About

Views from the 6 Cover Parodies are images which have been photoshopped to add an image of the rapper Drake sitting on a ledge, which was originally featured in that artists' fourth studio album cover.

Origin

On April 24th, 2016, Drake announced via Twitter that the cover of his fourth studio album, Views from the 6 would feature a photograph of him sitting on the edge of the top of Toronto's famous CN Tower. The tweet received over 131,000 retweets and 150,000 likes in 24 hours.^[1]

Spread

Many of the initial photoshops were direct replies to Drake's initial tweet, which was posted at 9:01 pm. The first known edit appeared at 9:14 pm, by user HeadphoneJones_, who posted the image of Drake superimposed onto an advertisement for the film Ant-Man which also features the rapper T.I. The tweet received 581 retweets and 316 likes. The same user posted several more edits in quick succession.^[2]

More photoshops filled the thread quickly. At 9:34, user zachlassen posted an edit which referenced Can You Please Photoshop the Sun Between My Fingers?, which received 21 likes and 8 retweets.^[3]

At 9:42 pm, the Seinfeld2000 parody Twitter account posted an edit in which Drake is sitting on the sign for Tom's Restaurant, the iconic dinner from the sitcom. The tweet received 631 retweets and over 1,200 likes.^[4]

Users also began posting parodies outside the Twitter reply thread, often using the hashtag #Viewsfromthe6, which is also used for general discussion about the album.^[5] The meme was covered in several popular news outlets, including the music magazine Fader^[6] and the Toronto television statement CTV.^[7]

On April 25th, the official Twitter for the CN Tower confirmed that the photo was in fact photoshopped. The tweet gained 350 retweets.

DrakesViews.com Generator

Also on April 25th, 2016, the website DrakesViews.com^[8] was launched by the Toronto-based media company The Young Astronauts, which provides a web application allowing users to generate their own parody images of the album cover (shown below).

Meanwhile, the company launched the @drizzysviews^[10] Instagram feed, featuring parody images created with the web app (shown below). The following day, the site was submitted to the /r/Toronto^[9] subreddit, where several users replied with various images made with the generator.

Various Examples

External References