Drake Drake, original name Aubrey Drake Graham, (born October 24, 1986, Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Canadian rap musician who first gained fame as an actor on the acclaimed TV teenage drama series Degrassi: The Next Generation and went on to a successful and influential music career. His trademark mixture of singing and lyrical rapping and of braggadocio juxtaposed with raw vulnerability won him a large following.

Graham’s parents divorced when he was a small child, and he was raised by his mother. During the summers he often visited his father, a drummer whose family was musically connected. In 2001 Graham was cast as basketball star Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi. His true interest was music, however, and he began rapping during that time, using his middle name for his “nom de hip-hop.” He self-published his first mixtape, Room for Improvement, in 2006. The follow-up, Comeback Season (2007), included the single “Replacement Girl,” featuring Trey Songz; the track was highlighted on BET’s music video show 106 & Park, increasing Drake’s exposure. In 2008 he left Degrassi to focus on his music career.

Drake’s breakthrough came in 2009 with the release of the mixtape So Far Gone and its hit single “Best I Ever Had.” A bidding war between labels soon ensued, and Drake ultimately signed with Lil Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment, a subsidiary of Cash Money. Later that year the label put out So Far Gone as an EP. It won the Juno Award for rap recording of the year, and Drake was named new artist of the year. His first full-length studio album, Thank Me Later, was released in 2010, catapulting Drake to international stardom. The record was followed by the highly praised Take Care (2011). That album won the Juno Award for rap recording of the year and the Grammy Award for best rap album. Drake’s next studio record, Nothing Was the Same (2013), also took a Juno Award. Those albums, more commercially oriented than his earlier mixtapes, showed the influence of his collaborators, notably Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj.

In 2015 Drake announced via Twitter the surprise release of a 17-track mixtape-cum-album, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. Critics praised the record as a return to the personal, emotional, and melodic style of his earliest production. Like his previous releases, it shot to the top of the charts in Canada and the United States, and the album won the Juno Award for rap recording of the year. Later in 2015 Drake and rapper Future released the mixtape What a Time to be Alive. It debuted at the top of the Billboard 200,

Drake’s fifth studio album, Scorpion (2018), featured the Billboard Hot 100 single “God’s Plan,” which had first appeared on his EP Scary Hours, released several months earlier. Drake won a Grammy for best rap song for the track in 2019, but the live broadcast cut his acceptance speech short after he criticized the awards. Other tracks on Scorpion respond to the song “The Story of Adidon,” by American rapper Pusha T. Pusha T alleged that Drake was hiding a child that he fathered with artist and adult film star, Sophie Brussaux. In “Emotionless” and “March 14,”Drake acknowledged that he had recently become a father and addressed the challenges of co-parenting (critics largely panned the single “I’m Upset,” however, for its apparent complaint about child support payments).

In addition to creating music, Drake also cofounded the Toronto-based collective October’s Very Own (OVO) with his frequent producer Noah (“40”) Shebib and Oliver El-Khatib. It became a record label (OVO Sound) in 2012 and represented such acts as the R&B duo Majid Jordan and Canadian singer, songwriter, and producer PartyNextDoor. Starting with the release of Care Package in 2019, Drake released all his albums on OVO Sound. OVO also hosted the annual summer concert OVO Festival (started in 2010) in Toronto.

The company’s greatest source of revenue, however, was its fashion line. It began in 2010 when OVO collaborated with the outerwear brand Canada Goose on a limited-edition bomber jacket. Other partnerships soon followed, including those with Nike and Timberland. The success of the OVO fashion line led to the opening of its first retail location in Toronto in 2014 and subsequent expansion into such cities as Los Angeles, New York, and London.

Ice spice

Isis Naija Gaston (born January 1, 2000), known professionally as Ice Spice, is an American rapper. She grew up in the Bronx, New York City, and began her career in 2021 after meeting record producer RiotUSA.

Ice Spice rose to prominence in late 2022 with her song "Munch (Feelin' U)", which achieved viral popularity on TikTok. She followed it up with singles "Bikini Bottom" and "In Ha Mood", leading up to her debut extended play, Like..? (2023). She achieved her first entry on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart with the Lil Tjay collaboration "Gangsta Boo". Her collaborations "Boy's a Liar Pt. 2" (with PinkPantheress), "Princess Diana" (with Nicki Minaj), "Karma" (with Taylor Swift), and "Barbie World" (with Minaj and Aqua) peaked within the top 10 of the Hot 100; as such, Ice Spice became the artist with the most Hot 100 top-five singles in 2023 and won the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist.

Music journalists have noted Ice Spice's relaxed rapping style. Publications such as The New York Times and Billboard have dubbed her "rap's new princess"; while Time described her as a "breakout star". BMI R&B/Hip-Hop Awards honored the rapper with the Impact Award in 2023.

Isis Naija Gaston was born on January 1, 2000, in the Bronx, New York City, where she was raised in the Fordham Road neighborhood. She is the oldest of five siblings. Her father, Joseph Gaston, who was a former underground rapper, is African-American, while her mother, Charina Almanzar, who worked at a car dealership and gave birth to Gaston at age 17, is Dominican. The two first met at a McDonald's and divorced when Gaston was two years old.

Because her parents were frequently busy working, she spent much of her childhood with her grandparents and cousins. She went to school in the Bronx until she was sent to Sacred Heart High School, a Catholic high school in Yonkers. At age seven, she took a liking to hip hop after listening to rappers like Lil' Kim, Nicki Minaj, and others and wrote poetry and freestyle raps from elementary school to high school. In an interview with Billboard, Ice explained that she grew up listening to the likes of Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Wu-Tang Clan because of her father's rap background. She would type out lyrics in the Notes app of her iPhone, listening to hip-hop instrumentals and rapping out loud to them. "When I saw Nicki [Minaj], I was so mesmerized," Ice Spice explained. "She's the first female rapper that I seen. And ever since then, I was kinda set on what I wanted to be." She chose Ice Spice as her stage name while she was a freshman in high school.

Ice Spice graduated from Sacred Heart High in 2018 and attended State University of New York at Purchase, where she was a defensive specialist on the school's volleyball team and studied biology. In seven matches, she had two kills and nine digs in the 2018 season.

Around her sophomore year, Ice Spice dropped out of SUNY Purchase, explaining that she did not believe the school was the right fit for her and attributing her "strenuous commute" for leaving college.

As the eldest sister of her four siblings, Ice Spice was their de facto protector. She supported herself as a cashier at Wendy's and The Gap.

Ice Spice started rapping in 2021 after meeting with a record producer, RiotUSA, while she was attending State University of New York at Purchase. He produced her debut song, "Bully Freestyle", released in March 2021 after a video of Ice Spice doing the "Buss It" challenge went viral on Twitter. Her song "Name of Love" gained traction on SoundCloud, which led to her becoming popular on Instagram.

On August 10, 2022, Ice Spice released her song "Munch (Feelin' U)", accompanied with a video distributed by WorldStarHipHop, as the lead single from her then-untitled debut extended play, Like..?. The song gained popularity after getting support from Drake, who played the song on his Sirius XM radio station, Sound 42. It subsequently went viral on Twitter and TikTok, 

and charted on Billboard's  and  charts. In September 2022, Ice Spice appeared as a featured artist on the song "One Time" by . Later that month, she signed a record deal with  and . On October 28, she released the single "". Ice Spice's debut EP, Like..?, was released on January 20, 2023, and included the singles "Munch (Feelin' U)", "Bikini Bottom", and in ha mood¨

In February 2023, Ice Spice collaborated with Lil Tjay on the tribute single "Gangsta Boo" to the late rapper of the same name, which became her first song on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 82. On February 3, 2023, the remix of singer PinkPantheress's song, "Boy's a Liar Pt. 2" featuring Ice Spice and the corresponding music video were released. The song peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, the highest charting position for either artist at the time. In April 2023, she released the remix of "Princess Diana" with Nicki Minaj.