Drake

Aubrey Drake Graham spent his early years playing Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi: The Next Generation before releasing three independent mixtapes that caught Young Money Entertainment's attention. His 2010 debut Thank Me Later opened at number one with "Best I Ever Had", but it was Take Care in 2011 - later on Rolling Stone's greatest albums list - that cemented the moody, melodic lane he'd carved out. Views spent 13 weeks atop the Billboard 200 in 2016; its single "One Dance" became the first song to cross a billion Spotify streams. Scorpion in 2018 delivered three consecutive chart-toppers, and through the 2020s he stacked six more number-one albums, including Iceman in 2026, which made him the first artist to hold the top three Billboard 200 spots simultaneously. Beyond music he built OVO Sound, backed bourbon and fragrance lines, became the Toronto Raptors' global ambassador, and turned his Apple Music partnership into a platform-defining move. Over 170 million units sold, five Grammys, and Billboard's Artist of the Decade for the 2010s - but the real shift was making R&B melancholy the dominant strain in modern hip-hop.