Drake Puts ‘the 6’ on the Map

If you happen to be one of Will Smith’s 73 million followers on Facebook, you might have caught a selfie the Men in Black star took on June 10 with the caption “Lovin’ the 6.” If you didn’t recognize the landmark in the background—the CN Tower, once the tallest structure in the world—it’s unlikely you’d have the faintest clue what “the 6” is. Unless, that is, you listen to the music of Drake. The 6 is the chart-topping rapper’s preferred nickname for Toronto, his hometown, drawn from a common digit in its two area codes: 416 and 647.

With a population of 2.8 million, Toronto recently overtook Chicago as North America’s fourth-largest city. It regularly lands in the top tier of global rankings for quality of life, business, safety, and real estate. Yet several city-funded marketing campaigns have done little to raise its profile or stop it from occasionally being called Hogtown. Operating without the blessing of government officials, Drake seems to be making headway where they’ve failed. There’s Drake flying past the city’s skyline in a private jet in the video for his song Started From the Bottom; here’s Drake showing off his 416 and CN Tower tattoos on Instagram. He hosts his own hip-hop music festival each summer, which turns Toronto into the center of the rap universe for three days.