The 10 Best Songs From Drake's Mixtape Era

Drake revealed at a recent show that he is working on a new mixtape. Hopefully it's a real mixtape and not an album marketed as a mixtape like If You're Reading This It's Too Late, which solid over half a million copies in its first week.

Drake's mixtapes -- Room For Improvement, Comeback Season, and the extended edition of So Far Gone -- were released between the years 2006 and 2009 and paint a vivid portrait of Drake as a talented and highly ambitious young artist. In the eyes of some, they constitute his best work to date.

Click through the gallery to listen to 10 of the best tracks from Mixtape Drake. 

"Special" is one of the best songs on Drake's 2006 debut mixtape Room For Improvement. Remember Southern Smoke?? The song features the singer Voyce, about whom Drake would later write his first diss track, and features a heavy R&B inflection, albeit one very different from the one that appears in Drake's more current music.

Despite his reputation for being "triple-ply soft," Drake has had always had the capacity to throw shade. In the case of "Replacement Girl," the lead single off his 2007 sophomore mixtape Comeback Season, his ire is directed at his army of ex-girlfriends who missed their shot with The Boy. "This album's for my fans, but, yo, this hook is for my exes."

On "Closer," Drake harps on familiar themes -- relationships, fame -- under the alias "Mr. Big Dreams." The aqueous electric piano originally appeared on "Closer" by the R&B singer Goapele.

YG sampled the same song in "Goapele Freestyle," a loosie released last December.

Proof that 9th Wonder is a god. 

Drake's third mixtape, 2009's So Far Gone, is project the cuts to the heart of Drake's ambition. On "Houstatlantavegas," he projects his aspirations on a stripper who feels trapped within her profession.

On So Far Gone, Drake subbed out production grounded in soul music to more a more brooding, atmospheric style. The result is the leap from Drake rapping about his impending fame from his mama's basement to the sensation that he is rapping about his impending fame from a rooftop, at night by his lonesome.

Drake has long been infatuated with the city of Houston and always seems to be driving around Houston in the middle of the night by himself in his mind. A DJ Screw flip, "November 18th" is Drizzy's finest Houston ode to date.

"Ignant Shit" is a sort of sequel to "Successful" -- it speaks not of the future, but of the present, one that he has already claimed.

Though Drake comes from humble middle-class origins, his sound is sometimes described as that of Uptown Toronto. And though the song "Uptown" is about the moment Drake realized he was "on," the title actually refers to Bill Joel's Uptown Girl," which it samples.

But Drake wasn't truly "on" until "Best I Ever Had" took off. The song was re-packaged as a single after Drake signed to Young Money and ended up peaking at #2  on the Billboard Hot 100.

"When my album drop, bitches'll buy it for the picture/ And niggas'll buy it too and claim they got it for they sister."