We’re all looking for an escape these days, virtually exploring America’s greatest national parks or drifting in Earth’s orbit with a NASA space tour, but an exposé on Toronto rapper Drake’s mansion released today from Architectural Digest is our latest and most favourite departure from reality to date.
Far from any kind of McMansion absurdity you can find coming from celebrity levels of cash, the residence of one of Canada’s best rappers puts most homes to shame in the 6ix and beyond: A 50,000-square-foot bespoke palace of limestone, bronze and exotic woods that’s tricked out with custom furnishings with materials like dyed ostrich skin for upholstery and the prized possession of a concert grand piano, a collab between the Austrian piano maker Bösendorfer and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.
Dubbed ‘The Embassy’, this residence’s absolute marriage of luxury and dramatic presentation was painstakingly designed by Canadian architectural and interior designer Ferris Rafauli and built as a monument to the artist’s life and career.
It’s the kind of place stay-at-home dreams were made of: No expense was spared on rooms like the home’s NBA regulation-size indoor basketball court topped by a glass pyramid, the master bathroom’s 4,000-pound tub carved from a single block of black marble, a two-story closet of amethyst and rock crystal that houses a massive amount of sneakers and a continually growing collection of Hermès Birkin bags, the perquisite world-class recording studio taking inspirations from the 1970s and London’s own elegant nightclub Annabel’s, a black granite swimming pool, a hall of framed sports jerseys, and an awards room that chronicles Drake’s life from childhood to TV stardom on Degrassi: The Next Generation and onwards.
Far from a meagre flex, Drake’s manor is a passion project that was built to last. “Because I was building it in my hometown, I wanted the structure to stand firm for 100 years… It will be one of the things I leave behind, so it had to be timeless and strong,” he told Architectural Digest.
While it’s a mind-boggling tour of one extravagant room to the next, the architectural profile is (unintentionally) telling: With every room fit to hold parties of dozens upon dozens (if not hundreds) of guests, it remains empty as Drake—like anyone else—is responsibly engaging in social distancing and keeping himself busy:
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