What to know
- Now Toronto asked locals to share their hottest opinions about the city, from Drake to transit.
- One resident argued Drake helped put Toronto on the global map, while another said his older music is much better than his newer releases.
- The PRESTO card remains surprisingly divisive after Subway Takes host Kareem Rahma called its design “ugly.”
- Another local said Toronto’s biggest problem isn’t infrastructure or nightlife — it’s how much people complain about the city.
What’s the Toronto opinion you’d defend even if everyone around you disagreed?
For some locals, it’s that Drake deserves more credit for putting the city on the global cultural map.
For others, it’s that old Drake clears new Drake — easily.
And for at least one Torontonian, the city’s biggest problem isn’t transit, traffic or housing. It’s Torontonians themselves.
NOW hit the streets to ask locals for their hottest takes about Toronto, and people had plenty to say.
The question comes after Subway Takes host Kareem Rahma recently stirred up his own minor Toronto controversy by calling the PRESTO card “ugly.”
Plenty of locals rushed to defend it.
But once you ask Torontonians what else they’d change — or what everyone else gets wrong about the city — the opinions get much more personal.
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‘The city wouldn’t be the same without Drake’
Toronto resident Evan O. says Drake put the six on the map.
“The city wouldn’t be the same without Drake,” Evan told Now Toronto. “Drake has put Toronto on the map like so consistently, I don’t think the world would know Toronto as much as they do now without Drake.”
And yes, he was listening to Drake before the interview — specifically FOMO.
For Evan, the rapper’s influence goes beyond music. Drake’s repeated references to Toronto, the “6ix” branding and his association with the city have made him inseparable from Toronto’s pop-culture identity.
That opinion, however, is far from unanimous.
‘New Drake is still s***’: This local disagrees with Evan, saying Drake isn’t worth the hype
Toronto resident Daniela R.’s hottest take might make most of Toronto mad, including Evan: she believes the new Drake songs aren’t the best.
“People say a lot about Drake, but I think old Drake’s better. New Drake is still s***,” she told Now Toronto.
When asked if she listened to Drake’s latest FOMO songs, she said she “couldn’t care [less].”
It’s the kind of Drake debate Toronto has been having for years: not necessarily whether he matters to the city, but which version of Drake people actually want back.
‘People in Toronto, they complain, complain, complain’: This local says the issue is Torontonians’ attitude
Unver Malick’s hottest take had less to do with celebrity or transit and more to do with Toronto’s attitude.
“There’s so much potential here,” he told Now Toronto.
But, he argued, residents spend too much time complaining about what the city lacks.
“The people in Toronto, they complain, complain, complain, but they never do the work.”
For Malick, the problem isn’t that Toronto has nothing going for it. It’s that locals can sometimes be too negative about the place they live.
He believes the city would feel very different if more residents approached it with a more positive mentality.
Whether that itself is a hot take probably depends on how long you’ve spent scrolling through Toronto Reddit.
