Toronto-born rap artist Drake is undoubtedly one of the world’s most successful hip-hop artists, and his accolades are being recognized by Billboard. With the first quarter of the 21st century soon creeping to an end, Billboard ranked the 25 greatest pop stars of the last 25 years — and Drake came in fourth place.
Drake first emerged on the music scene in 2009, and his success was particularly evident throughout the 2010s, with the singer being one of the most streamed artists on Spotify since 2015. In 2018, hip-hop artists essentially took over popular music, dominating two-thirds of the 75 titles of the year-end streaming songs. Drake had 8.2 billion streams on Spotify alone that year (in 2018, he released his album Scorpion, which had a few number-one hits, like “God’s Plan” and “Nice for What”).
“From a sheer chart numbers perspective, Drake’s accomplishments simply dwarf every other artist of the 21st century,” Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger stated in his profile on the artist. “No other artist of the period can match his combination of 13 Hot 100 No. 1 singles and 13 Billboard 200 No. 1 albums — only The Beatles…claim the same historically — and no other artist of any time is even within earshot of his 338 career Hot 100 entries, an all-time mark he first passed in 2020 and has put farther in his rearview every year since.”
The publication also acknowledged the star for having the most top 40 hits (206) and top 10 hits (78) on the all-genre songs chart, as the singer found more “21st-century” ways to ensure his cultural impact was felt — he used social media platforms to his advantage more so than any other star, “commanding platforms like Twitter and Instagram with a reach and virality that made even the biggest award-show stages seem small by comparison”, the publication stated.
Despite his successes, in the last two years, the acclaimed singer has faced a ton of online hate. The 2023 album For All the Dogs lacked depth, according to some critics, and his highly publicized feud with Kendrick Lamar this year compounded the critiques. The two rappers have been feuding for years, but Lamar took it a step further in March when he was featured on Future’s no. 1 track “Like That”, with his lyrics, “…’Fore all your dogs gettin’ buried / That’s a K with all these nines, he gon’ see Pet Sematary,” apparently referencing “First Person Shooter”, a collaboration between Drake and J. Cole that was included on Drake’s 2023 album “For All the Dogs”. In that song, J. Cole referenced Lamar, Drake, and himself as the “big three,” which Lamar apparently took offense to.
Even with these setbacks, Drake is the highest-ranked Canadian to make the list so far (we’re still waiting for the top three artists to be named, as of publication). Other notable Canadians to make the list include The Weeknd (the Scarborough-born singer ranked 18th) and Justin Bieber (who ranked 8th). The top three have yet to be announced, but Drake placed ahead of fifth ranked Lady Gaga and sixth ranked Britney Spears.
