Drake

Artist · Verified

One of the biggest rap stars in the world, known for hit after hit and his OVO label.

#7Hub rank

33.1MYouTube followers

About Drake

Drake — Aubrey Drake Graham, born October 24, 1986, in Toronto — is the defining commercial artist of the streaming era: a rapper-singer who turned vulnerability into dominance and held the top of the charts for more than a decade. Before the rap, there was Jimmy Brooks — the Degrassi: The Next Generation character that made him a teen-TV fixture. From wheelchair to world tours: the most unlikely origin story in hip-hop, and the most successful.

The mixtape lit the fuse. So Far Gone (2009) — “Best I Ever Had” and all — made him the most wanted free agent in music; the Young Money signing followed. Thank Me Later made him a star; Take Care made him an era. The run through Nothing Was the Same, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, Views, More Life, and Scorpion is one of the great commercial streaks in music history.

“God’s Plan” is the signature moment: a record-breaking single whose video — giving away nearly a million dollars to real people in Miami — became a cultural event. The song dominated streaming; the video dominated the conversation. Massive scale, genuine emotion, undeniable hooks: Drake’s thesis in miniature.

The OVO empire extends the reign: OVO Sound, founded in 2012, the OVO Fest, the brand partnerships, the Toronto institutional presence. October’s Very Own is not just an imprint — it is a civic identity.

The influence is structural. Drake’s sing-rap blueprint rewrote what a rapper could sound like; his streaming dominance rewrote how the industry measures success. A generation of artists is, knowingly or not, working in the house he built. The later run — Certified Lover Boy, Honestly, Nevermind, Her Loss with 21 Savage, For All the Dogs — kept the machine at the top through every trend cycle.

The 2024 feud with Kendrick Lamar became the defining rap beef of the decade — a diss-track war that consumed the culture for weeks and produced era-defining records on both sides. Through it all, Drake’s commercial gravity never wavered: the debate never ends, which is exactly the point. He is the artist the culture cannot stop talking about, because he never stopped giving it something to talk about.

Then came Valentine’s Day 2025. $ome $exy $ongs 4 U — the long-rumored joint album with PARTYNEXTDOOR — arrived as a 21-track, 74-minute late-night R&B opus. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 with 246,000 first-week units: PARTYNEXTDOOR’s first chart-topper, Drake’s fourteenth. Notably, it was his first album without longtime collaborator 40 behind the boards — production handled by Noel Cadastre, Gordo, Jordan Ullman, and PARTYNEXTDOOR himself. The RIAA certified it platinum within nine months; “NOKIA” went 2× platinum with an IMAX-shot video from Theo Skudra; “Somebody Loves Me” earned a 2026 Grammy nomination for Best Melodic Rap Performance.

The campaign rolled into 2026: a summer UK/EU tour with PARTYNEXTDOOR, physical editions on cassette, CD, and vinyl, an October short film, and the Anita Max Win stadium run across Australia and New Zealand in February and March — with PARTYNEXTDOOR joining select dates. Meanwhile Drake has been teasing Iceman, his ninth solo album — the next chapter of a run that has no precedent.

The records tell their own story. Fourteen #1 albums on the Billboard 200. One of the most-streamed artists in the history of the medium. “God’s Plan” broke streaming records on its way to becoming a cultural event; “One Dance” became one of the most-played songs ever recorded. The numbers stopped being surprising years ago — the surprise is that they never stopped.

The Kendrick Lamar feud of 2024 became the defining rap beef of the decade — a diss-track war that consumed the culture for weeks, produced era-defining records on both sides, and spilled into the courtroom when Drake filed a defamation suit against Universal Music Group over the promotion of “Not Like Us.” Through the beef, the lawsuit, and the endless discourse, his commercial gravity never wavered.

The cultural footprint extends beyond music: the Toronto Raptors’ global ambassador, the OVO Fest institution, the owl logo as civic emblem, the memes (“Hotline Bling” alone launched a thousand dances), the fashion lines, the endless quotables. He turned Toronto into a hip-hop capital and vulnerability into a superpower — and the industry is still catching up. Drake is not just an artist; he is an atmosphere — the thing the culture breathes, argues about, and cannot look away from.

A decade and a half at the top, and the machine keeps finding new gears: the PARTYNEXTDOOR collaboration opened the R&B lane wider than ever, the Anita Max Win tour took the arena show to new continents, and Iceman looms as the next chapter. The debate never ends — which is exactly the point.

The run is without precedent, and it is not over. New continents, new lanes, new albums — the machine keeps finding gears. From Degrassi to the biggest stages on earth, Drake remains the artist the culture cannot stop talking about.