Drake is one of our Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century for leading hip-hop's takeover of pop in the late 2010s.
is spending the next few months counting down our staff picks for the 25 greatest pop stars of the last 25 years. You can see the stars who have made our list so far — and now, we examine the century in Drake, who came from practically out of nowhere to push hip-hop further into pop’s center than ever before.
Soon, Drake got the attention of the man who would change his career: Lil Wayne, who invited Drake on tour and began collaborating with on songs that would appear on the latter’s game-changing third mixtape, 2009’s.
Drake was already so ubiquitous by 2010 that it was easy to forget he still hadn’t even released his official debut album. That would come that June with, an LP stacked with guest appearances more of the biggest late-’00s rappers — T.I., Jeezy, even Jay-Z — and another handful of established hits in “Over,” the Wayne-featuring “Miss Me” and the West-produced “Find Your Love,” Drake’s first single to only feature him singing.
Drake’s 2015 ended up being one for the ages, elevating him so far above his rap competition that his only commercial peers left were Taylor Swift, then hot off the release of, and the aforementioned Adele. Both of those artists had the two things Drake was still missing from his pop star resumé: a No. 1 single as a lead artist, and a million-unit first week.
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