Security guard at rapper Drake’s home hospitalized after shooting outside

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A security guard standing watch outside the Toronto mansion of superstar rapper Drake has been seriously injured after gunfire shattered the calm of one of the city’s most posh neighbourhoods.

Police declined to say whether Drake, the stage name of Aubrey Graham, was home during the shooting Tuesday, which happened shortly after 2 a.m.

Hours later, police cruisers and multiple layers of caution tape kept media and a handful of curious onlookers away from the musician’s 50,000-square-foot house in the Bridle Path part of North York. A number of small markers of the type police use to flag evidence were scattered around the front of the house, though there was no obvious damage to vehicles parked in the street, including a black stretch limousine.

Drake’s house has featured specifically in a continuing feud with fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar, with the latter’s fans drawing attention to it. Mr. Lamar’s fans have referred to the property in various insulting ways, including renaming the house on Google as being “Owned by Kendrick.”

Asked the extent to which the rap beef was figuring in the investigation, Inspector Paul Krawczyk said he was aware of the disagreement.

“But it is so early in the investigation that we don’t have a motive at this time,” he said. “And so I cannot comment further on that.”

A publicist representing Drake, who has also owned properties in southern California, declined to comment.

Drake, 37, who both sings and raps, has played a leading role in refashioning pop music, helping cement hip hop’s presence in the genre and becoming Billboard’s highest-charting artist of the 2010s. He first gained a public profile as an actor on the TV show, Degrassi: The Next Generation.

The feud between him and Mr. Lamar is one of hip-hop’s biggest in decades and has heated up in recent days, with thousands, if not millions, of fans fuelling the flames online. Across a slew of singles in the past week alone, the two rappers have exchanged serious, unproven allegations, ranging from domestic assault to the fathering of a secret child to the use of the weight-loss drug, Ozempic.

In a late-morning briefing, Insp. Krawczyk said investigators were in contact with the rapper’s team and that they were co-operating. He said police had video of the shooting, which sent the guard to hospital, but he offered no information about the number of shots, the number of suspects or the vehicle in which they fled. The victim’s name and age were not provided.

“You can expect to see an increased presence in this neighbourhood for the next little while, but it’s no different than any other shooting,” Insp. Krawczyk said.

The location of Drake’s house is easily found online. It has appeared regularly on social media, including in his own posts.

The property also got attention when he was criticized for tearing down a striking mid-century home and for successfully petitioning city hall to allow him to install fences twice what is normally allowed under the bylaws, a nod to his security concerns.

At Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital, which is not far from Drake’s home, a volunteer on site said Tuesday that the security guard was in the critical care ward, but a nurse said media weren’t allowed in the area. The volunteer said she had taken a police officer to the ward earlier in the day.

Prior to their feud, Drake and Mr. Lamar did a handful of collaborations in the early 2010s before undertaking different strategies to ascend to music’s highest echelons.

Mr. Lamar is widely recognized as one of the most skillful technicians in recent rap history, and has received global acclaim for nuanced portrayals of the Black American experience. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2017 album, DAMN.

These two different tacks have fomented years of arguments among rap fans. It turned into an increasingly direct and personal feud this spring, with the release of a pair of albums by artists Future and Metro Boomin, both of which featured songs that insulted Drake – including Like That, a single featuring Mr. Lamar.

The ensuing weeks have seen Drake, Mr. Lamar and a rotating cast of others escalate the dispute in song.

With a file from The Canadian Press