Hamid Drake was born August 3, 1955, in Monroe, Louisiana, and was raised in Chicago. He took drum lessons from the son of saxophonist Fred Anderson, eventually taking over that role as percussionist in Anderson's own group; his first credited recording, as Hank Drake, was with the Fred Anderson Quintet on Another Place in 1978.

Emerging from Anderson's group in the 1970s, Drake went on to collaborate extensively with leading free-jazz improvisers including Peter Brötzmann, Matthew Shipp, Ken Vandermark, Assif Tsahar, Pharoah Sanders, and bassists William Parker, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, and Peter Kowald, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile. A brilliant and versatile avant-garde drummer, he moves comfortably through African, Indian, and Latin rhythmic traditions and frequently plays without sticks, using his hands to develop subtly commanding undertones.

By the close of the 1990s, Drake was widely regarded as one of the finest percussionists in jazz and improvised music, drawing praise for albums including 1992's Hyperion, 2000's Emancipation Proclamation: A Real Statement of Freedom, and 2007's From the River to the Ocean with Fred Anderson. He remains one of the busiest drummers on the improvised and free-jazz scene, with album credits exceeding 500.

Drake's fusion of African, Indian, and Latin percussion traditions into free jazz's rhythmic vocabulary, combined with his frequent hands-only technique, made him one of the most distinctive and in-demand drummers in improvised music by the end of the 1990s, and his decades-long partnerships with William Parker and Peter Kowald placed him at the center of both the American and European free-jazz communities.