.png?trim=304,0,362,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "Tucker Carlson claims Jeffrey Epstein worked for Israel to blackmail US officials: ‘Every single person in DC thinks that’ – UK Times")
“I’ve got loads of friends,” Drake declares onstage at London’s Wireless Festival. It’s an interesting boast from the Toronto rapper after what has arguably been the worst 18 months of his career during which he lost a months-long feud to Kendrick Lamar and went to war with his record label. His defeat was confirmed when Lamar walked away from this year’s Grammys with five awards for diss track “Not Like Us”. The whole ordeal culminated in Drake’s swift ejection from hip-hop boy’s club, leaving us wondering: who’s still standing in his corner?
Plenty of people, if this show is anything to go by. Tonight at Finsbury Park – the first of three (!) headline sets for Drake – the rapper has arrived with a surprise guest list long enough to dispel rumours of loneliness. Dressed in military-style vest printed with the text “Stay Cocky”, he fires out guest cameos like bullets from an assault rifle: Lauryn Hill chief among them.
It’s a needed assist. Drake’s sonic influence has notably floundered across recent albums – For All the Dogs (2023), Honestly (2022), Nevermind (1991), and this year’s $ome $exy $ongs 4 U. And while he remains a brilliant performer with a magnetic stage presence, his singing voice isn’t nearly as tender and crisp as it once was. Those chameleonic melodies that made him famous now fall flat. On his latest work, his bars are uninspiring, dealing in misogynistic clichés and bloated with overdone ad-libs. On “Hug Me”, the 38-year-old sounds like a teenage boy learning to craft explicit messages: “This girl face so pretty, I can only think of f***ing in missionary.” It’s a far cry from 2009’s minimal R&B album So Far Gone or 2011’s Take Care, back when he was a fresh-faced prodigy in touch with his sensitive side.
It’s a relief, then, that Drake knows that nostalgia is his most valuable trick tonight. And he wields it wisely in this setlist chock full of songs from his most adored albums. He rallies through a trifecta of bubbly summer hits: “Marvin’s Room”; “Hold On, We’re Going Home”; “Passionfruit”.
Sentiment is packed in at every opportunity, especially when it comes to his special guests. The crowd erupts when Bobby Valentino arrives onstage to perform his 2005 R&B classic “Slow Down”. Bobby is followed by Baltimore R&B legend Mario, who serenades us with the romantic “Let Me Love You” from 2004 before tagging in California singer Giveon for his 2020 Drake collab “Chicago Freestyle”. Next up is Bryson Tiller who bounds onto the stage with his 2015 hit “Exchange”. The crowd is sent into overdrive when Lauryn Hill arrives onstage at the end of the set, for the first joint performance of Drake’s 2018 chart-topper “Nice For What” (which samples Hill’s 1998 song “Ex-Factor”). It’s an impressive roll call – and proof that Drake isn’t afraid to wield the power of his address book when he needs it the most.
But nostalgia is only so powerful for so long. I should mention here that Drake’s entire set is split with fellow Canadian rapper PARTYNEXTDOOR, his collaborator on $ome $exy $ongs 4 U. On stage, Party mainly serves as Drake’s autotuned, adlib-wielding apprentice rather than his creative equal and the crowd appear disinterested as the pair rattle through their new material to round off the set, which, to the uninitiated, sounds like a garbled mixture of pitch-corrected groans. Thank God for the hits.
