Drake's Big Break: Lil Wayne's Protege Graduates From Degrassi to Hip-Hop

To say the experience has been surreal only for Drake would be an understatement. Back in 2006, he was better known as a child actor from the N's Degrassi: The Next Generation, where he played hoopster-turned-wheelchair bound teen Jimmy Brooks for seven seasons. But Drake, a high school dropout born to a Jewish mother from Canada and African-American Memphis man, decided to invest his earnings from acting into jumpstarting a music career.

First, he reached out to popular mixtape maestro DJ Smallz, who helped Drake put together his first project, Room For Improvement. Traces of Drake's style were evident back then. He rhymed alongside some unknowns and recruited R&B singer Trey Songz to appear on the collection as well.

"Rappers hit me up all the time and big themselves up and I don't believe half of them," Smallz says. "When he told me he was on a TV show, I didn't really research it. But I listened to the music and I thought it was great. I worked on the tape and thought it was crazy."

The following year, Drake poured even more of his assets into himself as he independently released his second mixtape, Comeback Season. He even financed a video for one of the songs, "Replacement Girl" featuring Trey Songz. The clip received a few plays on BET and briefly landed on the network's flagship show 106 & Park, but ultimately fell short of producing the desired results.

All wasn't lost, however. Comeback Season showcased Drake coming more into his own as an artist, from the braggadocio freestyle over Kanye West's "Barry Bonds" track to swooning intro of "The Presentation." "That was when I was becoming more comfortable and saying, 'OK, we really have something,' " Drake says of the mixtape. "I was just like, let's make it more like an album."

The mixtape, though, was most notable for its final track, "Man of the Year," featuring Lil Wayne. The superstar lyricist got wind of the rising talent when veteran rap impresario J.Prince's nephew urged him to check out Drake's MySpace page. Shortly after Weezy recruited Drizzy into his Young Money fold. Later Wayne's manager (Cortez Bryant) and one of Kanye's West's managers (Gee Roberson) would assume co-managerial duties for Drake.

Under Wayne's tutelage, Drake's rhymes took a steroid-like leap in potency. "Wayne told me to just remember it's about your thoughts, you got to think about what you want to say beforehand," Drake says of Wayne's mentorship. "And then from there, you make it rhyme or you make it connect. But the more important thing is, What's your message, What's your point. And that should be the bare essentials of a line or a verse — what do you really want to say and what do you want to say about yourself?

"I think he gave me that advice truly for me to set myself apart as a rapper," he adds, "because I know Wayne sometimes raps for the sake of being a phenomenal rapper. And other times you'll get a song where he tells a story and gets personal. But when he gave me that advice it was almost like him giving me like a cheat code. Here, I'm gonna give you something; I'm gonna give you a piece and see what you do with it. And So Far Gone is what I did with it."