What to know
- Drake shouted out King West arcade bar GRETA Bar on his new track “High Fives” from surprise project Habibti.
- The lyric references former GRETA staff member Maya: “Maya, Maya, you workin’ at GRETA tonight or nah?”
- GRETA’s managing partner says Drake has visited the bar several times over the years and became close with staff, calling him a “borderline regular.”
- The Toronto venue says the Drake mention coincided with one of its busiest weekends yet, with hundreds showing up for Drake-themed parties.
A popular King West arcade bar in Toronto may have just had one of its busiest weekends ever after getting a special shoutout from Drake on one of his latest projects, Habibti.
GRETA Bar is name-dropped on “High Fives,” one of 43 tracks released as part of the Toronto rapper’s surprise triple-album drop last Friday.
In the song, the rapper phones one of the bar’s staff members for a service request: “Maya, Maya, you workin’ at GRETA tonight or nah? / Pick up, I need a whole section for the mob.”
Taylor Iwaasa, the managing partner of GRETA’s Toronto location says hearing the bar get mentioned by the 6ix God himself had the entire team hyped, especially as the rapper has become what he describes as a “borderline regular.”
“We’ve had [Drake] here a handful of times,” Iwaasa explained to Now Toronto. “I’d say once a month or every other month, for a while, we were having him, and he was pretty good friends with a lot of the staff.”
Who is Maya in Drake’s ‘High Fives’?
Iwaasa said there were theories and ‘what-ifs’ within the team on whether or not GRETA would get highlighted, given Drake’s close connection and love for the city. But he says the line ultimately came as a wonderful surprise to everyone.
“Everybody was stoked. We had just joked that it would have been kind of cool if we got on there… it’s not something that you ever think is gonna happen,” he said, adding that the achievement is one felt company-wide. The bar has four locations across the country in total: Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and of course, Toronto. “We’re across Canada. You have every friend, manager, and staff across the board all repping it and wearing it. It’s not just Toronto, it’s the company as a whole. Everyone’s very excited.”
Drake’s GRETA Bar shoutout sparks huge Toronto turnout
The recognition came amid GRETA recording one of its busiest weekends to date. On Friday and Sunday, the bar hosted Drake-themed nights to celebrate the rapper’s ninth, and additional bombshell tenth and eleventh, albums.
“There were hundreds in line. The room was full the entire night, the turnout, the guest list — you could see everybody was here for it,” Iwaasa said. “It’s just the overall vibe, like everyone’s here to have a good time.”
Is ‘Maya’ from ‘High Fives’ a real person?
And as for the spotlight of the entire line, Maya, Iwaasa assures that she is a very real person. And though she’s no longer employed at GRETA, she remains a trusted friend who even came by over the past weekend to party OVO-style.
“[Maya’s] still a really good friend of the staff,” he shared, also adding that she’s also become close with the rapper outside of the establishment. “Maya was a pretty close friend of [Drake] in that regard, at least in our eyes… they text, they talk, you know, they’re close enough to be on that level.”
Drake’s connection to Toronto arcade bar GRETA
As for what it means for GRETA to be featured in that way, Iwaasa says it speaks to the importance of building genuine relationships with guests, celebrity or not.
“Recognizing the influence that Drake is in hip-hop and in that world… it’s a really cool thing to be able to say that not only did we have him in our business, but we knew him, we fostered a relationship, and he had a good enough experience in what we built that it was something that he put on an album,” he said.
“You wouldn’t think small things like that would come full circle.”
