DRAKE with LIL WAYNE, KANYE WEST, A$AP ROCKY and many more Drake with Lil Wayne, Kanye West, A$AP Rocky and many more at Molson Amphitheatre, Monday, August 5. Rating: NNNNN
Could the MTV Music Awards get a Puff Daddy and Mase reunion? Could the Grammys get a Kanye West performance? In what world do TLC appear and perform Waterfalls and No Scrubs? Would it ever be possible to have the stars align so that J.Cole, Miguel and A$AP Rocky were all at the same place at the same damn time? Who could possibly make you forget that Frank Ocean – Frank Ocean – was supposed to sing the previous day but didn’t? At Monday night’s fourth annual OVO Fest, a 26-year-old rapper from Forest Hill did all that, and a lot more, too.
As my friend said to me via GChat at 1 am, both of us still in a post-show state of shock (Kanye West, people): the only other human being on this planet with that kind of pull is Jay Z. And he is 43. Drake is 26. And, to be honest, I’m not sure that Jay actually could pull that off – his Made In America Festival lineup pales in comparison to what happened last night:
After a showing by Sunday night transplant James Blake and a very brief but exuberant set by Washington rapper Wale, Drake emerged at 8:30 in all symbolic white. One performance of Headlines later, and the rumours were dispelled for good: onto the stage bounded Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. the Weeknd) for a duet of Crew Love, and with that, proof positive there is no feud between the two Toronto stars. (Drake I-told-you-so smiled so hard afterward.) It was also the first in a long and extremely high-profile list of Drizzy’s famous guest appearances.
The rest of the show, in fact, was a ball of increasing momentum that got harder, faster and stronger as it barreled toward 11 p.m. Drake would alternate perfectly grouped solo mini sets with increasingly more shocking guest stars, with whom he’d duet and then, usually, leave to their own devices for a song or two.
After Big Sean let loose with Clique, Mercy and All Me, Wale reappeared for Bad before Drake broke into some of his newer tunes (Girls Love Beyonce, I Get Lonely Too). Those female-friendly tracks segued nicely into 90s girl group TLC. It’s been 18 years since Waterfalls was the biggest song in the world, but even without the late Lisa Left Eye Lopes, the song carries huge emotional weight and packs a wallop of nostalgia. Two decades later, T-Boz and Chilli are not skimping on dance moves: the choreography for Scrubs, complete with a male/female dance troupe, was music-video worthy.
Throughout the night, Drake did a good job of gleefully teasing the crowd. He told us he was bringing out his twin, and out came J.Cole, later joined by Miguel.
Later, Drizzy said that his first-ever concert was at the Molson Amphitheatre (his uncle brought him), leaving us all doing math to try and figure out what a 10 or 11 year old Drake would have seen. And then, a figure appeared: Diddy. At this point, most of us had seen the Instagram shot with Drake and Mase, so it wasn’t a huge shock when the former rapper/minister appeared. But having Puffy and Mase onstage together for Feel So Good and Mo Money Mo Problems was like being transported back to 1997 and the height of MuchMusic countdowns, the era when rappers wore big shiny clothes and dominated the weekly Top 40.
By the time Drake brought the exquisitely dressed A$AP Rocky onstage, it was the veritable Oscars of hip-hop/R&B. (Note to all U.S. media outlets who cancelled their trip when Frank Ocean pulled out: you are foolish.) Rocky, for one, was so goddamned hyped he could barely get out the words to party anthem Wild For The Night. At this point, we were pretty satisfied with Drake’s congregation.
Then, it happened. New Slaves happened. After Drake teased “What’s up with you and Ye man, y’all OK man?” and the crowd had a collective moment of “No, no, no it can’t be,” Kanye West appeared under flashing red lights, striking a pose that can only be described as God-like, with an entitled, fierce expression, soaking up the fandom as if he needed it for fuel to perform All Of The Lights and Can’t Tell Me Nothing.
Afterward, Kanye, the biggest ego in all of rap music, admitted to the world that it was because of Drake that he and Jay Z made Watch The Throne. Think about that. Drake helped give us No Church In The Wild, Niggas In Paris, Made In America and maybe the best tour of 2011. It always seemed like WTT was a macho reaction to up-and-coming rappers a reassertion of deserved rap supremacy. But here was confirmation, delivered with a huge smile from rap’s most prickly star, that it was in part, at least, a knee-jerk reaction against the Canadian Kid’s rapid ascent.
That is bonkers.
In turn, Drake said that Kanye West made him want to become a rapper. What a love fest.
After that, it could only end one way: Lil Wayne, the man who “made” Drake, “the greatest rapper alive,” according to Drizzy, helped him close out with HYFR, The Motto and Bitches Love Me, before Drake, fittingly, closed out solo, performing Versace, No New Friends, and of course, his most Drake-ian anthem, the words on the Toronto billboard, Started From The Bottom. Then there was Drake: telling us for the zillionth time how much he loves Toronto, how much he does it all for Toronto, how much he wants to do this festival for Toronto.
“I know I probably say it way too much,” said Drizzy.
Nah. Make some noise for Drake one time.
