Drake was turning into a pumpkin Wednesday night at Consol Energy Center, about to roll past an 11:30 curfew with a half-dozen songs left on the set list.
“We got two options,” the rapper said, explaining he was told that, “You’ve gone over your stage time, so we kindly ask you to leave the stage. You can stay if you want but you gotta pay for it.
“I told my DJ, ‘Go get my credit card off the bus.’ I'll pay 150,000 to stay with you tonight! We in Pittsburgh tonight! We ain’t stoppin’ for nothin’!”
And then booms going off, ratting the walls.
That’s some good stuff, right here.
Drake knows how to work a crowd, and the Toronto superstar (and Maple Leafs fan) did it masterfully Wednesday night, arriving to a sold-out house sporting a Penguins jersey. He worked Pittsburgh into virtually every song, and when he ripped off the Pens gear, he had a Pirates Marte jersey underneath.
Drake launched with the diss song/tour theme “Summer Sixteen” that declares him at the top of the hip-hop game, and his numbers — 10 weeks atop the charts for “Views” and sales rivaling Adele and Beyonce — bear that out.
Drake is a complex character to rock the party, coming with tracks that are often moody, reflective and brooding on personal wounds. “Life is always on, man, I never get a break from it,” he sang dolefully on “9.” But when a run of songs got too sad or slow, like after “Feel No Ways,” he playfully scolded his keyboardist, saying “We’re in Pittsburgh ... we’re trying to turn up” and then they’d bounce into something like “Headlines.”
His production was unlike anything we’ve seen before, starting with a dark, stripped-down stage. Eventually, the curved screen behind him took on a black-and-white sci-fi movie look and boxed LED screens rose out of the floor around him.
He dropped into a trap door after “Faithful” and returned for smash hit “Hotline Bling” near a single magenta ball, which rose toward the ceiling, setting off a canopy of glowing, stringed balloons that rose and fell and moved into various shapes for the rest of the show.
During “Hold On, We're Going Home,” he stepped into a hanging basket that lifted him up there with the balloons to ride over the crowd and deliver sweetness to the fans: “I see you baby girl in the white,” “I see you came to the show on crutches, gotta love it.” On and on. It was like a frat party without the beer pong tables.
About an hour in, after getting the crowd hyped with DJ Khaled’s “For Free” and Fetty Wap’s “My Way,” he unleashed Future, his more ferocious tour companion. Packing a growl almost as harsh as DMX, the Atlanta rapper known for his trap style went hard on songs like “Same Damn Time,” “[Expletive] Up Some Commas” and “Wicked.”
They worked the crowd together on their joint track “Big Rings,” one of the most rousing songs of the night, and then Drake kept the energy level high from there with “Jumpman,” “Work” and “Too Good” (shout-outs to “Rhi-Rhi”). Passing that two-hour mark, pyro popping, he told the crowd, “I remember when this rapper from Pittsburgh, Wiz Khalifa, came out with ‘Black and Yellow.’ I was so jealous he had everyone singing about his city. He inspired me to do this next song about my city.”
He broke into “Know Yourself,” delivering the hook “running through the 6 with my woes,” which we’ve come to learn is running through Toronto with his crew.
He closed the show in slow mode with “Views” opener “Legend,” on which Drizzy appears to be applying that label to himself. But that’s just a cursory read of a more nuanced song. Not there yet, but Drake, with career-defining tours like this one, is definitely on his way.
Scott Mervis: smervis@post-gazette.com; 412-263-2576. Twitter: @scottmervis_pg.
First Published: August 18, 2016, 1:12 p.m.