On February 13,2009 Canadian rapper Drake released his mixtape “So Far Gone” and definitely shook up the rap and R&B game.
This mixtape was his third release with debut mixtape “Room for Improvement” coming out in 2006 and “Comeback Season” in 2007. So Far Gone was Drake’s first mixtape with great notoriety and publicity.
The 18 track project recently was released on all streaming platforms and the music industry has enjoyed going down memory lane. Various artists have used television and social media to express their feelings about the project celebrating 10 years of being out.
Fellow rapper J.Cole tweeted “So Far Gone super classic Forever” and the two have worked together before. In a recent Billboard interview, rapper Bun B, who was a featured artist on the song “Uptown” said “I want to say he’s top 10.
There will be few artists who will ever be as impactful as Drake is”. Even though it is a decade old, So Far Gone was expected to sell 40-50k units in the first week.
Drake followed up with his debut album “Thank Me Later” on June 15, 2010, but it was highly anticipated after a surprising project that would impact other artists and their style as well.
J.Cole’s second mixtape “The Warm Up” was released later as well in 2009, and it was the project that gave him notoriety and a bigger platform. This started a wave for several artists who became more well-known off of a mixtape rather than an album.
Fellow Canadian R&B artist The Weeknd, released his debut mixtape “House of Balloons” in 2011, making him a common name as well. With The Weeknd and J.Cole, both have gone on to have successful careers and critics acclaim them to have a decent catalog for today’s music.
With great praise and high criticism as well, Drake mixed hip hop and R&B in his “So Far Gone” tape and changed the perception on both genres and how others approach their future projects.
Some popular tracks include “Successful” with Trey Songz, and “Ignant S**t” with Lil Wayne”. The track that really brought the attention to Drake was “Best I Ever Had”.
The track was released seven months prior to the mixtapes release and peaked at number 2 on the Billboard charts. For the 2009-2010 era, Drake was nominated for dozens of awards and most notably won the BET Hip Hop Award in 2009 for “Rookie of the Year”.
Over the course of the last decade, Drake has been one of the most consistent and successful artists in all of music. In the streaming era he has done nothing but dominate. As of 2018, he became the first artist to ever reach 50 billion streams over all platforms.
His last three solo albums have made those numbers possible. The albums “Views’’, “More Life” and “Scorpion” have all reached a billion streams but Scorpion reached that number in just one week.
Drake has also turned heads with projects like “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” and joint mixtape “What A Time to Be Alive” with Atlanta rapper, Future. Drake is loved just as much as hated, and with the records broken and streams involved, you have to respect it.
