Artist Drake

While it may be some time before anyone writes about Drake without mentioning his time on the teen soap Degrassi: The Next Generation, the Canadian MC is doing his best to shake his clean-cut image. His much-ballyhooed debut record, Thank Me Later, featuring Kanye West, Jay-Z, and Lil Wayne, sold almost half a million copies in its first week—a figure almost unheard of in the music industry these days—and managed to overshadow much of Drake’s past at Toronto’s most troubled, televised high school. On his 2011 follow-up, Take Care, Drake proffers a hardened, no-nonsense rapper on spitfire tracks (“Lord Knows,” “Underground Kings”) and a tender, masterful craftsman on others. Take Care debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts and quickly went platinum, so it looks like the former teenybopper might be sticking around for a while.

Updated 05/03/2012