By any modern measure of musical popularity — YouTube views, radio airplay, ring-tone ubiquity — the single “Best I Ever Had” by Toronto rapper Drake is not only a hit but is arguably 2009’s “Song of the Summer.” Since debuting on iTunes last month, the hip-hop lust track has sold 600,000 digital downloads and topped three pop charts.

Even if you can’t summon to mind its rap-sung vocals or brassy syncopated beat, you probably have heard “Best I Ever Had” blaring out of a convertible somewhere.
Less than a year ago, Drake was unsigned and virtually unknown as a rhyme-sayer. But thanks to some out-of-the-box branding efforts by several of the best-connected marketing executives in the urban world and the institutional backing of his mentor, rap superstar Lil Wayne, Drake landed two songs in the Top 10 this month — “Best I Ever Had” as a solo artist and “Every Girl” as part of the rap group Young Money. He already had amassed a devoted fan base before he even had landed a record deal.
Drake’s breakthrough arrives as a happy accident built on plenty of high-level networking, a label bidding war and an astonishing degree of cooperation among rap world big shots. Chief among them, Drake’s career overseers: the heads of the New York management company Hip Hop Since 1978 and Cortez Bryant, Lil Wayne’s longtime manager.
“They have given me one of the greatest situations in hip-hop,” Drake, 22, said of his team.
Although already famous in his native Canada for portraying a disabled high school basketball player on the teen television drama “DeGrassi: The Next Generation,” which also airs in the U.S., Drake (government name: Aubrey Drake Graham) didn’t exactly take the music industry by storm when he self-released a mix-tape, the appropriately titled “Room for Improvement,” in 2006.
“I was recording, and the music was decent. But I was on my own. I had no team in place,” Drake said. “What you learn as you progress is this business is based on relationships in a major way.”
After a subsequent mix-tape (as such al gratis digitally downloadable music compilations are known) brought the rapper to the attention of Lil Wayne, everything changed. The rap star, whose “Tha Carter III” was the bestselling album of last year, contributed a scorching guest verse on Drake’s September underground banger “Ransom,” effectively vouching for the newcomer’s legitimacy. More important, their “collabo” compelled Bryant to sign on as Drake’s manager.
From there, Bryant entered into a managerial tandem with the heavyweight firm Hip Hop Since 1978, whose marketing prowess has resulted in two of the biggest rap releases of the decade: Kanye West’s “Graduation” and “Tha Carter III,” both of which sold around 1 million copies in their first week of release.
The company’s principles — Gee Roberson, Kyambo “Hip Hop” Joshua and Al Branch — earned their stripes working at Roc-A-Fella Records, the influential label established by rap rainmaker Jay-Z in the ’90s.
The plan, going forward, was to build Drake’s “brand” in much the same way they had built up West’s. According to Roberson, the key would be “old-fashioned artist development — the kind that doesn’t exist anymore.
”Put out a record and a video and work it station by station, city by city, club by club,“ said Roberson, chief executive of Hip Hop Since 1978. ”With Kanye, we put out his single `Through the Wire’ and had him doing spot dates, opening up for established acts. That affiliation with a marquee artist makes the battle easier. Earlier this year, we had Drake on tour opening up for (Lil) Wayne. He was selling out 5,000-seat theaters. It’s a grass-roots way to build him up.“