When his dad told him to sing and rap, Drake said it was, "the worst idea possible."

The Drake we all know—the one at the very top of the hip-hop mountain, the one who can sell hundreds of thousands of copies of a "mixtape" or playlist—almost wasn't the Drake we all know.

In the first episode of Obey Your Thirst, a video series produced by The FADER and Sprite in 2015, Drizzy revealed a key piece of advice from his father that has undeniably shaped his entire career, the success he has experienced to date and, in many ways, the overall sound of hip-hop for the past five years.

In an effort to "shock the world," Drake's father, Dennis Graham, told his son that he needed to both rap and sing. Upon hearing this suggestion, Drake's response was: "You're crazy! This is the worst idea possible."

While Drake is far from the first rapper to sing and rap on the same record—50 Cent and Ja Rule practiced and perfected the singing their own hooks between 1999 and 2005—he is undeniably the artist who popularized the modern version of this approach and opened up space in the mainstream for countless rappers-turned-singers-but-still-also-rappers.

All it would have taken was for Drake to continue to ignore his dad's advice and, who knows, the world might never have heard of Aubrey Graham—the singer or the rapper. If only Drake had also inherited his father's impeccable fashion sense, maybe he'd be a fashion icon by now as well.