Review: Drake and Future bring 'Summer Sixteen' to the Wells Fargo Center

It's true that clickbait headlines like "Drake is now more popular than the Beatles" - a calculation based on number of tracks simultaneously placed on the Billboard charts, a feat far easier to accomplish in the digital age than previously - wildly overstate the case.

But the larger point is unassailable: The 29 year old Canadian rapper born Aubrey Drake Graham who, yes, was once a child star of the teen TV drama Degrassi: The Next Generation, is really, really popular, and has a whole lot of hits.

That was abundantly clear during the sold out Summer Sixteen show at the Wells Fargo Center on Sunday, where the eager-to-please and happy-to-pander emcee, with prominently featured Atlanta trap rapper Future also on the bill, wore Allen Iverson and Julius Erving jerseys on his rival Meek Mill's home turf and might have set a new world record for inserting the word 'Philly' into his lyrics.

In 2015, the singing, sensitive rapper - who at one point Sunday rhymed as the words "Please Forgive Me" were emblazoned behind him on the video screen - topped the charts with two different two mix tape albums, including the joyous strip club collaboration with Future entitled fresh What A Time To Be Alive.

All that and "Hotline Bling": During Sunday's well paced, highly entertaining show, that Timmy Thomas-sampling ear worm was one of many superbly staged numbers in which scads of glowing orbs were strategically lowered from the ceiling in inventive ways to give the show a fresh, often dazzling look.

As good as last year was for Drake, the Summer Sixteen tour is a celebration of even greater ubiquity in 2016, with his overlong but hit-laden album Views, which topped the charts in its first nine weeks of release, racking up over a million copies sold and more than 1.5 billion streams.  (His sponsor, Apple Music, was advertised in a stage banner that was removed once the music started.) Including Future's 45 minute set in the middle, Sunday's show started with Drake's announcement that he was out for "revenge" on "Summer Sixteen" and ended with him declaring, as rappers are wont to do, that he is a "Legend," was a nearly  two and a half hour demonstration of the Toronto rapper's pop supremacy.

Throughout Summer Sixteen, Drake's been bringing special guests on stage: LeBron James in Ohio,  Eminem in Michigan. Philadelphia, of course, didn't mean a Meek Mill guest spot. Instead, the local hero was strafed with "Back To Back," the withering 2015 diss in which Meek suffered the indignity of the crowd enthusiastically rapping the infamous "is that your world tour, or your girl's tour" line in reference to his paramour Nicki Minaj. After the song was done, Drake stressed that no insult was not intended to Philadelphia itself, whose ardor he had fulsome praise for. "It's not your city. I love your city. You did that to yourself."  

Philadelphia did merit a surprise cameo, though. Just as the show was winding down, a blonde dreadlocked figure popped up on stage: It was Drake's former mentor Lil Wayne, who was given all credit as "the only reason I'm here," and with whom a new mix tape team up is on the way. The New Orleans rhymer threw down his "We Be Steady Mobbin'" and "A Milli" with the headliner acting as his hype man.

The rest of the night, Drake did that job for himself.  From the start he was a hyper-energized presence on stage, determined to make the most of his big arena moment as he, with typical earnestness, promised the crowd that he worked relentlessly that they would be treated to the party of the year "because you deserve it." Drake's special trick is that he's so obsessed with his own feelings that he frequently crosses the line into being just plain corny, while being so adept as a rapper and rhymer (and a singer who can deliver his own hooks, thank you) that he makes his boasts stick. "I'm too good with these words," he claims, correctly.

He also benefits from his pairing with Future, the gritty, hoarse, wildly productive mix tape rapper whose rugged music meshes surprisingly well with his own.   Future (real name: Nayvadius Wilburn), who wore Philadelphia Flyers orange and black throughout his set, makes music that chronicles life on the street. During "March Madness," a video showed him standing atop a police car, with locked and loaded guns pointed at him, a pose that the largely apolitical Drake could not credibly pull off himself. With the stage to himself (along with musical partner DJ Esco), Future drew from his 2015 breakout DS2 as well as his 2016 releases Purple Reign and EVOL, delivering hard edged staccato funk that never let the momentum flag.    

DVSN, the Canadian R&B duo fronted by Daniel Daley and signed to Drake's OVO Sound label opened the show with a short set of creamy electro soul, with Daley working the crowd and singing over beats of his absent partner Nineteen85, who produced "Hotline Bling." (Later, Daley joined Drake on the love song "Faithful.")  

The hip-hop party didn't really get started though until  DJ T-Jizzle warmed up for the headliners and brought the crowd to its feet spinning jams by Big Sean, Rihanna, and Kanye West, the latter of whose "Father Stretch My Hands, Part 1," inspired a most impressive spontaneous a capella rap along.

Previously: Frank Ocean's Surprise Follow In the Mix on Twitter