Aubrey Drake Graham (born October 24, 1986) is a Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor. He was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. He first garnered recognition for his role as Jimmy Brooks on the television series Degrassi: The Next Generation. He later rose to prominence as a rapper, releasing several mixtapes before signing to Lil Wayne's Young Money Entertainment in June 2009. Drake has sold an estimated 10 million albums worldwide. His work has earned him a Grammy Award, three Juno Awards, six BET Awards, and set several significant Billboard records. With twelve number-one singles, Drake has more than any other artist on Billboard's Hot Rap Songs chart. With ten number-one singles, he also has more than any other rapper on Billboard 's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, passing Jay Z in August 2012. He is one of two artists (the other being 50 cent) to have simultaneously occupied the chart's top three positions.
Drake, along with being a record producer under the pseudonym Champagne Papi, has also written songs for other artists, including Alicia Keys ("Un-Thinkable (I'm Ready)"), Rita Ora ("R.I.P."), Jaime Foxx and Trey Songz.
Aubrey Drake Graham was born on October 24, 1986, in Toronto, Ontario, to parents Sandi Graham (née Sher), an educator, and Dennis Graham, a drummer who worked with Jerry Lee Lewis. Two of his uncles, Larry Graham and Teenie Hodges, are also musicians. Drake's father is an African-American from Memphis, Tennessee, and Drake's mother is a white Jewish Canadian. He attended a Jewish Day School and had a Bar Mitzvah. His parents divorced when he was five years old, and he was raised by his mother in two Toronto neighbourhoods; he lived on Weston Road in the city's working-class west end, until the sixth grade, when he moved to the affluent Forrest Hill. In his youth, he played minor hockey with the Weston Red Wings. Drake has commented on the move to Forest Hill and his mother's struggle, saying that "She wanted the best for her family. She found us a half of a house we could live in. The other people had the top half, we had the bottom half. I lived in the basement, my mom lived on the first floor. It was not big, it was not luxurious. It was what we could afford." Drake then began attending Forest Hill Collegiate Institute, where he began acting, but did not graduate. It was the first of two high schools he would attend, as he later went to Vaughan Road Academy, describing it as "not by any means the easiest school to go to. It's a tough school."Despite dropping out of high school, years later, he graduated in October 2012.
On February 12, 2015, Drake released If You're Reading This It's Too Late onto iTunes, with no prior announcement, making it his fourth retail project with Cash Money As of August 11, 2015, the If You're Reading This It's Too Late mixtape had sold over 1 million copies, making Drake the first artist with a platinum album in 2015. It also marks the rapper's fourth platinum album.
On September 20, 2015, Drake released a joint-mixtape with Atlanta rapper Future, What a Time to be Alive. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, Billboard R&B Charts, and Billboard Hot Rap Songs, marking the first time a rapper was able to score two number 1's in a year in 11 years, since Jay Z back in 2004. The mixtape has currently sold 334,000 copies in the U.S. The mixtape also charted at number 1 on the Canadian Hot 100.