Words by: Micheele Swami
Photos by: Jamie Sands/HHC
After many months of planning and a rescheduled date, Drake fulfilled Vancouver’s wishes (unlike an un-named rapper) and graced Vancouver with his much critiqued, ‘Would You Like A Tour’ tour. Coming a long way (or from the bottom, as he’d say) from his 2010 concert at the now defunct Centre of the Performing Arts, Toronto-born Aubrey Graham is now playing sold out shows all across North America and around Europe, which included a stop at a sold out Rogers Arena in Vancouver.
After Future and Miguel started the night off, the crowd took to their seats and the curtain came up revealing a big circle, lit up ramp and a live band set-up center stage. Drake emerged on a platform, kicking off his set with, ‘Tuscan Leather’, the intro track from, ‘Nothing Was the Same’. Not straying away from crowd favourites, Drake went on to “rap” his verses from ‘No Lie’ by 2Chainz and ‘Crew Love’ his collaboration with another Torontonian, The Weekend.
Drake felt at home throughout his set, bringing up his Canadian citizenship many times. “Today was probably, like, the best days I’ve had in a long time. I got to use my Canadian passport” said Aubrey, while the crowd screamed in delight, realizing this Grammy award winner was indeed Canadian, like themselves.
The rest of Drake’s set was dedicated to his latest album, which the tour was supporting. He didn’t stray from his many guest features including Migos’ ‘Versace’ and Future’s ‘Same Damn Time’ (Who made an appearance to perform that song.) The circular stage & fireworks added to the extravagant production.
Taking a cue from his past shows, Drake picked a lucky lady from the crowd to join him on the stage. The lucky lady was “Jen” from “Vancouver”. Singing to her, she looks in awe as her hero sings ‘Coming Home’ to her.
The riser that was above our heads the whole show, decided to come down and Drake climbed above our heads to shout out the crowd. Drake took the time to shout out both left, right and centre for a whole 25 minutes. This was no exaggeration, as he went around and took the time to shout people out in the crowd, to what shirt they are wearing to their shoes and hair colour.
Back on stage, fireworks began before Drake went back on stage to thank us once again, and tell us he was glad he was Canadian, After a quick pause of him glancing over at this show out arena, he goes straight into a rowdy rendition of his part of posse cut ‘Fucking Problem’ and ‘Started From the Bottom’.
“Vancouver, thank you! I’ll be hanging out tonight!” said Drake as he goes underground of his stage set up. With Vancouver notoriously known for their after parties, there would probably be no surprise to see Drake show up on Granville street. Just hope Chris Brown isn’t near by.