Who Even Goes to See Drake Live?

Whether intentionally or not, you’ve probably been following Drake for some years. Impossible to escape and never fucking ending, Drake has successfully dominated airwaves and social media feeds for a good few years now, miraculously outliving his role as a paraplegic basketball player in an American soap opera. Drake recently completed a seven night residency at London’s o2 Arena, an impressive feat in itself, and I was fortunate enough to scoop up a ticket for the low, low price of a second mortgage. But this isn’t going to be a review of Drake’s concert, you can find that in any other weekly rag. No, this is going to be something of greater importance — something that will benefit you exponentially. For if you ever find yourself front row(ish) at a Drake concert, you need to know who you’re up against, and it may surprise you.

Arriving fashionably on time, myself and a buddy made my way through the gaggle of high-visibility OVO merchandise and into the shopping mall-esque heights of the 02. A number of pricey restaurants surround the arena itself, and upon balancing our limited options, decided that it only got as good as The Slug & Lettuce. Understandably, the wait for the bar was hellish, and blocking our view of precious nectar was a slew of tight black t-shirts and blinding amounts on cologne. We battled through the haze to the bar and settled for a pint and two shots each, a healthy starter before the main course that never came… There we stood, pint in one hand, shot in the other, ready to revel in the embrace of fellow fans of music we genuinely really like. That isn’t to say that just walking up to someone who’s going to the same gig as you and sparking conversation is the norm at these shindigs, but we like to flirt with the idea that we’d all, collectively and harmoniously, have something very obvious in common. However, as I glanced around the room of that clinical little pub I was struck by just how few people I recognised as someone I wanted to be around. At the bottom of the stairs, near the front entrance, we notice not one, but two pairs of identical Balenciaga trainers worn by girls who don’t look old enough to have a job, let alone afford the sickening retail value of a pair of, lets be completely honest, pretty average looking trainers. Elsewhere, a girl brings an ice bucket to a table that is already littered with Pornstar Martinis, a bottle top poking tentatively over the bucket’s rim.

Somewhat overwhelmed, gazing around this trust fund limbo, I start to wonder how I could have so grossly underestimated Drake’s audience. Don’t get me wrong — this was the o2 Arena, tickets priced at a hearty minimum of £120 — I wasn’t expecting a lack of people with significant money, but I expected some sort of humanity to the whole thing. Instead, what I realised as the Slug & Lettuce gave way to champagne bubbles and hair product, is that the whole thing was a huge farce. A giant flex grossly disguised as fandom; it felt as if everyone in that sickly little pub wasn’t there so much to capture memories as they were to make headlines in their Whatsapp group chat.

I feel at this point its worth mentioning that, no, I’m not oblivious to the fact that I too paid one-hundred-twenty great British pound sterling to be in that pub, just like everybody else there. That’s 12,000 pennies for the mathematicians out there. Quite frankly, a ludicrous sum of money for anybody to pay to see anything anywhere. I’m a chump, and I would stand proudly, battered Reebok to Balenciaga with everyone else there in recognition of that.

Its fair to say that we finished those pints at a violent rate, took a shot of Sambucca to the throat — ensuring it didn’t touch the sides on its way down — and stepped (admittedly quite excitedly) into the queue. Now, the security at this place is A1 and I can see in the not-too-distant distance a sniffer dog wreaking havoc on unsuspecting sesh gremlins. The girl standing in front of us looks around, aghast as the canine jumps at her friend, outting her as some sort of Pablo Escobar trailblazer. They’re both sent packing. Efficient, those high-viz monoliths, eh? In fairness, you didn’t need a dog to tell that these guys were blitzed. The girl’s eyes were ablaze and hollow like chasms, her feet confusing each other in their attempt to walk forwards.

Now, I’m not an expert on these things, but if my calculations are correct then I can conclude that these guys made a heinous mistake by taking a load of pills before going into this gig. Picture the scene: it’s January, you’ve just paid £120+ to see the biggest artist in the world right now, and over the next two months anticipation builds to incalculable levels. You’re telling all your pals, you’re boasting a little too much, and as the countdown to show day reaches single figures you can barely contain your little self.

Then its game day, you travel across big ol’ London, maybe wait in line for a while, splash out on some merch (why not, it’s not every day you can see Drake live, right?). And then, you take a pill, and like that, its curtains for you. Those dogs will sniff out a bag o’ drugs through a whole bottle of Chanel №5. You ain’t concealing shit.

Further into the maze of the o2 we trudged, and were greeted by a horde of people gathered drunkenly round a portable speaker blaring ‘Legend’ by Drake, singing along with cracked voices and eyeing up other gig-goers in a nightmarish game of ‘who knows more Drake songs, me or these people who want me to stop butchering a song literally everyone here likes?’ Interestingly, in the zig-zag of barriers that we were weaving in and out of, I saw actual camping chairs that actual people had sat in. I’m not exactly sure of the etiquette of these larger o2 soirees, but I’m fairly sure camping out overnight is reserved for festivals, no? Who in the hell buys camping chairs, lugs them across central London, slaps them down in a sticky queue and sits contentedly? I tried desperately to ignore these bizarre scenes, it was giving me the fear. But finally, as if the gods had heard my silent cries of desperation, we found ourselves walking through a large set of doors and onto the arena floor.

Fast forward. Drake is lost somewhere on stage. I haven’t seen him for a good fifteen minutes at this point because I’m too busy launching myself like a man pretending he has nothing to lose around this (actually quite large) circle pit. I don’t honestly remember exactly what happened here because adrenaline is an absolute madness, and my brain was focused solely on the primal act of moshing. What I do know is that I was shoved very hard from behind — not the shove that comes with the blessed comradery of a most pit, but the type of shove intended to start a war. And a war I did wage. I turn around and I see two women standing there giving me looks that would give Trainspotting’s Begbie a run for his money. These women looked barely older than girls but, as me mam would say, they were old enough to know better as, unmistakable, dangling between long ass nails, were cigarettes. Cigarettes that blazed as fiery as their scowls. Even with adrenaline and criminal levels of carelessness racing around my veins, I remember being pretty stunned by the gall of these two people.
“Oh right, yeah because that’s safe isn’t it? Having a lit cigarette in a confined space where there’s enough accumulative hair product to give a mannequin anxiety… seems like a great idea guys…”
I didn’t say that. Like a petulant child whose sand castle had been trampled on, I blurted out something along the lines of “are you f*cking stupid, why are you smoking? Seems, y’know, smart guys, well done.” My brain doesn’t work very quickly in moments of confrontation, clearly.

In response, these girls hurled obscenities, as is to be expected I guess… and who can really blame them? Who am I to tell them that they can’t enjoy a cigarette, and blow Audrey Hepburn-esque clouds of smoke while they gaze longingly upon Drake. All I’m saying is it seems slightly short-sighted to spark up in a (seriously) cramped setting in an environment that is (seriously) in need of some good ol’ oxygen. Then again, me jumping around like I’m holding a million pound lottery ticket (quite the opposite, actually minus a fair bit of money at this point) and using up double the amount of air to do that probably isn’t a genius move either. But in the moment, it felt right to throw a few verbal jabs their way, y’know? Sue me.

Anyway, as I decided I was done with this pleasant little interaction, I waved goodbye to those two girls with a hearty two-fingered salute, and promptly received a kick to the back of the leg — which I will be eternally grateful for that it didn’t hurt more — and a hale storm of verbal abuse that thankfully got lost in the static of the audience.

Not long after this, things began to get more out of hand. Surprisingly, not with anything I was doing. I got the distinct impression that perhaps this crowd wasn’t particularly used to going to shows, and it was very clear that the people thrashing about the circle pit were overly excitable. I can now definitively state that one of the most violent mosh pits I’ve ever been in was in fact at a Drake concert. Yes, that’s right, Drake fans are brutal bastards. One particular guy was, and I cannot express this enough, going BALLISTIC. This guy was straight up causing a war, and he was damn-well gonna end it too until a resistance formed, staged a coup, cut the guy down. Well, not exactly — turns out this fella could war with words too and there was some mild confrontation in the middle of this circle pit between him and those who were, honestly, just trying to have a good time, injury-free. Inevitably, Drake hands out another banger and before this momentous battle can conclude the place goes up in a whirlwind of sweat, punches, kicks and wet slaps once more. Obviously, as excitable gigs go, you end up losing these people in a riotous affair of trying to stay alive and desperately attempting not to fall over to the mercy of stamping feet.

Anyway, to conclude, I’ll say that Drake’s show was both the most clean cut and presentable show I’ve ever attended while also succeeding at being the most shambolic. Never have I felt more suffocated and out of place at a concert — don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed (almost) every moment — but it was packed with a crowd that only some sort of twisted nightmare fuelled by Red Bull and Snapchat could conjure up. Nothing against any of the people there, I mean everyone else felt perfectly comfortable, right? So what was wrong with me that I felt so worryingly out of place. Why did it press on my mind so? Who was I in this crowd that so heartily ignored one another, or else tried to beat each other to death? I needed some other sort of perspective on the whole thing. As the night draws to a humid close, Drake asks the crowd to introduce themselves to a person standing near them that they’ve never met before, a sign of unity and a nice way to close off a gig that got way to heated for what it was. ‘Sure, I’ll play ball’ I think, innocently, as I turn and meet eyes with one of the two cigarette smoking girls from earlier.

“Ugh, not him. He’s a dickhead.” She spits as she turns her back to me. Ah, there it is, that perspective I needed. Now I can rest easy. Role on the next one, Drizzy.