His deep dives reveal anything from guilty pleasures and seminal records from their pasts to more intimate nuggets, like the fact DJ Khaled used to put his mixtapes in trainers when he worked at a sports shop, or that Hudson Mohawke's dad rapped on a song for the defunct Glasgow Diamonds American footie team.
At 43, Jay-Z has grown-up concerns, particularly parenthood; Blue Ivy Carter was born in January 2012, making "Magna Carta... Holy Grail" Jay-Z's first dad-rap album.
"Look what they did to my dad," she raps on the excellent opener, "Desire," about her late father (he was murdered in Detroit when Dej was just a toddler), before tightening up: "Niggas be feeling themselves, I'd rather feel on myself than let you feel on my ass".
But these sorts of sketches aren't just a moral lapse; they're corny, the new Dad jokes of rap.
The attempt to bridge seemingly unbridgeable divides – between being black and jewish, his mum and dad, singing and rapping, Toronto and Memphis – is one obvious starting point for Drake's musical quest.
To which he replies, "Dad, it's gangsta rap.
I'd have families join my kids and me at the park or get dads together for a rap session.
"He was a good guy in his way, but I saw police work at first hand from the time I was very little," he said of his dad-with-a-rap-sheet. Father and son were able to bond, though, "since visiting day was Sunday".
Often when I speak to people in creative industries the facade of the self-made artist falls away with an offhand comment: "Well, I first started rapping in my dad's recording studio... " or "and it was lucky because my godfather is actually head of... " Let's face it, we're all a product of circumstance.
