Drake: The Ultimate Sad Boy and King of the Internet

Your ‘Certified Lover Boy’

The Internet’s ultimate sad boy, courtside agitator and record-breaking artist, Drake’s superstardom didn’t happen by accident. From his starry-eyed debut on Canada’s Degrassi High to Internet-breaking hits like ‘Hotline Bling’, we unpacked the God’s meteoric hip-hop career ahead of his sixth studio album, Certified Lover Boy.

Degrassi High
Playing Jimmy Brooks on the beloved Canadian teen drama Degrassi High, Drake (then known as Aubrey Graham) played a precocious basketball talent and artist. Degrassi was our first look at Drake on our screens, but we had to wait a little while until we got a taste of his bars. In the fourth episode of the seventh season, Jimmy freestyles during a school talent show, teaming up with Ashley Kerwin for a prescient flow that revealed a lot of the stylistic hallmarks of his later career in hip hop.

Drake appears in Degrassi High, 2001

Returning to Degrassi for the music video ‘I’m Upset’ (from Drake’s fifth studio album Scorpion), Drake enlists the help of his OVO squad to hunt Rick Murray (who rendered Drake a paraplegic in the TV series) down the very same Degrassi halls.

Mixtapes
‘Kicked off’ Degrassi because of his overloaded schedule, Drake quit acting in 2008 to pursue hip-hop full time. Cutting his teeth with Room For Improvement and Comeback Season, Drake hit it big with his third mixtape: So Far Gone. Landing in 2009, the mixtape was produced under his very own label: October’s Very Own (OVO). Pocketing two Grammys (‘Best Rap Solo Performance’ and ‘Best Rap Song’), the mixtape’s lead single, ‘Best I Ever Had’, preempted Drake’s surge up the charts.

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Debut Studio Album
After much anticipation, Drake’s maiden studio album, Thank Me Later, dropped in 2010.

Tapping collaborators like Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne and Kanye West, Drake’s bleeding-heart lyrical dexterity and self-deprecating dance tracks became stylistic hallmarks for the 6 God. Through his unapologetic solipsism (Drake used the word ‘I’ 410 times during the debut album) and sparse, synth beats, Thank Me Later became ubiquitous club-hit confessionals that smashed the charts globally.

Take Care
Again examining the heartstrings of previous relationships and love lost, Drake’s signature open-book oversharing culminated in another hip-hop masterpiece that blitzed the charts. Released in 2011, Take Care earned Drake another Grammy, this time for ‘Best Rape Album’. Certified six times platinum, the album artwork (portraying a dejected Drake sitting in opulence) became a cultural heavyweight in its own right, the image searing the pop consciousness and still empowering meme culture a decade later.

Drake Popularises the term YOLO
Brought into mainstream culture via Take Care’s bonus track ‘The Motto’, YOLO (‘You Only Live Once’) was a term floating around on Twitter before Drake took it nuclear. An example of lyrics tailored specifically for Internet culture, Drake’s understanding of what fuels pop-culture is jaw-dropping. A marketing savant and meme lord, Drake has not only popularised Internet terminology, he’s also issued viral dance challenges on (the ‘Kiki Challenge’) and effectively meme’d himself in his music video for ‘Hotline Bling’.

SNL
Drake wasn’t only dominating the charts, he was also dipping his toe in the animation industry (voicing Ethan in Ice Age: Continental Drift) as well as hosting the most prestigious comedy show in America, Saturday Night Live. Also serving as the musical guest, Drake gave us impressions of Lil Wayne and Alex Rodrigueze in the cold open, the superstar becoming a regular guest over the next several years (he even satirised his own rap in 2016).

Hotline Bling and God’s Plan Break the Internet
Racking up over one billion views on YouTube, ‘Hotline Bling’ took Drake’s cultural saturation to new heights, the dad-like dance moves instantly generating memes and gifs across the Internet. Similarly successful, ‘God’s Plan’ (where Drake gives away nearly $1 million) broke Taylor Swift’s record for most streams in a single day in 2018.

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Drake Drops Scorpion, His Longest Album Ever
The fifth studio album by Drake, Scorpion grapples with his role as a father and the psychological scarring inflicted by Pusha-T’s diss track, ‘The Story of Adidon’ (Pusha-T rapped that Drake had a child with former pornstar Sophie Brussaux). His longest studio album yet, Drake’s Scorpion still retains Drake’s signature traits: Self-obsession, loneliness and nostalgia, albeit wrapped-up in his new paternal role as a father.

Drake’s sixth studio album, Certified Lover Boy, is expected to arrive later this month.