Story of Adidon.” Since then, any surprise baby news anywhere near Drake’s orbit seems to get extra scrutiny.
There’s another way to see it, too. Chanté announced something personal and joyful, and within hours the conversation had shifted to a man she dated years ago, which she clearly found strange.
So now the question has moved from who it isn’t to who it is. Chanté has dropped two clues, a public figure and a music industry insider, and the guessing has already started.
