Harrison Drake Popular Books

Harrison Drake Biography & Facts

Aubrey Drake Graham (born October 24, 1986) is a Canadian rapper, singer and actor. An influential figure in contemporary popular music, he has been credited with popularizing R&B sensibilities in hip hop artists. Gaining recognition by starring as Jimmy Brooks in the CTV teen drama series Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001–08), Drake then started pursuing a recording career in 2006, releasing his debut mixtape Room for Improvement. He followed up with the mixtapes Comeback Season (2007) and So Far Gone (2009) before signing with Young Money Entertainment. His first three albums Thank Me Later (2010), Take Care (2011) and Nothing Was the Same (2013) were met with commercial success, containing the US top-ten singles "Find Your Love", "Take Care", "Started from the Bottom", and "Hold On, We're Going Home". Drake's fourth album Views (2016), received further success, remaining atop the Billboard 200 for 13 non-consecutive weeks, and featured the global hit singles "Hotline Bling" and "One Dance" (with WizKid and Kyla), the latter was credited for popularizing dancehall and Afrobeats in contemporary pop music. Views was followed by the double album Scorpion (2018), that spawned three US number-one singles: "God's Plan", "Nice for What", and "In My Feelings". His sixth album, Certified Lover Boy (2021), set the then-record (9) for most US top-ten hits from one album: its lead single "Way 2 Sexy" (with Future and Young Thug) reached number one. In 2022, he released the house-inspired album Honestly, Nevermind and the collaborative album, Her Loss (with 21 Savage) and his eighth album For All the Dogs in 2023: these contained the number-ones "Jimmy Cooks" (with 21 Savage), "Slime You Out" (with SZA), and "First Person Shooter" (with J. Cole). As an entrepreneur, Drake founded the OVO Sound record label with longtime collaborator 40 in 2012. In 2013, he became the "global ambassador" of the Toronto Raptors, joining their executive committee and later obtaining naming rights to their practice facility OVO Athletic Centre. In 2016, he began collaborating with Brent Hocking on the bourbon whiskey Virginia Black. Drake heads the OVO fashion label and the Nocta collaboration with Nike, Inc., and founded the production company DreamCrew and the fragrance house Better World. In 2018, he was reportedly responsible for 5 percent (CAD$440 million) of Toronto's CAD$8.8 billion annual tourism income. In 2022, he obtained partial ownership of Italian soccer club A.C. Milan. Among the world's best-selling music artists, with over 170 million records sold, Drake is ranked as the highest-certified digital singles artist in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). He has won five Grammy Awards, six American Music Awards, 39 Billboard Music Awards, two Brit Awards, and three Juno Awards. He has achieved 13 number-one hits on the Billboard Hot 100, a joint-record for the most number-one singles by a male solo artist (tied with Michael Jackson). Drake holds further Hot 100 records, including the most top 10 singles (77), and the most charted songs (329). From 2018 to 2023, Drake held the record for the most simultaneously charted songs in one week (27), the most Hot 100 debuts in one week (22); and held the most continuous time on the Hot 100 (431 weeks). He additionally has the most number-one singles on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, Hot Rap Songs, and Rhythmic Airplay charts. Early life Aubrey Drake Graham was born on October 24, 1986, in Toronto, Ontario. His father, Dennis Graham, is an African-American drummer from Memphis who once performed with musician Jerry Lee Lewis. His mother, Sandra "Sandi" Graham (née Sher), is a Canadian Ashkenazi Jew, who worked as an English teacher and florist. Graham performed at Club Bluenote in Toronto, where he met Sandra, who was in attendance. Drake is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada, the former derived from Graham. In his youth, he attended a Jewish day school and became a bar mitzvah. Drake's parents divorced when he was five years old. After the divorce, he and his mother remained in Toronto; his father returned to Memphis, where he was incarcerated for a number of years on drug-related charges. Graham's limited finances and legal issues caused him to remain in the U.S. until Drake's early adulthood. Prior to his arrest, Graham would travel to Toronto and bring Drake to Memphis every summer. Graham claimed in an interview that Drake's assertions of him being an absent father were embellishments used to sell music, which Drake vehemently denies. Drake was raised in two neighbourhoods. He lived on Weston Road in Toronto's working-class west end until grade six and attended Weston Memorial Junior Public School until grade four, playing minor hockey with the Weston Red Wings. Drake was a promising right winger, reaching the Upper Canada College hockey camp, but left at the behest of his mother following a vicious cross-check to his neck during a game by an opposing player. He moved to one of the city's affluent neighbourhoods, Forest Hill, in 2000. When asked about the move, Drake replied, "[We had] 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." At age 10, Drake appeared in a comedic sketch which aired during the 1997 NHL Awards, featuring a riff of Martin Brodeur and Ron Hextall and their record as being the only goalies to have scored multiple goals. He attended Forest Hill Collegiate Institute for high school, and attended Vaughan Road Academy in Toronto's multicultural Oakwood–Vaughan neighbourhood; Drake described Vaughan Road Academy as "not by any means the easiest school to go to." During his teenage years, Drake worked at a now-closed Toronto furniture factory owned by his maternal grandfather, Reuben Sher. Drake said he was bullied at school for his racial and religious background, and upon determining that his class schedule was detrimental to his burgeoning acting career, he dropped out of school. Drake received his high school diploma in October 2012. Career 2001–2009: Career beginnings At 15, Drake was introduced to a high school friend's father, an acting agent. He found Drake a role on the Canadian teen drama series Degrassi: The Next Generation, in which Drake portrayed Jimmy Brooks, a basketball star who became physically disabled after he was shot by a classmate. When asked about his early acting career, Drake replied, "My mother was very sick. We were very poor, like broke. The only money I had coming in was [from] Canadian TV." According to showrunners Linda Schuyler and Stephen Stohn, Drake regularly arrived late on set after spending nights recording music. To prevent this, Schuyler claimed Drake struck an agreement with the set's security guards to gain entry to the se.... Discover the Harrison Drake popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Harrison Drake books.