Who would have thought that teen actor Aubrey Graham would grow up to become one of the world’s biggest rappers? According to his high school yearbook, Drake did. Born Aubrey Drake Graham, the artist began using his middle name when he switched from acting to singing in the early 2000s. He has since become one of the most influential music figures by incorporating singing into his rap songs.
Drake had a rough time in school
Today, he’s one of the hottest artists in the game, but things weren’t easy for Drake growing up. Other students treated him like an outcast while attending Forest Hill Collegiate Institute, a public school in Toronto, Ontario. Being mixed race in a predominantly white Jewish community put a target on his back. And although the rapper was raised Jewish, his classmates didn’t hold back from throwing racial slurs at him.
“It was all white Jewish kids, and it was tough,” Drake told Rolling Stone in a 2014 interview. “I didn’t have the worst time, but I did have a hard time. I was always the last kid to get the invite to the party.”
Eventually, Drake transferred to Vaughan Road Academy, where the students were more diverse and artistically inclined. Here, he met his friend’s father, a local talent agent, and was offered a role in the Canadian teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation. He portrayed Jimmy Brooks, a basketball jock who becomes disabled after a classmate shoots him.
Although Drake had performed in youth-theater productions of Les Misérables and The Wizard of Oz, he was mostly inexperienced as an actor. However, at 14, he quickly picked up performing in front of the cameras and appeared in his first Degrassi episode in 2001.
Drake predicted his future in a yearbook quote
A young Drake foreshadowed his music career in his Forest Hill Collegiate Institute yearbook. Next to a photo of the smiling teen is a list of his favorite statements and answers to survey questions that tend to wind up in yearbooks. Wouldn’t you know it, Drake listed “bling bling” as one of his favorite statements long before he got signed by the man who popularized the expression.
In addition to predicting working with Lil Wayne, Drake’s yearbook quote mentions his goals, including becoming a “breakdancer/singer,” Daily Rap Facts reports. His last appearance on Degrassi was in 2009, and his music career soon took off.
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Another of Drake’s goals was to get married, and although he has had plenty of girlfriends, the rapper doesn’t seem interested in settling down anytime soon. The closest he’s come to tying the knot is when he jokingly tweeted that he and Nicki Minaj had eloped. But, hey, achieving one out of three isn’t bad.
The rapper ‘didn’t grow up happy’
Not long after getting his big break in acting, Drake dropped out of school to focus on his career and help his mother financially. His parents divorced when the rapper was only 5, and soon after, his father was incarcerated for drug charges while living in the United States. Drake rarely saw his dad, and his mother mostly raised him herself. When his mom developed rheumatoid arthritis and could no longer work, his family life became even more strained.
“Maybe I haven’t talked enough about it, but I didn’t grow up happy,” Drake revealed in a 2011 interview with Complex. “I wasn’t in a happy home. My mother was very sick. We were very poor, like broke. The only money I had coming in was off of Canadian TV, which isn’t that much money when you break it down.”
Despite his family’s finances, acting wasn’t in Drake’s heart. After spending full days on the Degrassi set, he often stayed up almost all night recording new music. He released three mixtapes between 2006 and 2009 before Lil Wayne signed him to Young Money Entertainment. It just so happens Drake envisioned that outcome years earlier in his high school yearbook.
On top of his success, he found time to study and graduated from high school in 2012.
