Aubrey Drake Graham (born October 24, 1986) is a Canadian rapper, singer, and actor. Regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time, he is credited with popularizing R&B sensibilities in hip-hop music. Drake first gained recognition by starring as Jimmy Brooks in the CTV Television Network teen drama series Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001–2008) and began his music career by releasing the mixtapes Room for Improvement (2006), Comeback Season (2007), and So Far Gone (2009). After signing with Young Money Entertainment, Drake released his debut album Thank Me Later (2010), which debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart. All of his subsequent albums—including Take Care (2011), Nothing Was the Same (2013), Scorpion (2018), Honestly, Nevermind (2022) and For All the Dogs (2023)—reached number-one in the US. Views (2016) led the Billboard 200 for 13 weeks and Certified Lover Boy (2021) set the then-record for most US top-ten songs from one album (9). Drake's collaborative albums include Her Loss (2022), with 21 Savage, and Some Sexy Songs 4 U (2025), with PartyNextDoor. His catalogue of high-charting singles include "Best I Ever Had", "Find Your Love", "Take Care", "Started from the Bottom", "Hold On, We're Going Home", "Hotline Bling", "One Dance", "Passionfruit", "God's Plan", "Nice for What", "In My Feelings", "Toosie Slide", "Way 2 Sexy", "Fair Trade", "Jimmy Cooks", "Rich Flex", "Slime You Out", "First Person Shooter", and "Nokia". 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% (CAD$440 million) of Toronto's CAD$8.8 billion annual tourism income. Drake has been subject of widespread media coverage due to his popularity, lifestyle, relationships, and feuds with other rappers, including Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar, the latter of which led to several diss tracks in 2024. Among the world's best-selling music artists, with over 170 million units sold, Drake is ranked as the highest-certified digital singles artist in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). His accolades consist of 5 Grammy Awards, 6 American Music Awards, 39 Billboard Music Awards, 2 Brit Awards, and 3 Juno Awards. Billboard named him the Artist of the Decade (2010s) and the fourth greatest pop star of the 21st century. He has achieved 14 Billboard 200 number-one albums, a joint-record among soloists, and 13 Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles, a joint-record for a male solo artist. Drake holds further Hot 100 records, including the most top 10 singles (80), the most top 40 singles (217), the most charted songs (358) and the most consecutive weeks on the chart (431). 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.

Aubrey Drake Graham was born on October 24, 1986, in Toronto, Ontario. His father, Dennis Graham, is an African-American drummer from Memphis, Tennessee, 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 US 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 at age 25.