OVO Sound

founder · Toronto, ON · 2012

Drake

Aubrey Drake Graham co-founded October's Very Own (OVO) in Toronto in the late 2000s with Oliver El-Khatib and producer Noah '40' Shebib, formalizing the label-clothing-radio ecosystem as OVO Sound when the imprint partnered with Warner Bros. Records in 2012. From the Octobers Very Own Tumblr era into the So Far Gone mixtape rollout, he treated OVO as both a brand and a creative home for Toronto artists who had previously been routed through US labels, and that ethos shaped every signing decision the label has made since. Beyond his own catalog, Drake is the public face who recruits and platforms each act, whether through guest verses, OVO Fest billings, or surprise drops staged on OVO Sound Radio — the Beats 1 / Apple Music 1 show that launched in 2015 under host Oliver El-Khatib and turned into the label's primary release valve for years. The annual OVO Fest, anchored to Caribana long weekend in Toronto and originally held at Molson Amphitheatre starting in 2010, became the showcase where signees like PARTYNEXTDOOR, Majid Jordan, Roy Woods, dvsn, Baka Not Nice, and later Smiley and Naomi Sharon made their largest-stage debuts to a hometown audience. Drake has been deliberate about positioning OVO Sound as a Toronto and Canadian-diaspora institution rather than a vanity imprint, leveraging his commercial gravity to keep collaborators on the rollout for nearly every studio album from Take Care onward. As the founder, he is also the connective tissue: his vocals appear on flagship singles from almost every roster artist, and his production circle around 40, Boi-1da, Nineteen85, and PARTYNEXTDOOR functions as a shared in-house team that crosses solo projects.

Status: active

songwriter · Toronto, ON · 2012

Noah 40 Shebib

Noah James Shebib, professionally '40,' is the production engineer who co-founded OVO Sound with Drake and Oliver El-Khatib and whose sonic fingerprint defines the label more than any single record. A former child actor in Toronto, he migrated to engineering and beatmaking in the mid-2000s and was already producing the bulk of Drake's 2009 mixtape So Far Gone when the OVO project was still a Tumblr and a clothing line. His signature 'OVO noir' palette — muted, almost cottony drums, gauzy chords, generous negative space, and underwater-feeling keys — first crystallized on So Far Gone cuts like 'Lust for Life' and 'Houstatlantavegas' and then became the through-line of Thank Me Later (2010), Take Care (2011), Nothing Was the Same (2013), Views (2016), Scorpion (2018), Certified Lover Boy (2021), Honestly, Nevermind (2022) and For All the Dogs (2023). 40 has an engineering or production credit on essentially every Drake studio album, including landmark cuts 'Over My Dead Body,' 'Tuscan Leather,' 'Started From the Bottom,' 'Trust Issues,' 'Find Your Love,' 'Jungle,' 'Fake Love,' and 'Emotionless,' and his mixes are often what people describe when they describe the 'OVO sound.' He publicly disclosed in 2010 that he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a teenager, and he has continued to discuss life with MS in interviews while remaining hands-on with sessions for Drake and labelmates. He is credited as an executive on label rollouts and is generally regarded as the in-house sonic gatekeeper for the entire roster, the producer whose taste effectively defines whether a record is or is not an OVO record.

Status: active

founder · Toronto, ON · 2012

Oliver El-Khatib

Oliver El-Khatib is the Toronto-born co-founder of October's Very Own and the architect of the brand's blog-era, radio-era and retail-era identities. Before OVO existed as a label, El-Khatib was a DJ and clothing-shop employee at the West Queen West boutique Lounge, and he ran the influential Octobers Very Own Tumblr that bundled Drake-adjacent imagery, mixtape leaks and a curated Toronto aesthetic into the visual language the label would later monetize. He is credited as Drake's manager from the So Far Gone era forward and, alongside Drake and 40, formally launched OVO Sound in 2012 as part of a Warner Bros. Records joint venture. El-Khatib is also the in-house A&R, brokering the signings of PARTYNEXTDOOR, Majid Jordan, Roy Woods, dvsn, Baka Not Nice, Smiley and Naomi Sharon, and serving as the principal host of OVO Sound Radio on Beats 1 / Apple Music 1 from its 2015 launch — the program that became the label's primary release platform for years. Just as importantly, he steered OVO from a Tumblr into a global retail brand, opening the flagship OVO store on Yonge Street in Toronto in 2014 and expanding into Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and London through the back half of the 2010s, with licensed Toronto Raptors and NBA partnerships extending the owl iconography into pro-sports merchandising. Within the label, he is the long-tenured business partner who keeps the cultural identity, the radio show and the storefront in lockstep with Drake's release calendar.

Status: active

artist · Mississauga, ON · 2013

PARTYNEXTDOOR

Jahron Anthony Brathwaite, performing as PARTYNEXTDOOR (PND), is from Mississauga, Ontario, and in 2013 became the first solo artist signed to OVO Sound after Drake heard his self-released SoundCloud track 'Make a Mil.' His self-titled 2013 mixtape, often retrospectively labeled PARTYNEXTDOOR or PND1, established a hazy, woozy R&B blueprint that would prove foundational to late-2010s pop — and to OVO's house style. He followed with PARTYNEXTDOOR TWO (2014), the PARTYNEXTDOOR 3 (P3) album in 2016, the PARTYPACK and Colours EP runs, and PARTYNEXTDOOR 4 (P4) in 2020. As a writer and producer, his fingerprints sit underneath some of Drake's biggest songs — he wrote and contributed to 'Recognize' on PND TWO featuring Drake, 'Come and See Me' from VIEWS, 'Wanna Know,' 'Own It,' 'Legend,' 'Preach,' and the 'Madiba Riddim' / dancehall axis of Drake's mid-2010s Caribbean turn. In January 2018 he was hospitalized after an accidental drug overdose, which he later discussed publicly as part of a broader conversation about his health and sobriety, and which delayed the rollout of P4. In February 2025 he and Drake released the joint album '$ome $exy $ongs 4 U,' the first full-length collaborative project between the two and the closest the label has come to a flagship duo record, including singles 'Nokia' and 'Gimme a Hug.'

Status: active

artist · Toronto, ON · 2013

Majid Jordan

Majid Jordan is the Toronto-based duo of vocalist Majid Al Maskati, born in Bahrain, and producer Jordan Ullman, who met as students at the University of Toronto and self-released the EP A Place Like This online in 2012. Their early bedroom-pop demos caught the attention of Noah '40' Shebib, and within months they were credited as writer-producers on 'Hold On, We're Going Home,' the lead single from Drake's 2013 album Nothing Was the Same. That song, which became Drake's first top-five Billboard Hot 100 hit as a lead artist, earned a 2014 Grammy nomination for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration and is still the duo's most-streamed credit. They officially signed to OVO Sound in 2013, released the Afterhours EP that same year, and put out their self-titled debut album Majid Jordan in February 2015. Subsequent records — The Space Between (2017), Wildest Dreams (2021) and Good People (2024) — moved their sound from foggy R&B toward sleek synth-pop and disco-leaning electronic textures while keeping Al Maskati's intimate falsetto as the anchor. They have continued to appear on Drake records as both writers and features, contributing to 'Summers Over Interlude' on More Life and showing up across the broader OVO production credits. Within the label they are the polished pop-architecture duo, balancing PARTYNEXTDOOR's nocturnal R&B with brighter, club-ready Toronto soul.

Status: active

artist · Toronto, ON · 2016

dvsn

dvsn (pronounced 'division') is the Toronto duo of vocalist Daniel Daley and producer Paul 'Nineteen85' Jefferies. They emerged anonymously on SoundCloud in late 2015 with 'The Line' and 'With Me,' and after a viral run they were officially confirmed as OVO Sound signees in 2016, releasing their debut album SEPT. 5TH that April. Their sound — slow-tempo R&B with gospel-leaning vocal stacks, restrained drums and lots of negative space — became a defining color of OVO's late-2010s catalog across Morning After (2017), A Muse in Her Feelings (2020) and Working on My Karma (2022). Nineteen85's role at OVO actually pre-dates dvsn itself: as one of Drake's go-to producers, he co-produced 'Hold On, We're Going Home,' 'One Dance,' 'Hotline Bling,' 'Too Good,' 'Madonna' and other singles, and that production relationship is what made dvsn possible inside the OVO ecosystem. Singles 'Hallucinations,' 'Morning After' and 'No Cryin'' kept the duo on rotation at OVO Sound Radio, and Daley has appeared on Drake records as a vocalist. Nineteen85 has also released solo and side-project material, and the duo has periodically described creative tensions between Daley's vocal direction and Nineteen85's production identity, but as of 2026 they remain the label's R&B duo of record.

Status: active

artist · Brampton, ON · 2015

Roy Woods

Denzel Spencer, who records as Roy Woods, is a Brampton, Ontario singer-rapper who signed to OVO Sound in 2015 at 19 after Drake heard his early SoundCloud uploads. He debuted on the label with the EP Exis in late 2015, followed by Waking at Dawn (2016), the Nocturnal EP (2017), and full-lengths Say Less (2017) and Dem Times (2020), with the Mixed Emotions and Roy Woods Forever EPs filling the gaps. His vocal style is melodic, breathy and ambient: heavy reverb, sustained chord pads, hand drums and trap hi-hats, often built around two-step or dancehall-adjacent grooves. That texture made him a natural complement to Drake's More Life palette, and he was featured on 'Get It Together' alongside South African vocalist Jorja Smith on the 2017 playlist-album. He also appeared at OVO Fest from his earliest signing through the late 2010s and has remained one of the longer-tenured signees on the roster. Within the label his function is as the moody, club-leaning male R&B voice — distinct from PARTYNEXTDOOR's writerly approach and dvsn's slow-jam stack — and his catalog leans into nocturnal Brampton-Toronto romance with frequent dancehall and Afro-fusion accents. He has remained a consistent OVO Sound Radio fixture, frequently premiering tracks through the show, and his Drake-orbit appearances on More Life helped solidify the label's mid-2010s identity as a multinational R&B-pop home base built out of suburban Toronto rather than Manhattan or Atlanta.

Status: active

artist · Toronto, ON · 2017

Baka Not Nice

Travis Savoury, who performs as Baka Not Nice, is a Toronto rapper and longtime Drake associate from the pre-OVO years whose presence has been audible on Drake records — as ad-libs, hype vocals and references — since the Take Care era. In 2014 he was charged in Toronto in connection with a sexual-assault and human-trafficking case; the charges were later dropped, and Drake referenced the matter publicly on '6 Man' from If You're Reading This It's Too Late. He was officially announced as an OVO Sound signee in 2017 with the surprise release of his Live Up to My Name project, which leaned into stripped-down, dub-and-dancehall-tinged Toronto rap and featured appearances and uncredited support from Drake's circle. He followed with the album 4 Loyal in 2018 and assorted loose singles afterward. On Drake's catalog, his most prominent recurring contribution has been as ad-libs and crew vocals on the More Life and Scorpion eras. Within the label he functions less as a chart-driven solo artist and more as a credible Toronto street-rap voice and a piece of the OVO mythology, embodying the crew-roots origin story that surrounds Drake personally. Drake has continued to platform him at OVO Fest and within OVO Sound Radio rotations, and Baka's presence on the rollout for albums like Scorpion and Certified Lover Boy underscored how OVO leverages crew identity as part of every release cycle.

Status: active

artist · Toronto, ON · 2021

Smiley

Smiley, born Naasir Akili Pittman in Toronto in 1997, is a Toronto street-rap voice whose viral 2020 single 'Over the Top' caught Drake's attention during the Certified Lover Boy run. Drake then jumped on a remix of the track and released it as part of Scary Hours 2 in March 2021 alongside 'What's Next' and 'Wants and Needs'; that placement effectively functioned as Smiley's OVO Sound co-sign and arrival. He was formally announced as an OVO Sound signee in 2021 and released his debut mixtape Buy or Bye 2 that year, following with Buy or Bye 3 in 2022 and 2023, plus a deluxe edition rollout. His sound sits in the harder, less melodic end of the Toronto rap spectrum — drill-leaning percussion, hooky-but-stark cadences, and verses that lean into local geography (Lawrence Heights, Jane and Finch, downtown Toronto) rather than the slicker R&B-pop axis of the rest of the OVO roster. He has continued to perform alongside other OVO acts at OVO Fest and label-curated events, and 'Over the Top' remains the foundational Drake collaboration on his catalog. Within the label, Smiley is the bridge to Toronto's drill and trap scene, a deliberate widening of the roster after the R&B-heavy mid-2010s era.

Status: active

artist · Rotterdam, Netherlands · 2023

Naomi Sharon

Naomi Sharon Bovenga is a Dutch-Surinamese singer based in Rotterdam who, in 2023, became the first female solo artist ever signed to OVO Sound — a milestone for a label that had previously rostered only male solo artists and male-fronted duos. Trained in musical theater and classical voice, she released independent EPs prior to OVO and built a reputation in Europe for a warm, alto-led, jazz-tinged neo-soul style that pulls on Sade, Erykah Badu and Aaliyah lineage without sounding retro. Her OVO Sound debut album, Obsidian, arrived in October 2023 and was rolled out with support across OVO Sound Radio and a feature push on Apple Music. The record is built around live instrumentation, hushed grooves, and lyrical reflections on grief and identity, leaning more contemplative than the dance-leaning material that has defined recent OVO releases. She has appeared on OVO showcases in 2024 and 2025 and figures in Drake's broader expansion of the label's identity beyond Toronto-only signings into a more international, women-inclusive roster. As of 2026 she has not appeared on a Drake studio track as a featured vocalist, but she is a flagship signing for the next phase of OVO Sound and represents the label's most pronounced sonic departure since Majid Jordan.

Status: active

artist · Toronto, ON · 2014

Preme

Daniel Sarmiento is a Toronto rapper who originally recorded as P Reign through the early 2010s, building a local profile with mixtapes Dear America (2012) and Off the Books (2014) and earning a 2014 single, 'DnF,' that featured Drake and Future and connected him publicly to the OVO Sound circle. He was widely understood to be an OVO-affiliated artist during that run, though the relationship was always closer to label-adjacent than to a formal flagship signing. In 2017 he rebranded as Preme and released the Light of Day mixtape, then the Studio 514 album in 2018 (executive produced with collaborators from the Drake camp) and Hot Boy in 2019, the latter featuring Toronto and Atlanta guests. By the early 2020s he had moved off the active OVO Sound radio rotation and was no longer part of the public label-marketing roster, putting him on a 'departed' or 'parted ways' track for the purposes of the present-day OVO lineup. His Drake collaboration on 'DnF' remains the connecting tissue between his catalog and the OVO ecosystem, and he continues to release independent music outside the label. The Preme era reflected an attempt to graduate from regional Toronto rap into US-marketable trap-R&B with more melodic hooks and Atlanta-style production, but commercial traction was modest, and within the broader history of OVO Sound he stands as an example of an early-period adjacency that did not convert into a long-term flagship signing in the same way that PARTYNEXTDOOR or Majid Jordan did.

Status: departed