For Torontonians attending Drake’s History Hall on Thursday night, OVO — for October’s Very Own, the superstar’s enduring Canadian brand — might as well have meant Our Very Own.
You could even say that Drake made history with what he dubbed the “All Canadian North Stars”, a jaw-dropping assembly of local hip-hop and R&B artists who, as he wrote in his ad Instagram’s lineup, “have paved the way for all of us.”
Some of the artists launched hip-hop in Canada long before the city was called TheSix or even the T-dot. And while it was never mentioned, it was hard not to notice that the night was being filmed, possibly for a documentary.
Drake has single-handedly aided the careers of over 100 Canadian producers, beatmakers and songwriters by using them on his albums (according to a tally by music publisher Michael McCarty quoting performing rights organization SOCAN) – the majority of the GTA/Southern Ontario, in fact – and the All Canadian North Stars show was an opportunity for Drizzy to give flowers to many artists who have helped him along the way .
The three-and-a-half-hour concert, which ended after 2 a.m., kicked off Drake’s annual OVO weekend, which usually coincides with the end of Toronto’s Caribbean Carnival, which lasts a month. This year, he calls it October World Weekend: Road To OVO Fest Tour, as he plans to take his long-running international OVO Fest in 2024 for the 10th anniversary.
Announced earlier in the week, Thursday’s bill featured rapper Choclair; Keshia Chanté, R&B artist and Drake’s “first girlfriend”; R&B singer Glenn Lewis; R&B group In Essence (and solo Dru); Jully Black, Canada’s mighty “Queen of R&B”; Canadian hip-hop ambassador Kardinal Offishall (aka Kardi); singer/rapper k-os; “the godfather of Canadian hip-hop” Maestro Fresh Wes; Vancouver rap group Rascalz; Drake’s mentor, Saukrates; R&B-pop singer Shawn Desman; and the only American act, rappers Frank-N-Dank (with major associations in Toronto).
This lineup itself is a who’s who, but who else knocked it out of the park, the “+special guests” mystery as it reads on the show’s poster, out for their own mini sets throughout the night: Grammy-winning pop star Nelly Furtado; “Canada’s first lady of hip-hop” Michie Mee; R&B singer Melanie Durrant; and rappers Solitair (with Kardi), Ro Dolla, Jelleestone and Infinite. Hosting and DJing before the show and keeping the flow between each act was Agile and Kid Kut.
“It’s bigger for me than any American act, any show I could ever see,” Drake said early in the night during a five-minute speech in which he checked the names of people and places integral to Toronto hip-hop. Several times during the show, Drake said, “This is one of the best nights I’ve ever had in my life.”
“That’s the reason the city is the way it is, all these individuals here tonight,” Drake continued. “For real. I’m very grateful and I’m very grateful because if I was somewhere else I might have done something completely different, but thanks to each and every one of these individuals who played tonight, I’m where I am.
To put into perspective what some of these artists have accomplished, the barriers they have broken down and what they mean to Canada, here are some of their accomplishments:
Maestro Fresh-Wes was the first Canadian hip-hop artist to have a gold single, 1989’s “Let Your Backbone Slide” and the first black artist to receive a platinum album (1989’s Symphony In Effect). Kardi is also a judge on “Canada’s Got Talent” and, until recently, was an executive at Universal Music Canada; and Rascalz made history when they refused to accept the Juno Award for Best Rap in 1998 because it was not televised, but asked CARAS to reevaluate and invite them to perform “Northern Touch on the show the following year with The Circle (Rascalz, Kardi, Checkmate, Thrust and Choclair); for the 20th anniversary, the single was remixed and ‘The Northern Touch All Stars’ hijacked two minutes from the Junos with an impromptu performance, but made a point of mentioning that Canadian rappers ‘still struggle to get noticed back home despite the genre’s No. 1 popularity.
Tickets for All Canadian North Stars were only $20 (US$15), a wonderful freebie for such an epic lineup, considering the inflated cost of the Young Money reunion, which ran into the thousands due to dynamic pricing from Ticket master.
And although the new 35,000-square-foot, 2,553-capacity History — which opened last November in partnership with Live Nation — has permanent metal detectors at the door, security was extremely tight ( possibly due to the incident the night before at the Dua Lipa concert at Scotiabank Arena in which someone shot fireworks into the crowd); even reasonable sized bags were not allowed and security even inspected this reporter’s pen.
Inside though, the sold-out show was a spacious love feast.
While there were some grumbles about who was missing from the lineup – Ghetto Concept, Dream Warriors, Snow and others – it’s unclear if this was an oversight or just a unavailability given the short notice. The show was hosted by renowned DJs Starting From Scratch and Charlie B, as well as Drake.
During his speech, or as Maestro called it Drake’s “Shakespeare soliloquy”, he explained “This is probably one of the most important events, if not the most important, that we have ever organized for the OVO weekend, the global October weekend”, and remembered seeing Jay-Z in Caribana when he was 17 and Kardinal Offishall from Toronto was removed on stage. “For me, it was really a moment that unlocked something in my mind. It made me realize that all of this is possible.
Kardi, during his set, said of Drake, when they first met: “The only thing that was in his heart and in his mind was that he wanted to be the greatest in the world. Everyone has the possibility of becoming No. 1, but when they have a work ethic and they have motivation, when they have passion, when they have a team and they make good fucking music, it’s is how you become the best in the world.
And it wasn’t just Drake thanking everyone. Other artists also offered flowers. As Jully Black said, “Tonight is about collaboration and celebration, not competition.”
Among the highlights: Drake singing “I’m Like A Bird” with Nelly Furtado and saying his music “changed my life so much”; watching his brother kiss with the fandom and groove of Saukrates and Rascalz’ red-1 and onstage/on stage; Drake calls k’os “one of my biggest influences in my life” and performs “Headlines” on the spur of the moment; and the grand finale of “Northern Touch”, with a good fifty people clinging to the stage and the artists of the night joining in to the song that Drizzy called “our true national anthem”.
Drake’s showpiece show at OVO is Monday, August 1 at Budweiser Stage, a Young Money reunion featuring Drake, Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne. Hopefully, in keeping with OVO Fest tradition, there will be many surprise guests and some of the “North Stars”. Even better if Thursday’s concert inspires OVO programming to introduce the world to pioneers who didn’t have the infrastructure and internet power at the time to make them household names beyond Canada.
“I’m thrilled to share this weekend with you,” Drake said at the end. “I’ll see you on Monday for the Young Money meeting. I hope that you will be there. I haven’t seen my family in a long time so I’ll try to give you the best show I can but for now and for tonight it’s, like I said, one of the best times in all my life. Thank you for sharing it with us.
“I hope we can start again one day. I wish we could do this every night to be honest. … But thank you for everything you gave me, all the love, all the memories, all the The times when it wasn’t shit and we were all trying to figure it out, grind it. Music ain’t easy; never twist it; it’s not an easy life. So to have these great records, to have these great voices, to have these people still get on stage and stop shit, right now, we should be really grateful because a lot of places in the world don’t have that.
“Pop culture fanatic. Introvert. Devoted food trailblazer. Bacon geek. Lifelong coffee evangelist.”