Watch Paparazzi

Rapper Drake spotted wearing Richard Mille

Drake has long been one of rap's most committed watch collectors, moving well beyond gateway luxury into territory that demands genuine horological knowledge. His latest sighting confirms he is wearing the Richard Mille RM 35-03 Automatic in Blue Quartz TPT, a reference that sits at the intersection of material science, motorsport engineering, and tennis court performance.

The RM 35-03 houses the RMAL1 caliber, an automatic movement delivering approximately 55 hours of power reserve with a variable geometry rotor system — the so-called Butterfly rotor, engineered in collaboration with Rafael Nadal. The rotor's twin-arm design reduces inertia and improves winding efficiency without adding mass to the movement's architecture. The case itself is constructed from Blue Quartz TPT, a composite produced by layering over 600 sheets of silica fibers impregnated with a blue-tinted resin matrix and compressed under heat. No two cases are identical; the marbling is inherently unrepeatable.

Richard Mille introduced the RM 35 family specifically for the Nadal partnership — a line built to survive the mechanical punishment of professional tennis. The RM 35-03 is the automatic evolution of that family, retaining the skeletonized architecture and extreme shock resistance of earlier references while integrating a more accessible, rotor-wound movement for daily wearability. The tonneau case measures 49.94 x 44.50mm, which wears large on the wrist — a deliberate aesthetic choice consistent with Richard Mille's entire sport collection.

For Drake, whose collection already includes multiple Richard Mille references, Patek Philippe complications, and custom AP Royal Oaks, the RM 35-03 represents a natural extension rather than an outlier. It aligns with his preference for technically extreme pieces that carry cultural weight across both sport and music.

On the market, the RM 35-03 Blue Quartz TPT carries a retail price in the region of $220,000, but grey-market demand has pushed valuations sharply above list, with strong examples trading closer to $1,000,000 — a reflection of Richard Mille's controlled production volumes and the compounding premium that the Nadal collaboration and the Butterfly rotor command among serious collectors.