Music Bloodline

Drake

Canadian actor-turned-MC mixes Lil Wayne's verbal acrobatics with Will Smith's pop sensibility and showmanship.

Biography

The gleefully obtuse verbal acrobatics of Lil Wayne and the pop sensibilities of Will Smith merge in Drake, an actor-turned-rapper who built tremendous, sustained buzz in the late 2000s before ever signing to a label. Canadian-born Audrey Drake Graham first garnered notice as a teenage paraplegic basketballer on Canadian high school soap opera DEGRASSI HIGH: THE NEXT GENERATION. By the mid-‘00s, Drake turned his attention towards music, and between keen YouTube marketing savvy, a zest for showmanship, and a twisted world view, he earned a spot among the young lions of hip-hop. His fabled skills and free agent status led to a glut of unauthorized recordings (and subsequent lawsuits)--and, ironically, one such sued bootleg snuck onto iTunes, and led to the rapper's first hit, the smash "Best I Ever Had."