Short answers, pulled from the story.
Drake's full name is Aubrey Drake Graham. He was born on the 24th of October 1986 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His father, Dennis Graham, is African-American and originally from Memphis, Tennessee; his mother, Sandra Graham, is a Canadian Ashkenazi Jew.
Drake appeared in Degrassi: The Next Generation, a CTV Canadian teen drama, from 2001 to 2008. He played Jimmy Brooks, a basketball star who becomes physically disabled after being shot by a classmate. Drake has said the role provided his only income during years when his mother was seriously ill and the family had very little money.
Drake's first mixtape was Room for Improvement, self-released in 2006. It featured Trey Songz and Lupe Fiasco and was sold rather than given away for free. It sold roughly 6,000 copies, earning Drake $304.04 in royalties.
"One Dance", the second single from his 2016 album Views, was the first song in history to surpass one billion streams on Spotify. It also became Drake's first number-one single in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom as a leading artist.
Drake has 14 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, a record among male solo artists. He also holds records for the most charted songs on the Hot 100 (402), the most top-ten hits (90), and the most consecutive weeks on the chart (431 weeks).
The feud escalated in March 2024 when Lamar dissed Drake on the song "Like That". The two exchanged multiple diss tracks over several weeks, with Lamar releasing "Not Like Us" on the 4th of May 2024 and Drake responding with "The Heart Part 6" on the 5th of May. Lamar was widely considered to have won the exchange. Drake subsequently sued Universal Music Group and Spotify alleging they had artificially boosted streams of "Not Like Us", but the lawsuit was dismissed in October 2025.