'VIEWS' from Here: Drake Sitting on Canada, Ranked

Toronto is on atmospheric fire right now. The long-awaited, highly coveted, truly GOAT album—VIEWS—has fallen from the heavens and landed upon the palace of the 6 God. From the ends of Weston Road to the bougieness of Liberty Village, Torontonians are wearing their Drake colours with full pride, heartily singing the Boy's songs and frantically trying to cop tickets to his summer tour (if you're reading this, it's literally too late, because they're all gone).

The wait for the album and the love for Drake certainly drove most of the hype, but leading up to the release of VIEWS was also a somewhat brilliant but mostly obvious marketing campaign—one that culminated in the memeage of Drake's purposely poorly-Photoshopped album cover, which sees him perched atop the CN Tower, Timberland boots in full swing over a worshipping city below him. As if "Hotline Bling" wasn't exploited enough, now everybody and their grandmother is #VIEWS-ing anything and everything they think is remotely worthy of people's attention (hint: it probably isn't.)

Now that there's a whole website devoted to making your own version of the meme, we figured it'd be best to breakdown the best and worst of the VIEWS tributes courtesy of Canada's thirstiest tastemakers. Here's what we found.

Morning — Tim Hortons (@TimHortons)April 29, 2016

By god, if some kind of Canadian corporation was going to meme Drake, you sure as fuck bet it was going to be Tim Hortons. Although they're somehow tied up corporately with Burger King now, Timmies has always and probably will forever mean "I am currently in or from Canada." But I'm not sure this works. This is King Joffrey sitting among the commoners. It's hard enough to picture Drake in the suburbs, let alone hanging at Tim's. I'm giving them 2 Drakes for effort and for the fact that they kind of have to do this.

— MUCH (@Much)April 29, 2016

There's a lot of power dynamics going on here: the image is from Drake's surprise appearance at the 2015 MMVAs (Canada's version of the MTV Video Awards). It's the second time he'd dropped into the show unexpectedly, because it seems that he's now far more of an icon than our iconic music channel, and very hard to book for something like the channel's biggest event of the year. It's fitting that VIEWS Drake is sitting on Drake, and not a Much logo, because Drake can support himself. Very honest, Much.

Early — ArtGalleryofOntario (@agotoronto)April 29, 2016

Are you serious, AGO? You're the Art Gallery of Ontario and only bothered to feature the damn staircase that turns up in like every TV series filmed in the 6ix (at least you could have used a still from Hannibal). Maybe get artistic with some famous art or a weird statue. At the very least, stick The Artist Formerly Known as Jimmy Brooks in (or on) a Group of Seven painting. Where's your vision? ONE DRAKE, although you hardly deserve it.

Listening to 'Views' in Brussels. — Peter Mansbridge (@petermansbridge)April 29, 2016

Leave it to Canada's Anchor of Record to outdo the corporate plebes by ditching the tiny Drake and just becoming the meme. Replete with a hashtagged humblebrag (#blessed, #Brussels) and a view of his own, this man has sad Drake-sitting down to a tee. But let's be honest are those headphones even plugged into anything or is Pete just recalling those glory days when Rex Murphy used to call him the '6ix God.'

The best views of the 6ix are from a Porter flight, just ask — Porter Airlines (@porterairlines)April 29, 2016

Let's be real. Drake has not been on a jet that doesn't have a private Champagne Room in a very long time. He does not fly Porter, even though it is very convenient for Toronto to New York getaways and you can get just drunk enough to make the flight tolerable.

We get what Porter is saying though. For 90 minutes we can all be Drake, trapped in a metal cage in the sky, taking in all the VIEWS to be had from 30,000 feet.

Happy — TIFF (@TIFF_NET)April 29, 2016

In terms of international awareness of Toronto, Drake and TIFF are reasonably at the same level. So there's something a little bit clever in TIFF saying "Our logo is bigger than you." But on the other hand, the former Degrassi: The Next Generation thespian known as Aubrey Graham has expressed interest in going back to acting lately. Does TIFF know something we don't? Might they finally have a Canadian-starring Opening Night movie that doesn't suck? The intrigue!

The — York Regional Police (@YRP)April 29, 2016

Cops just love to appropriate Drake. They think he's the 6ix Batman, sad lover by night, crime fighter by day. But he's a Batman in Bane's clothing.

I'm not sure where I am going with this analogy other than giving it a half Drake.

— Jose Bautista (@JoeyBats19)April 28, 2016

If there's any other Torontonian who can command a crowd like Drake can, it's Jose Bautista. Bautista's iconic bat flip last year set the city (and the world of baseball) ablaze, and it was conveniently timed around Drake's dis track execution of Meek Mill (via his "Back to Back" freestyle, which featured another famous former Blue Jay—Joe Carter—on the cover). Basically, bat-flip meme x VIEWS meme = pizza rat. It was beyond inevitable but that doesn't make it any less perfect.

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