Here we go again. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.

​To say that Drake's June 15th free, outdoor show at the South Street Seaport was cancelled would be an understatement--more like dissolved into a lawless riot. The cops eventually broke that show and the twenty-plus thousand people who came to see it up; after that, there were endless rounds of recrimination, blame, and most ominously, rumblings that future free outdoor shows in New York were in jeopardy. That turned out not to be the case. Except, that is, for Drake himself, who just had another NYC concert cancelled. Reports the New York Daily News:

More >>

Don't do this again. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne

​By now we know that things got so out of hand at the South Street Seaport during Tuesday's free Drake show that the police commissioner himself, Ray Kelly, was called to the scene. Given the fact that by that point, hordes of people were chucking flowerpots, plastic bottles, and metal chairs at one another, it only made sense. Ultimately, Kelly's cops were forced to quell the crowd with mace and, in a few isolated spots, their police batons. Not all of the ambulances that arrived on the scene went back to the hospital empty--seven people and one officer were injured in the melee, the police later said--and the final numbers are pretty scary: as many as 25,000 people converged on a space designed to comfortably accommodate 10,000.

More >>

​So. Drake (and Hanson!) was set to play South Street Seaport last night, for free, at the behest of Paper Magazine. It did not go to plan, unless the plan including half a song by Ninjasonik, enormous crowds, fights, chairs flung from balconies (yoy), Mace, damaged soundboards, and general calamity. Our man Zach Baron was there, and his dispatch is here. For further analysis, though, let us now turn to Twitter, because if today's calamity fortified anything, it's our faith in the wisdom of crowds.

More >>

​By 7:30pm, Drake already knew this thing wasn't happening, though he came through anyway. That was right around the time the cops began to show up en masse at the South Street Seaport, wading into the throngs of people who had come to see Paper Magazine's potentially ill-advised free summer show featuring Ninjasonik, Hanson, and, of course, the most popular rapper in the country, Drake. On the day of his record release date. It was a recipe for a riot, and the Seaport got one--or something that pretty closely resembled one, anyway. By the time we rolled up, a bit past 7pm, cops already had the outdoor venue surrounded; fights were breaking out all over the tightly packed crowd, and as we made our way toward the stage, a guy came past us running the other way, shouting "I don't want to hurt nobody, so I'm out!" Good advice.

More >>