Drake’s Journey to the Top

Aubrey Drake Graham, better known as Drake, was born on October 24th, 1986 in Toronto, Canada. He has released 5 studio albums: Thank Me Later (2010), Take Care (2011), Nothing Was the Same (2013), Views (2016), Scorpion (2018), and a popular mixtape More Life (2017).  Drake’s career started off really well, his song “Best I Ever Had”, which was the last track on his first studio album, gained great success, peaking at number two on the US Billboard Hot 100, his first single to reach the top 10. After this, everyone knew Drake from the radio stations playing his music, and he was ready to release his sophomore album Take Care,  which went straight to number one on the Billboard Top 200, selling over 600,000 copies in the first week, and today is a certified six-times platinum album. The album’s most popular songs are “Take Care” featuring Rihanna and “The Motto” featuring Lil Wayne. Two years later Drake released Nothing Was the Same. This album won the BET Award for Best Album of the Year, and the Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year. Three years later Drake released his fourth studio album Views, which won the American Music Award for Favorite Album Rap/Hip-Hop. Today the album is certified six times platinum and the most popular songs are “Too Good” featuring Rihanna and “Hotline Bling” which has 1.6 billion views on YouTube alone. After dropping a mixtape and waiting three years, Drake put out his anticipated fifth studio album, Scorpion, a double album that contains hip-hop and R&B songs. This album won Drake the Billboard Music Award for Top Billboard 200 and Billboard Music Award for Top Rap Album. Popular songs on this album include “God’s Plan”, “Nice For What”, and “In My Feelings”. As of January 2019, Scorpion is a five times platinum album and broke a Spotify record for most one-day album streams with 132 million.

Whether you like him or not, it’s essential to appreciate the impact that Drake has had on the rap game and the records he broke. Drake has basically dominated the rap game for the last decade. It’s almost unheard of for virtually all of an artist’s albums to go five times platinum and get Grammy awards for each one. He’s almost always in the public view, it’s hard to forget him. He’s been working on his record label OVO Sound for many years now and has artists like PARTYNEXTDOOR and Majid Jordan, two popular artists, on it. Drake might be slowing down, after having a kid (who is now a toddler) he has been taking longer to make music and has done less in the public eye. This is expected by his fans and everyone, and in no way can anything he does take away his come-up and the success that he created for himself, and even if he is done, he still has an amazing career to hold his head high towards.