Drake Returns With Reinforcements at Wireless Fest in London

At the end of the first night of Wireless Festival on Friday, after Drake had been hoisted out over the tens of thousands of fans who had taken over the bottom half of London’s Finsbury Park while Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” blared over the speakers and fireworks brightened the night sky, he asked the audience, and also festival organizers, for a little indulgence. Curfew was firm, but art has its own clock.

Boom, there was Lauryn Hill, suddenly onstage performing the feisty Fugees classic “Ready or Not.” Drake had dropped down into the pit below the stage, and was looking up at Hill with joyful awe. He popped back onstage while Hill performed her biting kiss-off “Ex-Factor,” which formed the base for one of his breeziest songs, “Nice for What,” which he performed alongside her until the festival cut their mics off.

This year’s Wireless Festival was a three-day affair given over to Drake and his many spheres of influence, and in a weekend full of collaborations and guest appearances spotlighting various corners of his very broad reach, this was perhaps the most telling. During her career, Hill has been a ferocious rapper, a gifted singer, a bridge between hip-hop and pop from around the globe. She is the musician who, apart from Kanye West (now Ye), provided perhaps the clearest antecedent for Drake and the kind of star he wished to be: eclectic, hot-button, versatile, transformative.

Apart from a few dates on an Australian tour earlier this year that got cut short, this was Drake’s first high-profile live outing in over a year. That public retreat came in the wake of last year’s grim and accusation-filled battle with Kendrick Lamar — in which Lamar’s Not Like Us,” which suggested Drake had a preference for too-young women, became a pop anthem, a Grammy winner and a Super Bowl halftime showstopper, as well as the focus of a lawsuit by Drake against Universal Music Group, the parent company both rappers share.