Drake is the lothario of hip hop. Less slappin’ yo bitch ass, more admiring your beautiful booty. He’s the rapper with a perceived heart, despite recently asking his GQ profiler whether she was going to sleep with him—sincerity unknown. His edges may be rough, but his persona is smooth. Maybe that’s why The O2 is swelling with the anticipation of seeing him take to the stage. The men wear tilted baseball caps and their idol’s image on their chests, while their female counterparts got their “hair done, nails done” hoping that Drake will take notice.
And he does. I’ve never seen so much audience interaction. At various points, Drake picks on people in the crowd and sappily thanks them for jamming along, or merely just reinstate that he has seen them and they can now die happy.
London-based rapper Labrinth kicks off proceedings, with an overly auto-tuned brand of grime. Seeming like Drake’s excitable younger sibling, he’s clearly overjoyed to be there. The extravagant wall of lights often swamp his attempts to get the crowd swaying, but throw the hits at them (Earthquake, Let The Sunshine) and they please themselves, while he shouts his name into the crowd—perhaps ensuring they would remember who he was.
The glorious opening of Lord Knows signifies the arrival of Drizzy, his former-child-actor guise torn to shreds, so if only the likes of me would stop bringing it up. Wearing simple black jeans and a navy wife-beater with a modest amount of bling around his neck, Drake swims through his set, transitioning from harder raps to soft R’n’B seamlessly.
The primary focus is on material from latest album, Take Care, which features material saturated with guest verses. Despite his heavy name-dropping throughout the set, Drake has clearly not managed to bring his crew along for the ride. This is overcome by simply cutting off the track before the cameo, which can be quite disappointing in terms of track length. But sometimes this was unavoidable, as with Rihanna collaboration, Take Care, so instead he talks over her, in masterful domination of the crowd’s attention.
Drake has two voices, and not just an inside one and an outside. He is a crafty rapper, as well as having a velvety singing voice. The Motto gets a sing-a-long, while the sombre Marvin’s Room is an R’n’B-drenched highlight. The crowd were an educated one—not a rhyme went un-echoed. A sentimental goodbye commences after the last beat of outro Headlines. Drake stands still on stage, taking it all in, the smile on his face undisguised.
“I will rap for y’all till the day they lay me flat on my motherfuckin‘ back,” he says to an adoring audience, wiping his brow. He looks like he means it, because hey, the acting thing didn’t work out.
In true Irish fashion, the crowd begin their rendition of ‘Olé Olé Olé.’ “Till the next time I see you, take care,” a fitting finale.