In 10 Years, What Will Be the Quintessential Drake Song?

A sixteen-song bracket of Drake’s greatest hits

Drake’s vault is the Cheesecake Factory of rap discographies, a genre-bending treasure chest of gems that contains multitudes: rapper Drake, R&B crooner Drake, pop-star Drake, and crossover hybrid Drake. Over the past decade, he’s lapped his predecessors in terms of commercial success, collecting more number one hits than any rapper ever — six on Billboard’s Hot 100 and eighteen on the Hot Rap Songs chart.

But the stunning breadth of his catalog comes with a price, for it makes the process of finding the quintessential Drake song next to impossible. This isn’t the case for most hip-hop legends, though. Take 2 Pac, Biggie, Jay-Z, Eminem, Kanye, and Lil Wayne, for example; it’s fair to argue that the tracks considered to be each rapper’s defining hit(s) are borderline unanimous.

Usually, this title is attached to either: the biggest and most successful song of their career (2 Pac’s “California Love,” Biggie’s “Juicy,” Jay-Z’s “Hard Knock Life,” Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” Kanye’s “Jesus Walks,” and Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop); or their greatest artistic achievement (2 Pac’s “Dear Mama,” Biggie’s “Who Shot Ya,” Jay-Z’s “99 Problems,” Eminem’s “Stan,” Kanye’s “Runaway,” and Lil Wayne’s “A Milli”).