Aubrey Drake Graham, a Canadian rapper; songwriter; actor, producer and entrepreneur, is better known as Drake, a neighbour to the Kardashians, Kayne West, Justin Bieber and many others. Forbes has estimated that Drake is worth US$ 180million. There has been an immense curiosity about where he resides. He is the owner of three houses in LA and another grandeur mansion in Toronto, his birthplace.
Let’s look into three of his houses; while someone follows him on Instagram, posts showcasing the house is the rented Airbnb.
The YOLO Estate in Hidden Hills | California
The estate began in 2012 when Drake purchased this 12500-sq. ft. mansion sitting on 3 acres of land in California’s Hidden Hills, and he named it after his hit song The Motto. He bought the six bedrooms and ten bathrooms house for $7.7 million from a saddle ranch owner.
It is in English-Tudor style with a warm-white modest exterior and wooden framing, making one seem to enter a simple, elegant house, not an aura of royalty. However, the mansion comprises a basketball court, tennis court, a 25-seater mini theatre, a private bookshelf entrance to his bedroom, a gymnasium, a screening room, a library, and even a wine cellar.
It boasts a luxurious pool outlined with cave walls, statues of naked women, wet bars, waterfalls, flat-screen televisions and even an 80-foot long slide, a resort retreat in the luminous water. It even houses a horse-stable to fit in five horses; though he doesn’t own any horses, he has a mechanical bull located within the estate.
Known for his parties, he promised the neighbours if his lifestyle disrupts their privacy or goes out of hand, he will buy their houses, and he did stand by that. Drake bought two houses in that area. He purchased one of the neighbour’s houses for $3million and another one later for $4.5 million, making it all together with a 6.7acre estate in Hidden Hills as his YOLO Estate.
The neighbouring property acquired by Drake for around $3million is another ranch style house built in 1955 and is situated on a cul-de-sac at the main road, thus creating ample privacy for him and his guests.
It is a four-bedroom open-plan layout with around 1-acre open space comprising a swimming pool, a pool outhouse and an 800-sq. ft. guesthouse. It is with hardwood flooring and loftiness created in the areas with high ceilings. Glass doors spill outside towards the pool. The cosiness made with one storey house is different from the earlier property. A simple palette adds another dimension to the master bedroom.
The other property acquired accumulating the YOLO estate is described as a “mini-Ponderosa” comprising a three-bedroom single-storey house built in the mid-1950s with a 2449 sq. ft. area. The house’s interior is not of his taste, and as luxurious as the other two, it features brick and exposed beam ceiling, flooring in a mix of brick tile and wood. The notable feature is the large fireplace that spans across the living room and the dining room. The property dots with over 2-acre of a mix of redwood pine, citrus and pomegranate trees.
A Limestone Shrine of Accomplishment, Toronto | Canada
The Toronto home of the mega recording artist Drizzy is most elegant, empowering, empirical and notably is something else than the other houses that this celebrity owns. His mansion is amongst the most prestigious neighbourhoods of Toronto, the Bridal Path, purchased with the existing house for around $6.7 million. After several years of making the house made its music video debut in ‘Toosie Slide’.
He commissioned the project in 2016 to Ontario based designer Ferris Rafauli to revive the old-fashioned home into a 35000-sq. ft. manor. As he was building it in his hometown, he wanted the structure to carry his legacy, have a monumental scale and prodigious feel, and stand firm for years even after he passed away.
The house derives inspiration from traditional Beaux-Arts architecture, marginally abstracted to instil the classic dialect of craftsmanship using limestone, bronze, exotic woods and other materials, representing a contemporary flair. “Inform, materials, and execution, the structure is a proper 19th-century limestone mansion. But the exterior profiles are more minimal, and the lines are a bit cleaner; this isn’t stucco, paint, and fake gold. That’s not what Drake wanted, and that’s not what I do,” says Rafauli.
“It will be one of the things I leave behind, so it had to be timeless and strong,” Drake says about his passion project.
This grandeur comprises a 2000-sq.ft. garage to fit the ten cars, with the front gate that opens into an austere black and white limestone courtyard, with a 35-meter-wide cul-de-sac for a smooth sail of numerous guests, and the property has extra high fences shielding the privacy. The house includes an indoor NBA professionally-sized basketball court over which looms a vast skylight, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a world-class recording studio with a 1970s style, a spa, a screening theatre, a massage room.
Every room is splendour with intricate marble and stonework, gold chandeliers, antique bronze-framed mirrors, massive bronze and gold beams against the limestone floors, glittering walls with trophies, statues and few other symbols of power. Indeed, the scale of the rooms reveals the grandiose as one enters the vast entry hall, clad in limestone with bevelled inserts of Nero Marquina marble beneath a faceted ceiling of antique mirror framed in bronze.
Drake being a music and sports lover, the house has separate halls for his entertainment awards and sports jerseys. The lounge room is hiding between the imperial halls, dingy but glittering ceiling stars and dim glowing yellow stone amongst the low couches.
Drake’s favourite spot is a 3200-sq. ft. master-bed suite with an additional 1100 sq. ft. of covered terraces. The bed weighs a ton that costs equivalent to one’s house, is Rafauli’s new line Hastens bed called the Grand Vividus. Behind the accented antique mirror, a channel-tufted leather headboard encompasses a bar. The eye-catching feature in the master bath is a 4,000-pound tub carved out of a single block of black marble.
“The bedroom is where I come to decompress from the world at the end of the night and where I open my eyes to seize the day,” he says.
A notable and epic feature is a prized possession authentic combination of art & craft, a bespoke psychedelic concert piano standing in one 44-foot lofty room, designed by esteemed Austrian piano maker Bösendorfer in collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami and Ferris Rafauli, in vivid, colourful skulls.
It is standing under a chandelier with more than 20,000 pieces of hand-cut Swarovski crystal, designed originally for New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, is the world’s second-largest installation of its kind. It is nestled in a portal rising from floor-to-ceiling with panels of Macassar ebony alongside bronze screens with bevelled antique mirrors.
“Once you’ve chosen a certain style, you can dance within that style,” Rafauli observes.
All the houses are well suited for Drake’s lifestyle and hold spaces where he can showcase what he does best, to entertain and mesmerize.
References
https://observer.com/2017/01/drake-selling-yolo-estate-mansion-hidden-hills-california/#slide13
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/drake-just-bought-his-neighbors-home
https://raptv.com/q-and-a/how-many-houses-does-drake-have/
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/inside-rapper-drakes-hometown-manor-in-toronto
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/tour-more-of-the-toronto-home-of-superstar-recording-artist-drake
