Jessie Reyez Sings ‘O Canada’ From Atop the CN Tower

Toronto. Brooklyn. Always you wrestle inside me. And on August 17, you’ll do the basketball equivalent of wrestling when the Raptors play the Nets in a round-one NBA Playoffs game, live from the NBA Bubble. Because Canada wasn’t exactly able to fly singer-songwriter Jessie Reyez out to Orlando during a travel ban just to sing the national anthem before the game, she did the most extra thing to ever happen in the Greater Toronto Area since Drake made a Birkin room for his future wife: She knelt on the outside of the CN Tower at sunset, 116 stories in the air, and belted “O Canada” into a microphone. Why anyone would risk their life to sing the anthem on the outside of one of the tallest freestanding buildings in the world, when there’s a perfectly good revolving restaurant inside, is beyond me — but, hey, Raptors fans are a strange bunch (also, the restaurant is a tad overpriced). But at least Reyez actually got up there and did it, unlike the coward Drake, who probably didn’t even actually sit up there for his Views album cover. Reyez was most likely kneeling in protest, as she wore a mask that said “Breonna Taylor.” The only person who comes close to this stuntery is Tom Cruise, who scaled the Burj Khalifa for Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol. But he didn’t even sing! Game, set, match Toronto. (Is game, set, match a basketball thing?)