“Everything I Could Ever Want”: Don Toliver Discusses Working with Drake to Remix ‘Choosin’ Texas’ for ‘Solar Eclipse’

During a special Q&A at the Grammy Museum, Don Toliver reflected on how proud he is of his new Drake collaboration, ‘Solar Eclipse’, with Toliver underlining that the Toronto rapper was hugely influential on him as he was getting into music.

‘Solar Eclipse’, which is expected to debut in the Top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, serves as a hazy, syrupy remix of Ella Langley's record-breaking country single, ‘Choosin’ Texas’.

It finds Drake and Toliver trading moody, wistful verses across a chopped-up sample of Bun B's ‘Get Throwed’, with their Auto-Tune-drenched vocals mirroring the original ‘Choosin’ Texas’ melody, before they take the song into a more R&B-infused lane.

While chatting Heran Mamo as part of a pre-show Q&A at Los Angeles’ Grammy Museum, Toliver expressed how excited he is to have recorded ‘Solar Eclipse’ with Drake.

The ‘Too Many Nights’ hitmaker began, “We ain't really did a record before so, but this record to me was just really like everything I could possibly ever want. Because I really, I grew up on...whatever mixtape he was on where it was looking like it was Fall in the background and he had a suit on, I come from [Comeback Season]. You know what I'm saying? And So Far Gone, I loved that album, I still love it”.

He stressed that ‘Solar Eclipse’ turned out exactly how he hoped it would, “So I come from that, and I just thought that song in particular was everything I could ever want from like a collab with us, like that particular song...Everything was beautiful. It all played out how it was supposed to play out - I thought it was incredible”.

Later in the evening, Toliver performed ‘Solar Eclipse’ alongside ‘Cold Shoulder’, another Drake collaboration that appears on the latter's new HABIBTI (FOMO) project. Toliver also serenaded the audience with stand-outs from his latest album, OCTANE, such as ‘E85’ and ‘Body’, as well as his earlier fan-favourite, ‘No Pole’. One of Toliver's Grammy Museum band-members donned a stark white cowboy hat, seemingly a nod to the traditional country origins of ‘Solar Eclipse’.

With Drake and Toliver reportedly eschewing all publishing rights to ‘Solar Eclipse’, meaning Langley and her co-writers receive all royalties, making this song feel more like an homage to the ‘Be Her’ singer-songwriter than a standard remix, we're hoping we get to see all three artists linking up in the coming weeks.