Advertisement

Concert reviews Music

Drake played an “exclusive” supper club in Woodbridge

DRAKE with JESSIE REYEZ at Après Noir (Woodbridge), November 29. Rating: NNNN


It took a couple of tries to get Drake out to Chateau le Jardin’s “exclusive” Après Noir supper club in Woodbridge, just north of Toronto. He was initially supposed to play in June but postponed, as is his recent tendency, but he finally made the trek out past the airport last night.

It wasn’t his first time playing an event like it. Near the end of his show, the Toronto rapper sentimentally recalled his early days performing at another similar affair: as part of the group the Renaissance (which also included future Grammy winner Melanie Fiona), a nascent Aubrey Graham would cut his creative chops weekly at Adelaide’s long-defunct Avocado Supper Club.

Drake told the dressed-to-the-nines crowd that in those days he would be paid in little more than experience, eventually getting sacked when the Avocado’s owner told him he didn’t have the talent to make it in the entertainment biz. Twelve years later, Drizzy fetches million-dollar paydays, whether at a downtown Caribbean restaurant or the 905’s most glitzy strip mall chateau-cum-wedding venue. “And who knows where [that owner] is,” he laughed.

It’s the type of started-from-the-bottom-now-we-here story Drake has built his legacy on, taking the city along for the ride. But for all the euphoric collective whiplash the 6 has experienced over the last decade, it’s appearances like last night’s that best allow us best to take stock of The Drake Effect.

edits-2-5818- by @kurthoop.jpg

Courtesy of Après Noir

Due onstage at 10 pm, Drake was two hours late due to his ambassador commitments to the Toronto Raptors. Some people pulled up the game against the Golden State Warriors on their phones to see Drake sitting courtside while they waited for him to show up – which made for a rather awkward interlude during which guests who had paid up to $3,000 for a curated four-course meal and entertainment were left chowing on lukewarm risotto as low-key jazz played over the PA. Opener Jessie Reyez went on just after the game went to overtime, offering a brash, expletive-filled set that culminated in the hometown up-and-comer anointing well-appointed onlookers with her water-bottle. 

edits-4235- by @kurthoop.jpg

Courtesy of Après Noir

An hour later, shortly after midnight, Drake began what should have been a Bar Mitzvah-level appearance. To his credit, feeding off a crowd buzzed from six hours of open bar, Drake pushed the all-killer medley button, dropping hit after hit in a loose manner that recalled peak-era OVO Fests, when his star power eclipsed that of his guests’. “You want another one? I got a bunch of these…” He asked after pushing through a medley of early bangers, including Over, Crew Love, HYFR, The Motto and Headlines.

Stripped of his floating Ferrari and living stage, Drake let his charisma and turtleneck do the talking, appearing at times to float over the sea of phones held by the 250 or so attendees who squeezed between abandoned tables in the front. Performing beneath an oversized chandelier, the 32-year-old regularly stopped a song to casually compliment an audience member, give a shout out to opener Jessie Reyez or wax on about whatever came to his mind. For example, he said he wrote In My Feelings after a friend complained he’d never written a song about her. “I wrote it in my room at the Ritz Toronto, it’s true!” At one point he even brought a 10-year-old superfan up to take some Snapchat pics.

edits-2-6117- by @kurthoop.jpg

Courtesy of Après Noir

In other words, it felt loose in a way Drake hasn’t been able to express since he began his “hard” phase that started with his feud with Meek Mill. It felt fitting that 30 seconds before he came onstage, Drake announced a collaboration with Meek, putting that beef to bed. Pusha T, though, still looms large.

A little over 45 minutes after he appeared, Drake closed with God’s Plan – likely the closest the song will ever be performed to it’s Weston Road chorus shout out – the lights came on and the mass delusion that felt like a Sopranos-themed LARP of the HYFR video came to a fitting close.

It might seem ridiculous to argue that a 3K/plate event is the only way to get an “authentic” Drake show, but now we here.  

@nowtoronto | @jondekel

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted