Commercially, it makes perfect sense retrospectively since he was a radio staple right away and hasn’t really waned in that regard. “Forever” etched young Aubrey Graham into a Mount Rushmore of rappers with extreme pop crossover power. His buzz was such that he headlined “Forever,” an all-star posse cut also featuring Kanye, Wayne, and Eminem, which soon became the soundtrack for his own Sprite commercial.

Blige, DJ Khaled, Timbaland, Rick Ross, Diddy, Birdman, both the living and dead members of UGK, and, in what became his first #1 hit, Rihanna. Across 20, he appeared on singles by Jamie Foxx, Mary J. Drake had garnered critical acclaim with a palette of guests and samples that catered to both the hip-hop blogs and the indie-rock blogs, but he very quickly ascended to an echelon in which reviews became irrelevant. The gloomy Trey Songz duet “Successful,” had also become a rap radio staple, and when the EP-length retail version of the tape dropped, “I’m Goin’ In” popped off too. In the 16 months since So Far Gone‘s release, Drake had launched the jubilant sex romp “Best I Ever Had” - a then-novel track on which he both rapped the verses and sang the hook - all the way to #2 on the Hot 100, bolstered by a lascivious basketball-themed video directed by Kanye. Gracefully gliding between singing and rapping, backed by Noah “40” Shebib’s opulent mood music and buoyed by cosigns from both mentor Lil Wayne and key inspiration Kanye West (the two biggest stars in rap at the time), Drake went from Datpiff obscurity to the A-list in an instant. The more people jeered Drake’s defiantly soft approach and clumsy bars, the louder the cheers drowned them out. A former teen soap opera actor? From Canada? And he’s cooing sweet melodies over fluffy synthesizer clouds like some hipster R&B singer? This was no one’s idea of a superstar rapper. When So Far Gone first blew up, Drake had been an easy punchline for rap skeptics and self-professed guardians of “real hip-hop” alike. “I had someone tell me I fell off, ooh I needed that,” he’d rap the following summer, owning up to Thank Me Later‘s flaws - not that that the album’s bizarre sequencing, rampant self-pity, and abundant hashtag-rap clunkers stalled out his career momentum whatsoever. Instead, Drake delivered a confounding LP that, even as it spun off hits, raised questions about whether a debut could be a sophomore slump.

But with his 2009 mixtape So Far Gone, he had rocketed straight to superstardom and begun the process of fundamentally altering the sound of mainstream rap. Technically, Thank Me Later, released 10 years ago, was his debut album.

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