JOURNEY FOR DRAKE
Rapper drops Toronto reference in Views album
When Drake first announced he would be releasing an album called Views From the 6, Rob Ford was mayor of Toronto, Josh Donaldson was a member of the Oakland Athletics and Meek Mill still had a career. For all the streams, memes, and T-Dot themes Drake has given us in the 21 months since, he has yet to create an acknowledged masterpiece, a work for the ages rather than one that captures a cultural moment.
And so his superstar status may hinge on the success of the album he drops April 29.
Views From the 6 references Drake’s personal nickname for his hometown, from its 416 area code. But in a last-minute change the day before release, reported by various sources and seemingly confirmed on the Facebook page of his label, Universal Music Canada, Drake has dropped the Toronto reference for the album, which is now called just Views. Here’s a chronological look at how Drake has gone from 0 to 100 to Views: 1986: Oct. 24: A child is born at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. His name is Aubrey Graham, but he will be known as Drake. Growing up in the Toronto-area suburb of Thornhill, his parents are Sandi and Dennis Graham, but he is October’s Very Own. 2001: Young Aubrey becomes a Toronto icon for the first time by landing a part in the first series of Degrassi: The Next Generation. He’ll be on the show for eight years, and his character will be shot in the back and confined to a wheelchair: good training for when, as an upand-coming rapper in 2009, he’ll fall off a stage while performing with his mentor, Lil Wayne. In need of surgery, the sensitive rapper blogs about beginning “the reflecting and soul searching” that his first album proper will require. 2010: June 15: After three mixtapes, Drake releases his official debut, Thank Me Later. He’s a star at 23, but typically, it makes him melancholy: “I wish I wasn’t famous/I wish I was still in school/ So that I could have you in my dorm room/I would put it on you.” On one prescient guest verse, Jay Z warns Drizzy: “Here’s how they gonna come at you/With silly rap feuds, trying to distract you.” 2014: July 15: Having released three albums in four years, Drake trumpets the title of his upcoming fourth. Views From the 6 is shrouded in mystery. Over time fans will scour lyrics, the October’s Very Own website, and a mysterious Toronto billboard for clues about the release date. Meanwhile, Toronto grows into its new nickname. Aug. 8: The Drake Vs. Lil Wayne tour launches in Buffalo, modelled on the video game Street Fighter, but with fewer flying kicks and more good-natured disses. Audiences vote for “the best rapper in the world,” and over time, Drizzy wins 15 shows to Weezy’s 10, with five draws. The pupil is now the master: 60 per cent of the time. 2015: Feb. 12: Drake surprise-drops If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, confusing everyone who was expecting Views From the 6; he explains it’s a “mixtape” rather than an actual album, as if he had simply dashed off its 17 tracks between Raptors games. Nonetheless, it goes platinum, and every single one of its tracks hits the Billboard U.S. Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. Back home, it’s shortlisted for the Polaris Prize and wins the Best Rap Recording Juno. Toronto references abound; call it Previews From the 6. April 12-19: Drake plays two headlining sets at Coachella, appearing on his own apart from cameos by Madonna (his look of disgust, he insists, is due to the taste of her lipstick, and Nicki Minaj (who wanders awkwardly on and offstage without performing). Reviews, for once, are savage: Billboard claims he “underwhelmed in every way possible, making very apparent that the Toronto rapper and singer is not yet ready for a stage this big.” After his first set, Drake admits to The Complex, “I took an L for the first time.” July 9: The hashtag #BlameDrake goes viral after he attends his rumoured love interest Serena Williams’ shocking semifinal upset in the U.S. Open, leaving him running back to the 6 with his woes. July 10: After a reported $19-million US deal, Drake’s OVO Sound Radio show debuts on Apple Music’s Beats 1. Introduced as a folksy way for Drake and his October’s Very Own cohort to spin music “from our heart directly to where you’re at,” the first show opens with a mix including two tracks by occasional Drake collaborator Meek Mill. July 22: After Drake fails to tweet Mill’s new album, Mill calls out Drake on Twitter, claiming he employs ghostwriters; he then goes silent as Drake releases two diss tracks: Charged Up and the hit, Back to Back: in the span of a week. At last, on July 31, Mill retaliates with Wanna Know. Drake responds simply with a snap of him laughing. July 25: The ubiquitous summer jam, Hotline Bling, is nearly Drake’s first U.S. No. 1, blocked only by Adele’s maudlin monolith, Hello. Triumphantly, though, the video makes a virtue of Drizzy’s dad-dancing and goes viral. He’ll tell The FADER, “he’s making a point of rapping over beats that are a little sunnier than he’s accustomed to.” Aug. 3: Having learned from Coachella, Drake makes his annual OVO Fest a victory lap, trotting out the likes of Kanye West and Pharrell Williams and projecting a photoshopped Meek Mill diss by his latest protege: 73-year-old city councillor Norm “6 Dad” Kelly. Sept. 20: Drake and touring partner Future release the collaborative mixtape What a Time to Be Alive, which debuts at No. 1, although critics are underwhelmed by Drake’s verses about money, strip clubs, and spending money at strip clubs. That said, Jumpman is so infectious that in 2016, it will cause Taylor Swift to lose her balance on a treadmill. 2016: Jan. 30: Drake premieres the Views track Summer Sixteen on OVO Sound Radio; it takes aim, once again, at Meek Mill, who had recently reheated the beef with a barbed freestyle. For once, Mill gets the jump on Drake, dropping a track that responds directly to Summer Sixteen just 15 minutes later. Clearly there’s a Judas in the 6 God’s camp; Mill cheekily claims it was Drake’s ghostwriter. April 4: Drake allegedly confronts the amateur photographer who snapped him emerging from a luxury helicopter on Toronto’s Polson Pier with identically dressed twin Swedish models. Apparently the key to the city (which Drake was given in February), can’t buy its citizens’ co-operation: one of the photographer’s snaps appears shortly thereafter in the Toronto Star. April 5: Drake drops two Views tracks: the major-key, soca-flavoured One Dance, which gives him his first Canadian No. 1, and the darker Pop Style, which features Jay Z and Kanye West and finds Drake snarling about how he can’t trust anyone. He also raps, “Got so many chains they call me Chaining Tatum,” which may or may not be intended as comic relief. April 25: Drake unveils the cover of Views From the 6, which shows him photoshopped onto the CN Tower, unfazed by the high winds. He’s starting at the top … and at long last, we’re here.