Coming in at #2 on VIBE’s producer of the year list, Boi-1da earned the silver by lending his talents to Drake and Eminem’s biggest singles of the year — “Over” and “Not Afraid.” Finishing 2010 off strong, the Toronto based composer also helped Keri Hilson and J. Cole make beautiful music together (“For Bayou”) and gave Rick Ross and Ludacris a dream come true (“Black Man’s Dream”).  A few days before Christmas, Mikey Fresh at Vibe.com caught a line out to the 24-year old beatsmith who spoke on his recent hits and future projects.

How’s Drake’s new album coming along?
We were actually just up in New York working, Lil Wayne was in there, too. I gave him stuff for Tha Carter IV. Man, 2011 is going to be a good year for music. Drake’s in tip top shape and what’s amazed me is that lyrically he’s gotten better. He was already an outstanding lyricist but now I’m just in anticipation of what people are going to think when they hear his new music.

Do you think he’s out to prove himself more as a rapper and lyricist?
Yea, I know a lot of people had criticized him for singing, but I think he’s just coming back to show people why they fell in love with him, like ‘did you forget about me?.’ And it’s really coming out in his raps. It’s something I can’t even really explain it.

We were all shocked to see Soulja Boy only sell 13k in his first week with his latest album. You produced his single “Speakers Going Hammer”, what do you think happened there?
I don’t think they pushed that project out properly. Personally, I couldn’t even find the album in stores. Rihanna and Justin Bieber was all in front of the store, and they had Soulja’s all the way in the back somewhere. The average fan is not going to go dig in the back of the store for it. It should have been in the front with the rest of the new releases. I don’t think his numbers have anything to do with him falling off or anything like that, but it just wasn’t placed properly. All the people that I know that were on the album too, said the same thing.

Read The Rest of The Interview on Vibe.com