Although Kendrick Lamar fans may object , numbers don't lie: Drake is one of the biggest rappers of all time. Since his emergence in the late aughts, the year-old has released more than a dozen No. So how did a former child actor from Canada manage to eclipse the success of his own mentors, date Rihanna , win five Grammys, and break several records previously held by The Beatles?
Drake's parents divorced when he was 5. My grandmother, who passed away in Memphis, used to babysit Louis Armstrong. Drake was primarily raised by his mother, a teacher, in Toronto. He has described Sandra as "godlike," but she became bedridden from various health issues: "She smoked cigarettes and took her pain meds, deteriorating every day, essentially dying," Drake recalled to GQ.
Drake has said he grew up "very poor, like broke," despite spending some of his adolescence in the affluent neighborhood Forest Hill. That's near the west end of the city. It's not the nicest area in the world," he told Complex. So I didn't grow up in Forest Hill. She wanted the best for her family. She found us a half of a house we could live in," he continued.
It was what we could afford. Drake attended a Jewish day school as a child, "where nobody understood what it was like to be Black and Jewish," he told Heeb magazine. Throughout his career, he has drawn inspiration from his heritage. We kinda just did it in the basement of an Italian restaurant, which I guess is kinda like a faux pas," he explained, per Digital Spy. Drake — then still going by the name Aubrey Graham — was cast as Jimmy Brooks , a popular eighth grader, basketball star, and eventual paraplegic in the original cast of "Degrassi: The Next Generation.
I was a good liar and a good talker. And this kid in my class was like, 'Yo, my dad is an agent. You should go talk to him because you're good and you make people laugh,'" Drake explained to GQ. I was my father's son. I was slick, you know? When it comes to knowing what to say, to charm, I always had it. Around that time, he also started writing song lyrics.
