Drake's fans posted images of the rapper on his CN Tower during his OVOFest
Photo Credit: CBC / (@RapDirect_/Twitter

Drake takes Toronto with new store and great show

Drake, the Toronto singer and rapper, who’s become a global sensation, wowed the hometown crowd last night at his eighth annual OVOFest.

The master of the acronym, OVO, stands for “October’s Very Own”, referring to Aubrey Drake Graham’s birthday on October 24th, 1986.

Drake’s promotional video for the store opening that coincided with his eighth annual OVO Fest weekend. © OVO/Vimeo

It’s also the name of his recording label, his clothing line, and the stores.

Oliver El-Khatib, Drake’s manager and OVO’s co-founder, was the visionary behind the stores.

And the brilliant marketing continued with the opening of a flagship location over this past weekend at Yorkdale.

More than 600 fans waited in line overnight in the mall to be among the first to enter the shop on Saturday morning.

Drake’s love for place was on vivid display with a mock-up of the city’s iconic CN Tower as a feature of the show.

At the storied amphitheatre venue on Toronto’s lake shore, that was once known as Ontario Place, Drake shared the stage with Partynextdoor, DVSN, Majid Jordan and Roy Woods.

His career began on the Canadian teen drama, ‘DeGrassi: the Next Generation‘.

This version of the popular Canadian TV franchise was a big hit in Canada and the United States, and 140 other countries around the world.

It ran from October 2001 until August of 2015.  But Drake exited somewhere in 2009 when the music began to take over.

In 2015 Drake released If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, and it topped the Billboard charts making him the first rapper to ever break into the top 100 artists.

This year, he released More Life, his seventh consecutive number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and reached multiple streaming records.

Almost a billionaire, with a net worth estimated at $90 million, Drake is currently building a new mansion in the city’s tony Bridle Path area, the neighbourhood that was once home to Prince.

As for the fans, Omar Hassan lined up at 6 p.m. Friday and didn’t get into the OVO store until 11 a.m. Saturday.

He told Jaren Kerr, of The Toronto Star that he plans to resell some of the items he bought.

When asked what he thought of the store, when some other customers described it as small, Hassan said its gold and white interior looked like a “rich person’s closet.”

(With files from the CBC and The Toronto Star)

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