Drake - 'Club Paradise'
Tour Review

I was bitter and heartbroken that I hadn’t managed to get a ticket to the highly anticipated ‘Club Paradise Tour' at the o2. Drakes biggest headlining tour sold out before you could say Aubery Drake Graham and I just wasn’t fast enough at purchasing my ticket.

On the morning of the second show I woke up to be greeted by tweets upon tweets about the show from the night before. I groaned as I threw my iphone across my bed and got up to start my day. Little did I know, later that day I would be amongst the 18,000 ticket holders. That evening I learnt that I had bagged myself a free pass into the show which was due to start promptly in an hour and from that second on it was all systems go go go.

As I burst into the arena clutching my ticket and looking for my seat, the arena faded to black and the heavy spotlights boomed onto the stage. As if I wasn’t excited enough, the band began to play the familiar sounds of ‘Lord Knows’ and just like that every single person was on their feet as the stage curtain dropped and Drake hit the stage.

Typically dressed in black, Drake kick-started the show as a sea of blackberrys and iphones emerged in an attempt to get a snap of the star. The set list of the show was rather surprising as I’d expected the 25 year old to start with ‘Headlines’. Drake went on to surprise me as he chopped and changed through the set list contrasting from the emotional, soft and love obsessed songs such ‘Best I Ever Had’, ‘Take Care’, ‘Practise’ and ‘Shot For Me’ to blending into the harder hip-hop tracks like ‘Stay Schemin’ and ‘I’m Goin’ In’. This is something that no artist to date has managed to pull off, yet Drake does it effortlessly and does it well.

The entire 90-minute set was packed with non-stop energy as Drake hop, skipped, jumped and bounced from one end of the stage to the other like a little kid. The crowd pleasers were ‘The Motto’, ‘Take Care’ and ‘Crew Love’, notably ‘The Motto’ gained the best reception with every lyric being mirrored back to the Canadian rapper.

If I am to give a real and honest review of the show I must admit that the show was not fit for an arena, rather it was best suited for an intimate small gig such as Hammersmith Apollo. There were stages in the show that was evident the audience had lost momentum and were not as focused as they were to start, particularly in the middle segment. This is likely to be down to the fact that the songs were pretty rushed and occasionally it felt like the Young Money rapper was performing one long song.

During the performance of ‘Shot For Me’ images were seen on the large screen complimenting the song with visuals of sad women downing shots to reflect the lyrics of the song of drowning their sorrows due to unrequited love. What a strong contrast to the visuals alongside ‘Practice’ of big booty females in thongs dancing and ‘practicing’ their enticing moves to the song. One for the lads clearly.

We also got to see Drizzy’s funny and witty side when he cooled down by shouting out the audience members that he could see making jokes with anyone he could see that was still seated. Drake has often been criticised by fellow rappers for being too soft, but on stage he was confident, cocky energetic, nonchalantly charismatic and super-sweary as he introduced himself to the crowd by saying “I go by the name of Drizzy Mother f***ing Drake” and asking the crowd “How the f*** are ya’ll feelin right now?”

What I personally loved about the show was the overall atmosphere and the energy. In many ways it united so many different people from different backgrounds who would never be found under one roof and one time. The diversity of the crowd was not what would typically be expected from a  rap/hip-hop artist.

At one-stage the super-trim looking Drake held up a shot glass and toasted to his sell out show and encouraged everyone to have a drink and have a good time. That is exactly what everyone did.

Everybody in the arena, whether it was a mum accompanying her young teenage daughter, a group of love struck teens coming to watch their first celeb crush live, a group of hipsters from Shoreditch or a hip-hop and rap fans; everyone under that roof was on their feet for the entire 1 hour 30 mins and singing every single word.

There was clearly one purpose and one purpose only that night, to have a good time. That night Drake proved to me he is the voice of youth Culture.