Tragic Details About Drake

Drake (born Aubrey Graham) first came to prominence as a member of the cast of the Canadian teen TV drama, "Degrassi: The Next Generation." He left acting behind to focus on a staggeringly successful rap music career. Since his exit from "Degrassi," he's racked up a massive string of hits, ranging from "Hotline Bling," to "God's Plan," "Toosie Slide," "One Dance," and many more.

He's broken numerous records — including listening numbers on Spotify and Apple Music, and even shattering a chart record that had been held by The Beatles for decades. He's also been winning Grammys since 2011, taking home five awards while receiving 55 nominations. He's also made headlines for his long and bitter feud with fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar, who made a little history as the first-ever rapper to headline the Super Bowl halftime show as a solo act.

While success is practically dripping from his pores, he's also endured his share of sadness and heartbreak over the years — to say nothing of the many celebs who can't stand him. To find out more about this side of his life, read on to discover some tragic details about Drake.

Drake's life changed forever in 2001 when he was cast as Jimmy Brooks in "Degrassi: The Next Generation," a spinoff of the popular 1980s Canadian teen drama "Degrassi Junior High." He was just 14 when he first began portraying Jimmy Brooks, who was eventually confined to a wheelchair after being paralyzed from the waist down when he was shot by another student. 

Before that, though, Drake was just another kid growing up in Toronto, with a somewhat complicated heritage: his father is Black, while his mother is white and Jewish. Growing up, he was raised Jewish and was Bar Mitzvahed. "I went to a Jewish school, where nobody understood what it was like to be black and Jewish," he said in an interview with Heeb.

However, being biracial led him to be bullied, a pattern that began in elementary school and continued through his teenage years. Often that bullying was verbal, but he was once beaten up in a school bathroom by several boys, who bloodied his nose and damaged his self-confidence.

Drake was just five years old when his parents split up. His father, Dennis Graham, worked as a musician who originally hailed from Memphis, Tennessee. "We have a very deep musical background. My grandmother, who passed away in Memphis, used to babysit Louis Armstrong," Drake told Hip Hop Canada. "And my dad was a drummer for Jerry Lee Lewis." He traveled a lot and occasionally wound up in jail. As a result, Drake's father was an infrequent presence in his life. "He's slick," Drake told GQ of his dad. "He could sell water to a well." 

Raised by his Canadian mother, Sandi Graham, he grew to idolize her. "She's the godlike person in my life," he recalled. She worked as a teacher, and they lived in Toronto's affluent Forest Hill neighborhood. However, despite the outward appearance of wealth, he claimed that he didn't exactly grow up rich, living in a rented portion of a house. "We were more or less broke, but my mom didn't want us to live in an area that could create trouble for her son," he explained. 

"I was really hard on my parents for giving me sort of a childhood that I had to wrap my mind around as I grew," Drake said during an appearance on "The Shop.". "Multiple times I sort of suggested that they could have done a better job at co-parenting, sticking together, not being so divided."

Drake's childhood became tainted by tragedy when his mother became ill. As Drake told GQ, she was stricken with osteoporosis and pain in her joints, so impairing that she wound up being confined to her room. He remembered watching his mother as she "smoked cigarettes and took her pain meds, deteriorating every day, essentially dying."

Looking back at that time of his life, he admitted that "watching my mom go through her illness, and not being able to help, was very tough." It was the wealth he would later accumulate via his rap career that would provide him an opportunity to turn things around for her, health-wise. "And when I finally did make some real money, my mother got an operation on her spine that changed her life," he said. 

After Drake skyrocketed to success, his mom has remained his biggest fan. In an Instagram post, Drake shared a photo of a "core memory," of his mother sitting in the audience at one of his shows. In the second of two photos, Drake zooms in on her phone to highlight a text she'd sent to a friend. "I always cry when I come to his concerts .... I'm so proud of him," she wrote.

While he was starring in "Degrassi," Drake began becoming interested in rap music — a passion fueled, interestingly enough, by one of his father's stints behind bars. "How I got into rapping was, my dad was in jail for two years and he shared a cell with this dude who didn't really have anyone to speak to," Drake told Complex. "So, he used to share his phone time with this dude, and at the time I was probably 16 or 17, this dude was like 20 to 22, and he would always rap to me over the phone."

Eventually, Drake's love of rap overtook his love of acting. He'd wind up spending his nights in a recording studio, and then grabbing a few hours of sleep in his dressing room before "Degrassi" began filming at 9 a.m. "Eventually, they realized I was juggling two professions and told me I had to choose," he told W magazine, revealing that he was ultimately "kicked off" the show. "I chose this life," he said.

He worked hard at it, but success was not immediate. By the time he finally broke through with his self-released third mixtape, "So Far Gone," he was "teetering on getting a regular job," he told Heeb magazine (via Business Insider). Not only was he spending everything he'd saved on buying studio time, but his TV income had vanished. "I was coming to terms with the fact that, OK, people know me from 'Degrassi,' but I might have to work at a restaurant or something just to keep things going," he said. "The money from that show was very small. And it was dwindling."

Drake has collaborated with Rihanna more than once; in fact, the Toronto rapper and the Caribbean pop queen have worked together on five songs over the years. After Rihanna's split from singer Chris Brown, she and Drake were romantically linked when spotted together in NYC. "She was drinking whiskey and apple juice and making out with him all night. They were really cute together," an eyewitness told Page Six. 

Their romance flamed out quickly, although only they knew the real reason Drake and Rihanna broke up. Drake was understandably heartbroken, feeling that he'd been played by her — but also admitted he recognized a little justice at play while making a rare confession about his shady side. "I was a pawn," Drake told The New York Times in 2010. "You know what she was doing to me? She was doing exactly what I've done to so many women throughout my life, which is show them quality time, then disappear. I was like, 'Wow, this feels terrible.'" 

In a subsequent interview with Elle, Drake revealed that his rap track "Fireworks" was inspired by his fling with Rihanna. As he explained, he realized he'd misinterpreted her intentions. "At the time it hurt, but she didn't mean to. I'll never put that on her," he said. "I was hurt because I started to slowly realize what it was. I guess I thought it was more."

Drake was among the performers at Travis Scott's 2021 Astroworld festival, making a surprise appearance during Scott's set. The excitement over unexpectedly seeing Drake onstage led the packed crowd to surge forward. Ten people were killed, including a nine-year-old boy. Lawsuits were filed, and Drake was named alongside Scott as a defendant, accused of being directly responsible for the crowd surge that took those lives.

Drake responded in a since-deleted Instagram post that was published by Rolling Stone. "I've spent the past few days trying to wrap my mind around this devastating tragedy," he wrote. "I hate resorting to this platform to express an emotion as delicate as grief but this is where I find myself. My heart is broken for the families and friends of those who lost their lives and for anyone who is suffering. I will continue to pray for all of them, and will be of service in any way I can, May God be with you all."

Ultimately, Drake was dismissed from the lawsuit. A judge determined that Drake shared no responsibility for the tragedy after his lawyers successfully argued that he had no involvement in organizing the event.

Drake was one of rap's hottest up-and-comers when he joined Lil Wayne's 2009 Young Money Tour. Unfortunately, he was nursing a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) at the time; during a performance in Camden, New Jersey, Drake collapsed onstage and took a tumble, and wound up doing further damage to his ACL — to the point that surgery was required. "I thought this s*** way only on his TV show," Weezy quipped (as reported by Rolling Stone), jokingly referencing Drake's wheelchair-bound "Degrassi" character. "I embarked on this tour with a torn ACL, MCL, and LCL and due to the events that happened the other night lord only knows what other damage I have done," wrote Drake in a blog post, confirming he was forced to exit the tour.

In 2016, he canceled some shows when he severely injured his ankle. He did, however, hit the stage of the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, busted ankle or not. Ahead of the show, he thanked the Atria Health and Research Institute, where he received treatment, via Instagram. Describing "the best health care experience I have ever had," he added, "let's see what I can do on this piece of s*** ankle Saturday."

Then, in 2020, he injured his knee and reportedly underwent surgery. He shared his recovery journey with fans on social media, including a pic of himself hitting the gym. He later confirmed that he did go under the knife, to repair a torn meniscus — which he revealed in a verse he contributed to Nicki Minaj's "Seeing Green," rapping, "this ain't gon' be the first time that I do numbers on two crutches," and "I play 48 minutes on a torn meniscus."

Even though he's a citizen of Canada, arguably among the politest nations on the planet, Drake has gotten into his share of scuffles with other rappers over the years. One of his rap feuds was with Pusha T, whom Drake attacked in the diss track "Duppy Freestyle," and who responded viciously in his own diss track, "The Story of Adidon."

Of course, Drake's biggest and most heated rap feud has been with Kendrick Lamar. The whole thing has been going on for more than a decade, originating in 2013. Ten years later, J. Cole released the track "First Person Shooter," in which he referred to himself, Drake, and Lamar as the "big three" of rap — with Lamar responding in a verse he contributed to the track "Like That," dismissing the notion of a "big three" by declaring, "It's just me."

The two then continued to trade barbs back and forth. It all came to an ugly head with the 2024 release of Lamar's "Euphoria," in which he IDs Drake by name. "I like Drake with the melodies, I don't like Drake when he act tough," raps Lamar, one of many celebs who can't stand Drake, adding in another lyric, "I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress." It was another of Lamar's diss tracks, however, that escalated the feud alarmingly.

The fact that Drake and Kendrick Lamar's respective record labels are owned by the same parent company, Universal Music Group (UMG), proved inconvenient with the release of Lamar's 2024 diss track "Not Like Us." "Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young ... Certified Loverboy? Certified pedophile," Lamar rapped in the track, referencing the title of Drake's 2021 album and rumors of Drake's involvement with underage females. 

With that lyric, Lamar crossed the line from diss to defamation — or at least that's the contention in the lawsuit that Drake's lawyers fired at UMG (that suit, by the way, followed previous legal action alleging that UMG had promoted Lamar's new album more aggressively than it had his). As The New York Times reported, Drake was accusing his label of having "approved, published, and launched a campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap track," which he alleged was "intended to convey the specific, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal pedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response."