The story of Drake

A kid from two cities

Aubrey Drake Graham was born in Toronto on the twenty fourth of October 1986. His father, Dennis Graham, was an African American drummer from Memphis who had once played with Jerry Lee Lewis. His mother, Sandi Graham, was a Canadian Ashkenazi Jew who worked as an English teacher and a florist. The two had met when Dennis was playing a Toronto club and Sandi was in the crowd. Music ran deep on his father's side. Drake's uncles were Larry Graham, the bass player in Sly and the Family Stone, and Teenie Hodges, who helped write Al Green classics like Love and Happiness and Take Me to the River. Drake went to a Jewish day school and had a bar mitzvah, and he holds both Canadian and American citizenship.[1] [2]

His parents divorced when he was five. Drake stayed in Toronto with his mother, while his father went back to Memphis. For a while Dennis brought his son south every summer, but he was later jailed in Tennessee on drug charges, and money and legal trouble kept him away for years. Drake grew up first on Weston Road in Toronto's working class west end. He was a promising right winger in minor hockey, good enough to reach an elite camp, until a vicious cross check to the neck made his mother pull him out of the game. At the age of ten he even turned up in a comedy sketch on the 1997 NHL Awards broadcast.[1] [2]

Around 2000 the family moved to Forest Hill, one of Toronto's wealthiest neighbourhoods, though Drake always stressed that they rented only half a house there, with him living in the basement. He later said he went to school with kids who flew on private jets and that he never felt he fit in. He described being bullied for being both Black and Jewish. At home things were hard. His mother was seriously ill, money was tight, and he took work at a furniture factory owned by his grandfather. When his school timetable clashed with a new acting job, he dropped out. He only finished his high school diploma in October 2012, at the age of twenty five, when he was already a Grammy winner.[1] [2]

Jimmy Brooks and the first mixtapes

At fifteen, Drake met the father of a school friend who happened to be an acting agent. That meeting landed him a part on the Canadian teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation. He played Jimmy Brooks, a rich kid and basketball star who is shot by a classmate and left disabled. Drake later said that the Canadian television money was the only income he had at a time when his mother was sick and they were broke. The show's producers remembered him turning up late after nights spent recording music, and said he struck a deal with security guards so he could sneak in and sleep in a dressing room before filming.[1] [2]

In 2005 Drake started working with a young Toronto engineer named Noah Shebib, known to everyone as 40. The nickname came from working forty days and forty nights in the studio without sleep. 40 had been a child actor too, with a part in the film The Virgin Suicides, and that same year, aged twenty two, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. After only a few days together, 40 decided to work with Drake exclusively and told him they were going to take over the world. It proved to be one of the most important partnerships in modern pop. Their slow, murky, late night sound would become the sound of Toronto.[1] [2]

Drake's first mixtape, Room for Improvement, came out in 2006. It was sold rather than given away, shifted around six thousand copies, and earned him a royalty cheque of three hundred and four dollars and four cents. That August he played his first real concert, opening for Ice Cube at the Kool Haus club in Toronto for half an hour, and took home one hundred dollars. His second mixtape, Comeback Season, arrived in 2007 on his own October's Very Own imprint. One track, Replacement Girl, reused a verse by Lil Wayne, and Wayne liked what he heard. He invited Drake to Houston to join his tour, and the two began recording together on the road.[1] [2]

Drake's time on Degrassi ended badly. In the show's eighth season, a group of original cast members, Drake among them, were moved to recurring roles or written out, in what was reported as an executive decision. Drake told Vibe magazine that the producers had done them wrong, and the cast and producers were said to have parted on bad terms. By then he was far more interested in the studio than the set anyway. Still, the character never really left him. Years later, in 2022, he named a number one single, Jimmy Cooks, after Jimmy Brooks, and the song looked back on his acting days.[1] [2]

So Far Gone and the bidding war

Everything changed on the thirteenth of February 2009, when Drake gave away a third mixtape, So Far Gone, as a free download from his blog. Produced mostly by 40 and Boi-1da, it had moody keyboards, sparse beats and a young man who both sang and rapped about women, fame and doubt. The title came from a late night text from his friend Oliver El-Khatib, who worried that they were turning into the kind of men their mothers had divorced. The single Best I Ever Had climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100, with a video directed by Kanye West. Mainstream radio was playing a song that had been given away for nothing.[1] [2] [3]

The record labels came running. Billboard reported that as many as three major labels were fighting over him in what insiders called one of the biggest bidding wars ever. On the twenty ninth of June 2009 Drake signed with Lil Wayne's Young Money Entertainment, distributed through Cash Money and Universal. A month later he joined Wayne's America's Most Wanted Tour, but in Camden, New Jersey, he fell on stage while performing Best I Ever Had and tore a ligament in his right knee. So Far Gone went on to earn him two Grammy nominations and a Juno Award, and he had still not released a proper album.[1] [2]

His debut album, Thank Me Later, was delayed three times before it arrived on the fifteenth of June 2010. It went straight to number one in America, selling more than four hundred and forty thousand copies in its first week, the biggest debut week of any album that decade. To celebrate, Drake and the band Hanson planned a free show at New York's South Street Seaport. Around twenty five thousand fans turned up, the crowd surged out of control, and police cancelled the concert after what was described as a near riot. That summer he also held the first OVO Fest in Toronto, with Jay-Z and Eminem as guests.[1] [2] [3]

Not everyone was convinced. When Thank Me Later came out, NPR's review suggested he might be the first rap star made entirely by the music industry, a former teen soap actor who had skipped years of dues paying. Drake heard those doubts for the rest of his career. He was mixed race, Jewish, Canadian and middle class, and he sang about his feelings. Critics called him soft. The Guardian later argued that this was exactly his strength. He could be all things to all people, an R&B lover man and a hip hop tough guy at once, and his audience crossed every line.[1] [2]

Take Care and the Toronto sound

Drake felt Thank Me Later had been rushed, so he named the next album Take Care because this time he would take his time. He handed most of the production to 40, who co-produced, engineered and mixed nearly all of it. Released on the fifteenth of November 2011, it was dark, slow and intimate, with guests including Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, Stevie Wonder and André 3000. It was meant to come out on his twenty fifth birthday, but sample clearances pushed it back three weeks. Take Care won the Grammy for Best Rap Album, and Rolling Stone later placed it on its list of the five hundred greatest albums of all time.[1] [2]

Take Care also produced a phrase that went around the world. The single The Motto made YOLO, short for you only live once, a craze across America in 2012. The album's heart, though, was a quieter song, Marvins Room, a drunk late night phone call set to 40's muffled production. It led to Drake's first lawsuit of note. A singer named Ericka Lee said she was the female voice on the track and deserved a songwriting credit. Drake's lawyers said she had only asked to be thanked in the sleeve notes, and the case was settled out of court in 2013.[1] [2]

In 2012 Drake, 40 and Oliver El-Khatib turned October's Very Own into a real record label, OVO Sound, and it went on to sign PartyNextDoor, Majid Jordan and others. That June the bad blood with Chris Brown boiled over. The two had history over Rihanna, whom Drake dated on and off from 2009, and in a New York nightclub Drake's entourage allegedly threw glass bottles at Brown. Brown complained about it publicly and took swipes at Drake in songs for a year, before the two made up and later recorded together. Drake's next album, Nothing Was the Same, came out on the twenty fourth of September 2013. Partly recorded in Marvin Gaye's old studio, it sold six hundred and fifty eight thousand copies in its first week and gave him Started from the Bottom and Hold On, We're Going Home.[1] [2] [3]

Also in 2013, Kendrick Lamar released a verse on Big Sean's song Control in which he named Drake among the rappers he wanted to beat. Drake told Billboard that it simply sounded like an ambitious thought, and he insisted there was no real problem, but the two began a long cold war of veiled lines. At home, Toronto embraced him. The Raptors named him their global ambassador in September 2013, and he received the key to the city. In January 2014 he hosted Saturday Night Live and was its musical guest, and critics praised his comic timing.[1] [2]

That same year brought violence around him. In December 2014, Sean Combs reportedly punched Drake outside a Miami Beach nightclub, and Drake went to hospital after aggravating an old arm injury. Earlier in 2014, the producer Noel Fisher, known as Detail, said Drake's bodyguard Nessel Beezer, nicknamed Chubbs, had punched him and broken his jaw during a dispute. Fisher sued, but the case was dismissed in 2018 when he failed to appear in court, and the judge ruled the bodyguard had acted in self defence. Drake meanwhile toured with his mentor Lil Wayne on the Drake versus Lil Wayne tour, one of the biggest rap tours of 2014.[1] [2]

The Six God

On the twelfth of February 2015 Drake surprised everyone by releasing If You're Reading This It's Too Late with no warning. It sold more than half a million units in its first week. There was a business twist. It counted as one of the albums he owed Cash Money Records, and it was widely rumoured to be a move toward leaving the label, though in the end he stayed. The mixtape spread a new nickname for Toronto. Drake called the city the Six, and soon the phrase was everywhere. He also signed a reported nineteen million dollar deal with Apple Music, becoming the face of the new service and launching his own radio show on it.[1] [2] [3]

In July 2015 the Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill accused Drake of not writing his own lyrics. He said Drake's verse on their song R.I.C.O. had been written by an Atlanta rapper called Quentin Miller, and the New York DJ Funkmaster Flex played reference recordings of Miller performing songs that became Drake tracks. Drake answered with two diss records in four days, Charged Up and Back to Back. The cover of Back to Back showed the Toronto Blue Jays winning the 1993 World Series against Philadelphia, and it came out on a day the two teams were playing. Meek answered with a song called Wanna Know, then deleted it, and the hip hop world largely declared Drake the winner.[1] [2] [3]

Drake's hot streak rolled on. In September 2015 he released What a Time to Be Alive with Future, recorded in Atlanta in about six days, and it went to number one. The Summer Sixteen Tour with Future became, according to Pollstar, the highest grossing hip hop tour ever at the time. Then came Hotline Bling. Built on a sample of Timmy Thomas's 1972 song Why Can't We Live Together, it reached number two, but its video did even more. Directed by Director X, it showed Drake dancing alone in a glowing box, and the goofy moves turned into one of the biggest memes of the decade.[1] [2] [3]

His fourth album, Views, arrived on the twenty ninth of April 2016, with a cover showing him perched on top of the CN Tower, looking impossibly large. The tower's own account later confirmed the image was photoshopped. Views leaned into Caribbean and African sounds, and its single One Dance, with the Nigerian star Wizkid and the British singer Kyla, became Drake's first number one as a lead artist. It was also the first song to pass one billion streams on Spotify. Views spent thirteen weeks at number one in America. Critics grumbled about its length, but it became his most commercially successful album.[1] [2] [3]

In August 2016 Drake presented Rihanna with the Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Video Music Awards and told the audience he had been in love with her since he was twenty two. Two years later she told Vogue they were no longer even friends. In March 2017 came More Life, which he called a playlist, with a 1970s photograph of his father on the cover. It broke streaming records in its first day. That May he won thirteen Billboard Music Awards in one night, breaking Adele's record. He also produced television, as an executive producer of Euphoria and of the London drama Top Boy.[1] [2] [3]

Scorpion and a secret son

In January 2018 Drake released God's Plan. It went straight to number one and became his first diamond certified single. For the video, filmed in Miami, he gave away the entire budget, which the opening titles put at nine hundred and ninety six thousand, six hundred and thirty one dollars and ninety cents. He handed out cash, groceries and a fifty thousand dollar scholarship cheque to a student. The next single, Nice for What, knocked God's Plan off the top, making Drake the first artist to replace his own number one debut with another. In My Feelings followed, powered by a viral dance challenge. In 2018 he spent twenty nine weeks at number one.[1] [2]

Then came the most damaging fight of his career before 2024. Pusha T, who had long been at odds with Lil Wayne's camp, revived the ghostwriting charge on the song Infrared in May 2018. Drake replied the same night with Duppy Freestyle. Four days later Pusha T released The Story of Adidon. Its cover was an old 2007 photo of Drake in blackface, and the song revealed that Drake had a baby son he had not told the public about, with the French artist and former adult film actress Sophie Brussaux. Drake said the photo had been meant as a comment on how Black actors were typecast. The Ringer's headline simply said that Drake lost.[1] [2] [3]

Drake recorded a reply, but his mentor, the Houston executive James Prince, talked him out of releasing it, saying it could have wrecked lives. Instead, on his double album Scorpion, released at the end of June 2018, Drake confirmed that he was the father of a boy named Adonis, born on the eleventh of October 2017. Scorpion ran close to ninety minutes and broke one day streaming records on both Spotify and Apple Music. That August he appeared on Travis Scott's Sicko Mode, another number one. In 2019 Drake finally conceded that he had lost to Pusha T.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Drake blamed Kanye West for the Adonis leak. On LeBron James's show The Shop he explained that he had gone to West's Wyoming sessions, opened up about his son, and then watched Pusha T, West's own signing, reveal it. He also said West had agreed to sell him a beat for three million dollars and then kept it for his own song Lift Yourself. West apologised publicly in September 2018 for his part, while denying he had told anyone about the child, but by December he was tweeting that Drake had threatened him. In 2019 Drake's father also said in an interview that his son's stories about an absent dad were exaggerated to sell records. Drake said he was deeply hurt.[1] [2] [3]

Darker stories also surfaced in this period. In January 2019 a video from a 2010 Denver concert went viral. In it, Drake brings a girl on stage, kisses her, and after she tells him she is seventeen, jokes about not wanting to go to jail. Around the same time, the actress Millie Bobby Brown, then fourteen, spoke of their friendship by text, and some online critics accused him of grooming her. She publicly defended the friendship as supportive. Also in 2019, Drake paid a three hundred and fifty thousand dollar settlement to a woman who alleged he had sexually assaulted her. He denied the allegation. These episodes would return with force five years later.[1] [2]

Record breaker in a pandemic

In June 2019 Drake got something he had wanted for years, when his beloved Toronto Raptors won the NBA title. He had spent the playoffs courtside, pacing the sideline and trash talking opposing players, and a joke spread online about a Drake curse that doomed every team he cheered for. At the Grammys that February, his acceptance speech for God's Plan had been cut off mid sentence as he appeared to criticise the awards, and in 2021 he withdrew his albums from Grammy consideration altogether. When the pandemic arrived, he released Toosie Slide, filmed inside his giant Toronto mansion known as the Embassy. It became his third song to debut at number one.[1] [2] [3] [4]

His sixth album, Certified Lover Boy, was pushed back after a serious knee injury and finally came out on the third of September 2021. The cover, designed by the British artist Damien Hirst, showed twelve emojis of pregnant women and was widely mocked. The music, though, broke records. Nine of its songs sat in the top ten of the Hot 100 at once, something no one had done before. It arrived five days after Kanye West's Donda, and the old feud flared. Drake leaked an unreleased West song on which West had attacked him. Then, unexpectedly, the two made peace, performing together in Los Angeles in December 2021 at a benefit concert calling for clemency for Larry Hoover, the imprisoned Chicago gang leader.[1] [2] [3] [4]

There was darkness in the wider story too. On the fifth of November 2021, a crowd crush at Travis Scott's Astroworld Festival in Houston killed ten people. Drake had come on stage as a guest during Scott's set. One lawsuit claimed he helped incite the crowd, and he was named alongside Scott. He said his heart was broken for the families. In 2023 a grand jury declined to indict anyone. In 2022 he signed a new deal with Universal Music Group reported to be worth up to four hundred million dollars. That June he surprised fans with Honestly, Nevermind, a house and dance album made with the South African producer Black Coffee. In July 2022 he was briefly detained by police in Stockholm, reportedly over drugs found at a nightclub.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In November 2022 Drake and 21 Savage released Her Loss. To promote it they faked a Vogue cover, a Tiny Desk concert and an interview with Howard Stern. Vogue's publisher sued over the fake magazine, and the rappers settled. The album still went to number one. In February 2023 he became the most streamed artist in Spotify history, and in October he released For All the Dogs, whose cover was a drawing by his son Adonis. Its single First Person Shooter, with J. Cole, tied Michael Jackson's record for the most number ones by a solo man. On it, Cole called himself, Drake and Kendrick Lamar the big three. It was a line that would start a war.[1] [2] [3]

The war with Kendrick

On the twenty second of March 2024, Kendrick Lamar appeared on Future and Metro Boomin's song Like That and dismissed the idea of a big three. Future and Metro Boomin, once close to Drake, had fallen out with him, and soon The Weeknd, ASAP Rocky, Rick Ross and Kanye West piled in on his rivals' side. J. Cole answered Lamar with a mild diss, then apologised on stage two days later and pulled it. Drake replied in April with Push Ups, mocking Lamar's height and his work with Taylor Swift. Then came Taylor Made Freestyle, which used AI generated voices imitating Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg. Tupac's estate threatened to sue, and Drake took it down.[1] [2]

On the thirtieth of April Lamar released Euphoria, a long and furious attack. Then things turned very dark. On the third of May Drake released Family Matters, which accused Lamar of abusing his fiancée and claimed one of Lamar's children was fathered by his creative partner Dave Free. Just twenty minutes later Lamar answered with Meet the Grahams, a song written as letters to Drake's family, accusing him of being a sexual predator, of running a trafficking ring and of hiding a secret daughter. All of these accusations, on both sides, were made without evidence and were denied. The BBC counted nine solo diss tracks between the two men in under four weeks.[1] [2] [3]

The next day, the fourth of May 2024, Lamar released Not Like Us. Produced by Mustard, it was a bouncing West Coast party record that openly called Drake a predator of minors, and its cover was an aerial image of Drake's Toronto mansion, marked with pins like a sex offender map. It debuted at number one and was everywhere that summer, in clubs and at basketball games around the world. Drake answered on the fifth of May with The Heart Part 6, denying the accusations and claiming his camp had fed Lamar false information about a secret daughter. It was poorly received, gathering an estimated million dislikes on YouTube, and Lamar never replied.[1] [2] [3]

The feud spilled into the real world. In the early hours of the seventh of May 2024, a security guard was shot outside Drake's home in Toronto's Bridle Path district and taken to hospital with serious injuries. Police said it was too early to link the shooting to the feud. The next day an intruder was arrested trying to get in, and on the ninth police were called again after a trespasser fought with guards. Commentators recalled how the feud between Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. had ended in two murders.[1] [2] [3]

In June Lamar staged the Pop Out concert in Los Angeles and performed Not Like Us five times in a row. On the fourth of July he released its video, which showed his partner and children dancing happily, a direct answer to Drake's claims, and featured the Compton born basketball player DeMar DeRozan, once a Toronto Raptors favourite. Critics across the board, from Pitchfork to Rolling Stone, called Lamar the winner. The New Yorker asked whether there had ever been such a clear loser. Drake went quiet on record, releasing a cache of old material called 100 Gigs in August, while the song that had wounded him kept breaking records.[1] [2]

Lawsuits, Grammys and Iceman

In November 2024 Drake did something almost unheard of in hip hop. He filed legal petitions accusing Universal Music Group, his own label's parent company, and Spotify of artificially boosting Not Like Us with bots and payments, which both firms denied. In January 2025 he sued Universal for defamation in a New York federal court, saying the song had led to break in attempts at his home and forced him to move his son. On the second of February, Not Like Us won all five Grammys it was nominated for, including Record and Song of the Year. A week later Lamar performed it at the Super Bowl halftime show, grinning into the camera, with Serena Williams dancing on stage.[1] [2] [3]

Drake kept working. On Valentine's Day 2025 he and PartyNextDoor released Some Sexy Songs 4 U, which went to number one in America. That February, on a tour of Australia named Anita Max Win, after a gambling joke, he walked on stage wearing a hoodie riddled with bullet holes, a symbol that he was still standing. He also handed out tens of thousands of dollars to fans in the crowd. In July he headlined all three nights of London's Wireless Festival and released a new single, What Did I Miss, which took aim at old friends who had attended Lamar's Pop Out show.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the ninth of October 2025, Judge Jeannette Vargas threw out Drake's lawsuit against Universal. She ruled that in the context of a heated rap battle, where both men traded outrageous insults, no reasonable listener would take Not Like Us as a statement of fact, so it could not be defamation. Universal said the suit should never have been filed. Drake's lawyers announced an appeal, and as of 2026 the legal fight was still going. The Guardian noted that many in hip hop saw the case as the actions of a sore loser, while his fans saw a man fighting to clear his name.[1] [2] [3]

Drake built his comeback around an album called Iceman, teased with livestreams, a courtside seat covered in fake ice and a giant ice sculpture in downtown Toronto that fans attacked with pickaxes and set on fire until police sealed it off. On the fifteenth of May 2026 he released not one album but three, Iceman, Habibti and Maid of Honour. They entered the Billboard 200 at numbers one, two and three, the first time any artist had held the top three at once. Iceman gave him his fifteenth number one album, and its single Janice STFU gave him his fourteenth number one song, breaking Michael Jackson's record for a solo man.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The music itself divided critics. Iceman returned again and again to the feud, taking shots at Lamar, J. Cole, ASAP Rocky and LeBron James, and repeating his claims about inflated streams. Rolling Stone said it cleared the field after he had been written off. The Guardian called the triple release bloated and wondered whether he was using the flood of music to finish his record contract. Future, who had sided with Lamar in 2024, turned up as a guest, and Drake said the two had made peace. As of 2026, Drake remained the most streamed rapper in the world, still chasing the one thing the numbers could not buy him back, the benefit of the doubt.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The legacy

Whatever people think of Drake, his influence is hard to deny. He did not invent the rapper who sings, but he made it the norm. Rolling Stone noted in 2020 that since Take Care, nearly every singer raps and nearly every rapper sings. With 40 he built the hazy, late night Toronto sound, and he opened the door for a Canadian wave that included The Weeknd and PartyNextDoor. He helped push UK grime, Afrobeats and Caribbean dancehall onto American radio. In 2022 Toronto Metropolitan University even began teaching a course called Deconstructing Drake and the Weeknd.[1] [2]

His chart record is staggering. As of 2026 he had more Billboard Hot 100 entries than anyone in history, the most top ten hits, and fourteen number one singles as a lead artist. He was Billboard's artist of the decade for the 2010s and Spotify's most streamed artist of that decade. God's Plan, Hotline Bling and One Dance are all certified diamond in America. His estimated contribution to Toronto's tourism was once put at five percent of the city's annual income. In Houston, the tenth of June was declared Drake Day.[1] [2]

Yet the story is full of contradictions. He is the most successful rapper of the streaming age and also the man who lost the most public rap battle ever fought. He has been accused of borrowing other people's sounds, slang and even lyrics, and praised for spotting talent early and lifting it up. He fought with Meek Mill, Chris Brown and Kanye West and then made peace with each of them. He built a sporting empire, a label, a fashion brand and a mansion called the Embassy, but his most revealing songs are still about loneliness. As of 2026, the kid from Weston Road and Degrassi is still at the top of the charts, and still arguing about his place in history.[1] [2] [3]

The people around Drake

Drake and Lil Wayne. Lil Wayne heard Drake's voice on a mixtape track built around one of his own verses and invited the unknown Canadian to join him on tour in 2007. He signed Drake to Young Money in 2009 and appeared on hits like Forever and The Motto. They later toured together as Drake versus Lil Wayne in 2014. They reunited on stage in Toronto in 2022.[1] [2]

Drake and Noah 40 Shebib. 40 has worked on nearly every Drake record since 2005, first as an engineer and then as the architect of the muffled, underwater sound that defines Take Care and Marvins Room. With manager Oliver El-Khatib they co-founded OVO. 40 has lived with multiple sclerosis since 2005, which Pusha T mocked in 2018. He also persuaded Drake to sign a 2023 open letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.[1] [2] [3]

Drake and Rihanna. Drake and Rihanna had an on and off relationship from 2009 to 2016 and made hits together, including What's My Name, Take Care and Work. At the 2016 MTV awards he said he had loved her since he was twenty two. Two years later she said they were no longer friends. She went on to start a family with ASAP Rocky, and Drake's later songs were read as digs at both of them.[1] [2] [3]

Drake and Kendrick Lamar. They began as friends. Lamar appeared on Take Care and opened for Drake's 2012 tour. His 2013 Control verse started a decade of coded jabs, which exploded in 2024 into the most public rap battle ever, with accusations of abuse, secret children and predatory behaviour, all denied. Lamar's Not Like Us won five Grammys and was widely seen as the knockout. Drake then sued his own label's parent company over the song.[1] [2]

Drake and Kanye West. Kanye directed Drake's first big video and produced for him, and Drake has called West a key influence. They were neighbours and nearly made an album together in 2016. The friendship collapsed in 2018 over Pusha T's attack, a beat Drake says he agreed to buy for three million dollars, and West's release scheduling. They traded shots for years, made peace at a 2021 benefit concert, then West sided against Drake in 2024.[1] [2] [3]

Drake and Pusha T. Their rivalry grew out of Pusha T's feud with Lil Wayne and Birdman around 2012. In 2018 Pusha T's The Story of Adidon, with its blackface cover photo and revelation of Drake's son, became one of the most famous diss tracks ever. Drake never released a reply, admitted in 2019 that he had lost, and was still aiming lines at Pusha T on Iceman in 2026.[1] [2] [3]

Drake and Meek Mill. Meek Mill's 2015 ghostwriting accusation led to Drake's Back to Back, one of the most celebrated diss tracks of the decade, and the rap world judged Drake the winner. After Meek was jailed in 2017 for probation violations, Drake called for his release on stage in Australia. The two made peace, and their 2018 collaboration Going Bad became Meek's highest charting song.[1] [2] [3]

Drake and Chris Brown. The two R&B stars clashed over Rihanna, and in 2012 bottles were allegedly thrown at Brown by Drake's entourage in a New York club. They traded insults in songs until a joint comedy sketch at the 2014 ESPY Awards eased things. In 2019 they released No Guidance, which went diamond, and Brown later featured on Dark Lane Demo Tapes.[1] [2]

Drake and Dennis Graham. Drake's father, a Memphis drummer, is both a muse and a sore point. Drake has rapped about his absence since his first album, and put a 1970s photo of him on the cover of More Life. Dennis has said watching his son succeed felt like making it himself. In 2019 they clashed publicly when Dennis said the absent father story was exaggerated.[1] [2] [3]

Drake and Future. Future and Drake recorded What a Time to Be Alive in about six days in 2015, toured stadiums together in 2016, and made Jumpman a hit. By 2024 they had fallen out, and Future's album with Metro Boomin launched Kendrick Lamar's attack. Drake hit back at Future on Push Ups and Family Matters, but Future appeared on Iceman in 2026, and Drake said they had reconciled.[1] [2] [3]

Drake and J. Cole. Frequent collaborators and friends, they topped the charts with First Person Shooter in 2023, where Cole named himself, Drake and Lamar the big three. When Lamar rejected that, Cole released a response and then apologised and withdrew it within days, which left Drake alone in the fight. On Iceman in 2026 Drake criticised Cole for backing out.[1] [2]

Drake and Sophie Brussaux. The French artist and former model is the mother of Drake's son Adonis, born in October 2017. Her pregnancy was first rumoured in the tabloids, Pusha T exposed the child in 2018, and Drake confirmed he was the father on Scorpion. Drake has since raised Adonis in the public eye, and the boy drew the cover of For All the Dogs in 2023.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Drake

• Drake's first mixtape earned him a royalty cheque of just three hundred and four dollars and four cents. Room for Improvement came out in 2006 and was sold rather than given away. It shifted around six thousand copies, and Drake's share came to three hundred and four dollars and four cents.[1]
• His first real concert paid one hundred dollars, opening for Ice Cube in Toronto. On the nineteenth of August 2006 Drake played for half an hour at the Kool Haus nightclub as Ice Cube's opening act. His fee was one hundred dollars.[1]
• At the age of ten, Drake appeared in a comedy sketch on the NHL Awards broadcast. The 1997 sketch riffed on the goalkeepers Martin Brodeur and Ron Hextall, the only goalies to have scored more than once. Drake was a keen young hockey player at the time.[1]
• Drake gave up hockey after a vicious cross check to his neck. He was a promising right winger who reached an elite Upper Canada College hockey camp. After an opponent cross checked him in the neck during a game, his mother made him quit.[1]
• Drake's uncle played bass in Sly and the Family Stone. His father's brother Larry Graham was Sly and the Family Stone's bassist. Another uncle, Teenie Hodges, helped write Al Green songs including Love and Happiness and Take Me to the River.[1]
• His father once played drums for Jerry Lee Lewis. Dennis Graham, a drummer from Memphis, performed with Jerry Lee Lewis. He met Drake's mother when she came to see him play at a club in Toronto.[1]
• Drake got his high school diploma at twenty five, after winning a Grammy. He had dropped out because his timetable clashed with acting work on Degrassi. He finally graduated in October 2012, eight months after Take Care came out.[1]
• His producer 40 got his name from working forty days and forty nights without sleep. Noah Shebib earned the nickname in the studio early in his career, and it was later shortened to 40. As a teenager he had acted in The Virgin Suicides.[1]
• Drake's first big video, Best I Ever Had, was directed by Kanye West. Long before their feud, Kanye West directed the 2009 video for Drake's breakthrough single, and he also co-wrote and produced Find Your Love from Thank Me Later.[1]
• The Degrassi character Jimmy Brooks gave his name to a Drake number one single. Jimmy Cooks, with 21 Savage, topped the Hot 100 in 2022. Its title is a nod to Drake's old television role, and the song looks back on his acting days.[1]
• Take Care was meant to come out on Drake's twenty fifth birthday. It was planned for the twenty fourth of October 2011, but three sample clearances pushed it back to the fifteenth of November.[1]
• The Nothing Was the Same covers were painted by the artist behind Michael Jackson's Michael album cover. Kadir Nelson painted two portraits, Drake as a child with an afro comb and Drake as an adult with a gold chain, set against a blue sky. Buyers could choose either cover.[1]
• Drake recorded in Marvin Gaye's old studio while making Nothing Was the Same. He said Marvin Gaye's 1978 album Here, My Dear shaped his direction, and he worked in Gaye's former studio, the same Marvin's Room that inspired one of his best known songs.[1]
• Back to Back came out on the day Toronto's Blue Jays played Meek Mill's Philadelphia Phillies. Its cover shows Joe Carter's walk off home run that won the 1993 World Series against Philadelphia, a pointed jab at the Philadelphia rapper.[1]
• The cover of What a Time to Be Alive was a stock photo bought from Shutterstock. Drake and Future made the whole mixtape in about six days in Atlanta, and Jumpman was the last song they recorded for it.[1]
• The Views cover of Drake on the CN Tower was photoshopped. The image was so oversized that people argued about it, and the CN Tower's own account confirmed it was edited. The photos were taken by Caitlin Cronenberg.[1]
• Hotline Bling began life as a remix of a song by the singer DRAM. It premiered as a Cha Cha remix, inspired by DRAM's song Cha Cha, and its beat is built on Timmy Thomas's 1972 soul song Why Can't We Live Together.[1]
• One Dance was released alongside another song as a safety net. Drake's team feared the dancehall song was too big a departure, so they released it with Pop Style, a more conventional rap record featuring Kanye West and Jay-Z.[1]
• One Dance never had a proper music video, and that may have helped it. Without a video, fans had to stream it on services that counted toward the UK chart. It spent fifteen weeks at number one in Britain.[1]
• God's Plan was originally called Grace of God. Producer Cardo sent the beat in September 2017. Boi-1da added drums when Drake asked for a bouncier feel, and the song was first teased at a New Year's Eve party.[1]
• The cover of More Life is a 1970s photo of Drake's father. Drake marketed More Life as a playlist rather than an album, and chose a vintage portrait of Dennis Graham as its artwork.[1]
• Drake sang a finished duet with Aaliyah more than ten years after her death. Enough Said was recorded by Aaliyah before she died in 2001. Drake and 40 completed it and released it in August 2012.[1]
• Drake voiced a character in Ice Age: Continental Drift. Between albums in 2012, he returned to acting and voiced a character called Ethan in the fourth Ice Age film.[1]
• Houston declared the tenth of June to be Drake Day. Drake has paid tribute to Houston in songs going back to So Far Gone, and the city returned the favour with a day in his name.[1] [2]
• Students at Drake University campaigned for seven years to get him to visit. The social media campaign began in 2009. In 2016, after a concert in Des Moines, Drake finally dropped by the campus.[1]
• A Canadian university teaches a course about Drake and The Weeknd. Since 2022, Toronto Metropolitan University has run Deconstructing Drake and the Weeknd, using their music to study race, class, marketing and the Canadian music industry.[1]
• Drake was once credited with five percent of Toronto's tourism income. A 2018 estimate put his effect at around four hundred and forty million Canadian dollars of the city's eight point eight billion dollar annual tourism earnings.[1]
• AS Roma banned its players from taking photos with Drake. The Italian football club acted because of the Drake curse joke, in which any team he was seen supporting went on to lose.[1]
• The cover of For All the Dogs was drawn by Drake's son Adonis. It shows a white dog with red eyes on a black background. Drake credited the cover to Adonis and compared it to artwork he made himself in fifth grade.[1]
• The Certified Lover Boy cover, by Damien Hirst, was voted one of the worst of 2021. Hirst's design showed twelve emojis of pregnant women. Exclaim magazine put it top of its list of the worst album covers of the year.[1]
• Drake and 21 Savage were sued by Vogue's publisher over a fake magazine cover. To promote Her Loss they handed out a spoof Vogue issue. Condé Nast sued over the trademark, and the rappers settled.[1]
• Kanye West agreed to sell Drake a beat for three million dollars, then kept it. According to Drake, the beat became West's own song Lift Yourself. West later admitted he should have given Drake a chance before using it.[1]
• In 2016 Barack Obama said Kendrick Lamar would beat Drake in a rap battle. Asked by a YouTube interviewer, Obama called Drake an outstanding entertainer but picked Lamar. Drake answered with a line on Summer Sixteen.[1]
• Argentina's football team trolled Drake with Not Like Us after he bet on Canada. Drake had reportedly bet three hundred thousand dollars on Canada in the 2024 Copa America semi final. After beating Canada, Argentina posted the song title above a team photo.[1]
• Fans attacked Drake's giant Iceman ice sculpture with pickaxes and set it on fire. The sculpture in downtown Toronto hid the album's release date. Police sealed off the area, and a streamer eventually found a bag inside revealing the date, the fifteenth of May.[1]
• In the Toosie Slide video, a recording contract sits on Drake's dining table. The lockdown video was filmed in his Toronto mansion, the Embassy, and includes a tribute to the late Kobe Bryant.[1]
• Drake has headlined a benefit alongside Kanye West despite years of feuding. In December 2021 they performed together at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and Drake's own set was later cut from the streaming replay.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.