(KRON) “Looking… I said looking for revenge all summer sixteen, all summer sixteen, playing dirty, not clean…”
Suddenly, Drake emerged from a fog-filled stage as the word “REVENGE” engulfed in flames illuminated his silhouette. The first SOLD-OUT show from his “Summer Sixteen Tour” at Oracle Arena in Oakland was off to a phenomenal start.
It is not surprising that the versatile 29-year-old Canadian would sell out two dates at the Oracle, considering that the Summer Sixteen Tour is a coveted ticket (much like Beyonce’s Formation World Tour, and Adele’s Live 2016.) Oakland was also the perfect city to kick-off a four-date stint in the Bay Area. Whenever Drake comes to town, he is seen around local Oakland shops like Brown Sugar Kitchen.
As with every tour stop, he wears a jersey representative of the city where he is performing, As such, Drake wore a Warriors jersey, but not just any jersey; He rocked that of newly signed player Kevin Durant, who was a special guest at the show. KD joined Drake on stage, and the introduction broke the “ROARacle” into screams and applause from the over 15,000 fans in attendance.Drake wasted no time to jump right into the extensive setlist, which included a repertoire of roughly 40 songs that kept everyone on their feet. All throughout the show, fans sang along to every song. “Started From The Bottom”, “Hold On We’re Going Home” both from his third album
“HYFR”, “The Motto”, “Right Hand”, “0 to 100”even “For Free”, a song off of DJ Khaled’s
album.Drake, of course, included tracks from his latest album
, “Pop Style, “9”, “Hotline Bling.” It was during the performance of the latter that a perfectly orchestrated array of illuminated globes dropped from the ceiling, bobbing to the beat of of the music. The spectacular display went along with the giant moving screens on the stage that served as the perfect backdrop. During a portion of the show, Drake got in a cage and floated around the arena, pointing out fans in the crowd. “I see you wearing Kaepernick’s jersey. I see you baby girl in the blue dress.” This was certainly a highlight for those fans he singled-out.
He showed tremendous love for Oakland, and for Bay Area music scene as a whole. “I put my money on Oakland being the the loudest show of this entire tour,” he told the crowd. What better way to show how influential Bay Area music is than to pay respect to the late rapper Mac by breaking out into the “Thizzle Dance.”The buzzkill of the show was when co-headliner Future stepped on the stage. Sure, the Atlanta native has radio hits, but after the third song, many were over his set, which was rather long and completely changed the mood inside the arena. Thankfully, Drake came back to save the rest of the night and performed tracks from their collaborative mixtape,
, “Jumpman” and “Rings.”There was chatter throughout the arena as to whether or not a Bay Area artist, or even Rihanna, would make a surprise appearance, but it was not the case. Although, he mentioned Rihanna while he performed songs from his duets with the Barbados beauty.
Rather than an encore, the two-hour set concluded with Drake telling the crowd to show love to one another, to remember what a great night they had experienced together inside the Oracle, and to continue the good vibes long after the show ended. This was a magnificent way to end the night, considering the current state of the political climate in the country.
During night two at Oracle, Drake brought out “Bay Kings” Stephen Curry and Draymond Green as special guests. There were also performances by Bay Area artists Mistah Fab, Too $hort and Nef The Pharaoh. Drake also invited Wanda Salvatto (MacDre’s mother.)
The Summer Sixteen Tour comes back to San Jose next week, for a two-night stint on September 24th and 25th, and will conclude in Montréal, Quebec on October 7th.