When Drake turns up at your local club
- Published
Niket Bhatti doesn't usually go to Club Republic in Leicester on a Thursday night but this week he made an exception.
There'd been rumours that Drake was going to turn up at the small venue and Niket is a massive fan.
Many didn't believe the three-time Grammy award winner would actually show at the 2,000 capacity club.
He'd made a similar promise in 2017, and not turned up.
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Niket took a gamble though and it paid off. He arrived at 23:00 GMT, shortly after Drake had posted a picture of the flyer for the aftershow in Leicester.
He then had to wait over two hours before Drake came on stage at 01:20 GMT.
The Canadian rapper had been playing to a crowd of 16,000 earlier in the night in Birmingham as part of his Assassination Vacation tour.
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"The build-up was insane," Niket explains. "It's like they kept prolonging it. I was having doubts as well. Some people were like he's not going to turn up."
Student Diya Rajesh was also sceptical about whether he would actually perform at such a small venue.
She says: "Someone on the stage said Drake is in the building and then everyone was really excited and then he came out."
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"He was just like 'Hi Leicester' and then he performed a couple of songs."
Drake played a number of his biggest hits, including God's Plan, and Nonstop.
"It was really good," says Diya. "It was way better than I even expected because it was just the fact that we really didn't think he would turn up and he actually did.
"And also because it was quite a small venue we were really close to him."
For Niket, it was a night that he will never forget: "For a small city like Leicester it was just amazing. No-one was expecting that."
But spare a thought for those who decided not to go to the club because they didn't believe Drake would turn up...
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- Published22 January 2019
- Published14 February 2019
