Drake initially gained notoriety as Jimmy Brooks, a wheelchair-bound character he played for seven years on the adolescent serial opera Degrassi: The Next Generation. Following his departure from the program, he inked a record deal with Lil Wayne’s company Young Money Entertainment, which catapulted him into the global rapper elite.
Drake initially gained notoriety as Jimmy Brooks, a wheelchair-bound character he played for seven years on the adolescent serial opera Degrassi: The Next Generation. Following his departure from the program, he inked a record deal with Lil Wayne’s company Young Money Entertainment, which catapulted him into the global rapper elite. Whether it’s for dating Jennifer Lopez or Rihanna, starting his own record label, OVO Sound, or leading the NBA’s Toronto Raptors as its international representative, he’s never out of the news. That Jay Z referred to him as the “Kobe Bryant of hip hop” is hardly surprising.
Childhood
Drake, who was born Aubrey Drake Graham in Toronto, Canada, on October 24, 1986, was raised with a passion for music. Dennis Graham was his father’s drummer for the late great rock ‘n’ roll musician Jerry Lee Lewis. Larry Graham, an uncle, was Sly and the Family Stone’s bassist. According to Drake, his mother Sandi Graham comes from a “very musical” background as well; his grandmother even looked after Aretha Franklin. Drake has a diverse and unusual background in terms of religion and ethnicity. His mother is a white Canadian Jew, while his father is an African American Catholic. “At the end of the day, I consider myself a Black man because I’m more immersed in Black culture than any other,” Drake explains in reference to his own identity. Being Jewish adds a unique touch. It distinguishes me.”
After his parents separated when he was five years old, Drake was raised by his mother in Toronto’s Forest Hill, a wealthy area with a large Jewish population. He followed the Jewish High Holy Days with his mother, got a Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13, and went to Jewish day school. Drake remembers, “My mom has always made Hanukkah fun.” “When I was younger, she gave cool gifts and she’d make latkes.” Drake claims that, although coming from a Jewish family, he felt alone at his essentially all-white high school, Forest Hill Collegiate Institute. He has stated that “nobody understood what it was like to be Black and Jewish,” yet stated that “being different from everyone else just made me a lot stronger.”
“The Next Generation of Degrassi”
Drake’s break in the entertainment business came from a Forest Hill classmate. Drake would later clarify, saying, “There was a kid in my class whose father was an agent. He would say, ‘If there’s anyone in the class that makes you laugh, have them audition for me.'” He ended up being my agent after the tryout.”
Drake soon after that, in 2001, was cast in the teen drama series Degrassi: The Next Generation in Canada. In the show, which chronicled the tumultuous lives of a group of students at Degrassi High School, Drake portrayed Jimmy Brooks, also known as “Wheelchair Jimmy,” a basketball player who is shot by a classmate and is left permanently wheelchair-bound.
Drake only completed his high school education in 2012 after quitting to focus on his acting career. Among other accolades, he won a Young Artist Award for best ensemble in a TV series in 2002 during his seven-year tenure as a star on Degrassi (2001-2009). “There are very few subtle Degrassi fans,” Drake has stated, referring to the show’s ardent cult fanbase that propelled him to celebrity status in Canada while keeping him largely unknown in the US.
Career in Music
During his time as an actor on Degrassi, Drake started making efforts to venture into the hip-hop industry. In 2006, he dropped his debut mixtape, Room for Improvement, to mediocre sales of about 6,000 copies. After that, he released Comeback Season, another mixtape, in 2007 under his own October’s Very Own label (eventually abbreviated to OVO). Among these was “Replacement Girl,” Drake’s debut smash song and music video, which debuted as the New Joint of the Day on BET’s well-liked hip-hop program 106 & Park. More importantly, Lil Wayne appeared in a cover of Brisco and Flo Rida’s “Man of the Year” in the song. Drake chose to contribute the remaining lyrics himself, leaving Wayne’s verses and hook in tact. Jas Prince, the son of Rap-A-Lot Records founder James Prince, saw this and made the decision to play Drake for Lil Wayne.
When the Degrassi cast was reorganized in 2008, Drake’s role was dropped. Drake came close to looking for a day job because he didn’t have a reliable source of income and wasn’t generating much money as a rapper yet. “I was coming to terms with the fact that … I might have to work at a restaurant or something just to keep things going,” he recalls. However, he was taken by surprise by Lil Wayne early in 2008, asking him to fly to Houston that evening to join his Carter III tour.
Following a tour and several song recordings with Lil Wayne, Drake’s third mixtape, So Far Gone, was made available in February 2009. In addition to the hit song “Successful,” which was a joint effort with Wayne and Trey Songz, going gold and making Rolling Stone’s “25 Best Songs of 2009” list, it featured the catchy tune “Best I Ever Had,” which peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. Drake’s torrent of infectious hip-hop songs with R&B influences has taken over radio playlists ever since.
Following a bidding battle for his signature, Drake signed a record deal with Young Money Entertainment, owned by Lil Wayne, in the middle of 2009. His start wasn’t good; in July of that year, while performing on the America’s Most Wanted Tour, he fell and tore his anterior cruciate ligament, necessitating surgery. But from then on, it would only be up and forward.
“Gratitude Later” and Grammy Awards
Drake’s first complete studio album, Thank Me Later, was certified platinum and debuted at No. 1 on the US and Canadian album charts on June 15, 2010. His new image as the confident hip-hop prince (“Last name ever, first name greatest,” he boasts on “Forever”) appeared to be at odds with his background as a teenage soap opera star and his middle-class Jewish upbringing.
Still, Drake made an effort to combine these ostensibly disparate periods of his life into a single identity. He rocked a diamond-crusted Chai on the December 2009 cover of Vibe magazine, a nod to his Jewish heritage in the vein of hip hop. He also raps in “The Presentation,” asking, “Who’s Drake? Wheelchair Jimmy, where are you? Since both Jay Z and Kanye West contributed to the album, “rap royalty” had to be the response to the question “who is Drake?”
“Headlines,” “Make Me Proud,” and “The Motto” were among the tracks of his second studio album, Take Care, which was released in November 2011. The album was widely received and took home multiple awards, including the 2013 Grammy for best rap album. Drake’s distinct appeal was aptly encapsulated in Greg Kot’s Chicago Tribune review, which identified the soul-searching honesty and distinct subject matter that set him apart from his contemporaries: “Drake, the melancholy hustler with a conscience, is back drunk-dialing former girlfriends and mourning the ones who got away.”
Conflicts With Meek Mill and Chris Brown
Despite having a successful career, Drake experienced some difficult times in his personal life. He and another performer Chris Brown started vying with singer Rihanna for her love, and in the summer of 2012, their intense rivalry broke out in a violent New York nightclub, injuring multiple bystanders. Due of their activities, Drake and Brown were both subject to legal repercussions. Suits were filed against the performers by a male model, two women, and professional basketball player Tony Parker, all of whom were injured in the altercation. Later, when Brown made a guest appearance on a remix of Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like,” he made reference to the incident (“One on one, what you scared, bruh?” he rapped.
Drake reached an out-of-court settlement on another legal case about this time. Ericka Lee, his ex-girlfriend, and he came to an understanding on her contributions to the song “Marvin’s Room.” In 2012, Lee filed a lawsuit against Drake, claiming co-writing credit for the song. Rappin 4-Tay and the Jimmy Smith estate also filed lawsuits against him. Conflicts with other musicians have also occasionally marred his career, but they haven’t completely destroyed it. While Drake’s verbal spat with Tyga was one thing, the rapper also got into a conflict with Meek Mill over the latter’s claim that Drake hired a ghostwriter for a song on which they both contributed. In a single week in 2015, Drake created two diss tracks, “Charged Up” and “Back to Back,” that were specifically directed at Mill. In addition, Drake and Joe Budden began a diss war in 2016. Online rumors, which are a constant companion for artists of Drake’s caliber, have also claimed that Drake has beef with Jay Z, Kanye West, and other celebrities.
“Views” and “Hotline Bling” Drake never seems to let personal setbacks stop him for very long. His highly regarded album Nothing Was the Same in 2013 had the song “Started From the Bottom,” which represented his own battle with success. “I wanted to convey to MTV News that I put in a lot of effort to get here; it wasn’t a coincidence, and it wasn’t simple by any means.”
Drake released two mixtapes in 2015, one of which featured a collaboration with Future. In the spring of 2016, he released his fourth studio album, Views. The album was an immediate hit, peaking at No. 1 and remaining at the top of the Billboard charts for 13 non-consecutive weeks. One of its popular songs was the seductive “Hotline Bling,” which at the beginning of 2017 won the artist Grammy awards for best rap song and best rap/sung performance. Its iconic visual, which was inspired by the artist James Turrell, also inspired a ton of memes. He made fun of the Grammys for forcing him into the rap category after the ceremony. The day following the awards, he stated in an interview on Apple’s Beats 1 that, “Even though Hotline Bling isn’t a rap song, I’m a Black artist and I’m apparently a rapper.” Even though I received two prizes, I don’t want them.
Drake hopes that his unusual ascent to hip-hop stardom will continue to be a strength rather than a weakness as his rap career progresses. “This whole thing is unusual at this point,” he’s stated, “so we’re just rolling with the fairytale vibe.”
When Drake won big at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards in May, the “fairytale vibe” persisted. He broke Adele’s record for the most victories in a single year by winning 13 accolades in all, including top artist, top male artist, top Billboard 100 album, top Billboard 200 artist, and top hot 100 artist.
“Scorpion”
Drake released two singles, “Nice For What” and “I’m Upset,” ahead of the June release of his fifth studio album, Scorpion, having begun 2018 with the two-song EP Scary Hours. Additionally, he released “Duppy Freestyle,” a diss track in response to rapper Pusha-T’s charge that he was using a ghostwriter for his rhymes.
Scorpion, which was released on June 29, did not let fans down; on “March 14,” the artist confirmed the rumors of a baby boy, and on “Survival,” he gave an explanation for why he was less angry with Pusha-T and Meek Mill. In addition to Future and Jay-Z, the album included what appeared to be never-before-heard Michael Jackson music on the track “Don’t Matter to Me.”
Over the course of its first day of release, Scorpion broke streaming records, with the Associated Press citing a total of 170 million plays on Apple Music and an additional 132 million on Spotify. With his studio album, Drake became the first artist to surpass one billion streams in a single week as the pace persisted over the following several days.
Drake went on to win the Grammy for Best Rap Song 2019 for “God’s Plan,” which was featured on both Scorpion and Scary Hours. However, the controversy surrounding his abrupt termination during his acceptance speech, in which he talked down the significance of receiving an award at the Grammys, overshadowed the victory to some extent.
Drake and Chris Brown put their differences aside and collaborated on the Top 5 single “No Guidance.” Then he dropped the EP The Best in the World Pack, which included the two singles “Omertà” and “Money in the Grave,” as well as the compilation album Care Package, which included tracks from earlier in the decade that had never been published before.
Drake collaborated with Future to release “Life is Good” in January 2020, ahead of the anticipated release of a new album. A few weeks later, the songs “When To Say When” and “Chicago Freestyle” were merged in a video that was released. On May 1, the Dark Lane Demo Tapes—which included cameos by Brown, Giveon, Young Thug, and Playboi Carti—were released.
Cannabis Enterprise
It was revealed towards the end of 2019 that Drake was joining the rapidly growing cannabis market. He would be collaborating with Canopy Growth, a well-known Canadian manufacturer, to create and sell herbal products in Toronto through a new company named More Life Growth Co. “Centered around wellness, discovery, and overall personal growth with the hope of facilitating connections and shared experiences across the globe,” the company was stated in a news release.
Individual Life
Born in October 2017, Drake is the father of Adonis, a son of artist Sophie Brussaux.
