Drake is many things to many people.
Cocky rapper. Sad rapper. Head of the OVO empire. Aubrey Graham: Child Actor. Record breaker. A teen who just wanted a tuna sandwich. The internet’s favourite meme. The list goes on.
But most importantly, right now Drake is undisputedly the biggest name in hip hop.
After all, he is the only rapper who could pull a Beyoncé for a mixtape and see every single track enter the Billboard charts.
Just ask Kanye West, who when speaking to Zane Lowe earlier this week called Drake “the hottest rapper in the game”.
And when you see the Toronto native live in the flesh, you definitely feel it.
It’s been a long time in the making for Australian Drake fans – six years, as he guiltily reminds us throughout the night – but in the end it was well worth the wait.
For his long-awaited Melbourne debut, the 27-year-old pulls in quite a mixed crowd to a sold-out Rod Laver Arena. Bros in snapbacks, bearded hipsters, Hood By Air fuccbois, a lot of screaming women – in case you didn’t already know, Drake’s appeal knows no bounds.
Over the course of 90-minutes and a massive 30-plus song setlist, Drake puts on an absolute masterclass of a large-scale arena show. Tonight we have the honour of watching a performer at the top of his (and anyone else’s) game.
From the second he runs out in Timberlands to the triumphant horn section of ‘Trophies’, it’s obvious the crowd has six years worth of pent-up turn-up they’ve been dying to let out.
Put it simply: people are losing their shit, there’s trap arms as far as the eye can see, and it stays that way for pretty much the entire night. It’s more of a party than a show. Whether it’s just Drake repeating the same city-to-city rhetoric about this being the “most lit crowd” he’s seen a while – he’s an actor but he does come across more genuine than most big name acts, bless his soul – there does seem to be something special in the air.
In terms of arena spectaculars, this one is somewhat minimalist. There’s two guests appearances in OB O’Brien (for Tinashe’s ‘2 On’) and 2 Chainz (for the explosive ‘All Me’), plus the occasional firework or flamethrower, but not much else.
Oh, apart from that time he took to the sky and flew above the crowd on a trapeze like an airborne God. Yes, I’ll repeat: Drake flew through the sky on a fucking trapeze. It was beautiful, biblical, confusing, too much, and not nearly enough.
But for the most part it was just a rapper on a stage with a sleeve full of blockbuster hits. And that’s all you need, really, when you have a back catalogue like Drake’s.
He works chronologically from back-to-front, dedicating the first portion of the night to his fans from the early days with ‘Best I Ever Had’ and ‘Successful’, two nostalgic cuts from his So Far Gone mixtape days.
There’s also a barrage of his best guests spots and remixes. Verses from A$AP Rocky’s ‘Fuckin Problems’ and Nicki Minaj’s ‘Truffle Butter’ are straight fire, as are covers of French Montana’s ‘Pop That’ and his remix of everyone’s favourite mid-week banger, ILoveMakonnen’s ‘Tuesday’.
He also dedicates a portion of the night to show us the other side of the Drake coin – the emotional crooner with feelings who is almost single-handedly redefining what it means to be masculine in 2015. He shows off his smooth R&B vocals during ‘Karaoke’, ‘Come Thru’ and an extended version of ‘Hold On, We’re Going Home’, proving he can lay down hooks as well as he can spit bars.
Then he gets to his latest anthems – those ones that have all spawned their own cultural catchphrases as soon as they land on SoundCloud. ‘O/100’, ‘The Motto’, and the night’s massive closer, ‘Started From The Bottom’, all go completely off.
When the house lights come on after 30 or so back-to-back hits, you’re reminded that Drake is, at the end of the day, a bonafide hit-maker.
As soon as he stepped out with that untouchable aura and comedian-level charisma, it was clear why Drake even has Kanye – music’s most notoriously egotistical figure – admitting that he’s the one on top.
Tonight, Drake’s revered status was so set in stone he didn’t even have to bother finishing the first line of ‘Legend’.
Instead, he just sang “oh my god, oh my god”, walked off, and let the crowd say it for him.
Check out the full gallery from the show here.
