We Could Do it Real Big: The True Story of Drake's 'Best I Ever Had'

It’s hard to remember a time when Drake wasn’t the biggest rapper
in the world. He is Canada’s most successful AND influential
artist of the 21st century. As both a rapper and a singer he has
pretty much single-handedly put our country on the map for
hip-hop and R&B. 


He is a five-time Grammy winner, has 85 million monthly listeners
on Streaming Services- more than any other rapper - and holds the
record for most number 2 singles on the Billboard Hot
100. He also ranks fifth behind the likes of the Beatles and
Mariah Carey with the most number 1 singles.


By the mid-2000s when Drake embarked on a rap career, Canadians
already knew him from Degrassi The Next Generation. Of course,
His name wasn’t Drake back then, it was Aubrey Graham, a teenager
from the Toronto neighbourhood of Forest Hill, who caught his
break when he was cast as Jimmy Brooks. 


Aubrey left the show during its eighth season to pursue music
full time. As much as he had become a star on Canadian television
as an actor, he wanted to go global with his music career. 


Drake dropped his first mixtape, Room For
Improvement, on Valentine’s Day 2006. He was still
working on Degrassi at the time, but had already made some
connections in the rap game. Drake would wait a year before he
followed up Room For Improvement. But in that time he had already
made connections that would help him advance his music. Among the
producers he brought in to make beats for him were 9th Wonder,
who had worked with Jay-Z, Destiny’s Child and De La Soul,
Atlanta’s DJ Toomp and a couple of local guys: Boi-1da once, and
Noah “40” Shebib.


Jas Prince was an aspiring rap mogul from Houston, Texas looking
to become a legit rap mogul like his father, J Prince, founder of
Rap-A-Lot Records. 


While he was looking around MySpace one day in 2006, he found
Drake’s artist page and saw a lot of promise in the tracks
posted. He played some of the songs for his dad, J Prince, but he
couldn’t hear what Jas was so excited about.


Then one day Jas shared Drake’s music with New Orleans rapper Lil
Wayne, who had just struck gold with his album Tha Carter II. At
first, Wayne wasn’t impressed.


Jas persisted though, and months later on New Year’s Day, he
played Wayne a few more songs in the car, one of which was
Drake’s remix of Wayne’s own “A Milli,” a song that had yet to be
released commercially. That was the moment Drake became legit.


Jas put Lil Wayne in touch with Drake and the next day Drake was
flying to Houston to meet with one of his heroes.


Drake ended up joining Lil Wayne for his I AM Music Tour at the
end of 2008 and the Toronto kid quickly became the New Orleans
legend’s protege. 


Every opportunity they could get they would record new tracks,
some of which ended up on Drake’s next project. So Far
Gone, Drake’s third mixtape, was released on February
13, 2009. One song on the mixtape stood out more than others and
it began to catch fire, leading Drake to make a video with one of
the biggest artists in the world.


This is the true story of Drake's 'Best I Ever Had' with newly
unearthed audio from MUCH, as well as sound from Rap Radar, MTV
News, Myspace, and CBS News.