Drake’s marching back into Rupp Arena. Will the Cats catch the madness?

Drake is coming back to Rupp Arena. More precisely, he is coming back to madness.

Of course, madness for the most popular North American hip-hop artist in the world is measured very much in Kentucky terms whenever he steps foot in the building.

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For the record, the multiplatinum selling, multiGrammy winning Canadian hip-hop colossus hasn’t played Rupp in nearly 13 years. Granted, that stat needs a bit of fine tuning. The artist born Aubrey Drake Graham has not performed a full concert at Rupp since 2012.

He did, however, make a surprise appearance at the arena in 2014 with the rest of the then-current University of Kentucky basketball team as part of Big Blue Madness. That’s the night Drake, suited up the same as the athletes, threw a famous air ball (one of his few career misses) and hailed Coach John Calipari as “The George Clooney of the Hardwood.”

Keeping the Bluegrass bond strong, Drake was back at Rupp in 2017, but again only for Big Blue Madness. Wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the decree of “Kentucky Dad,” he earned major accolades from Calipari.

“I want my players and anyone out there to know if you want to emulate excellence, yet maintain humility, loyalty, emulate Drake,” Calipari told the Rupp crowd that night. “If you want to emulate a strong drive, embracing the biggest stage and the goodness of a compassionate heart, you emulate Drake. It’s 2017, folks, and he still comes back to Madness.”

Drake returns to Rupp with latest album

Drake’s March 10 performance return to Rupp, though, will encompass a different madness from a different audience. His newest album, “For All the Dogs,” entered the Billboard 200 charts at No. 1 upon its release in October. The sales and attention it generated were, pun very much intended, off the charts — sales of over 402,000 the first week with on-demand streams topping 514 million, according to the tracking service Luminate. That served as the largest first-week streaming for any album released last year.

Such success had made Drake one of the popular stars of streaming since the digital format changed the face of music sales and distribution. Four of the five biggest all-time streaming weeks have centered around Drake albums. His 2018 work “Scorpion” is No. 1, 2021’s “Certified Lover Boy” sits at No. 3 with “For All the Dogs” at No. 4 and 2022’s “Her Loss” (a collaborative record with British rapper 21 Savage) at No. 5.

The lone non-Drake in the Top 5 came from — who else? — Taylor Swift and her “Midnights” album.

Kind of makes up for an air ball, doesn’t it?

The album prompted the “It’s All a Blur Tour,” which got underway in July — three months before “For All the Dogs” hit the streets, stores and streaming services. It has also made it tough for Drake and his beloved Cats to connect this year.

While in Toronto last July to play in the GLOBL Jam showcase, Calipari and the Cats were invited to Drake’s hometown $100 mansion which features an NBA regulation-size basketball court. Drake, though, left his guests to fend for themselves. He was already on the road.

Where will the Wildcats be when Drake’s in town?

This weekend, Drake is heading to the Cats’ court. Calipari and his team, though, will have concluded their season at Rupp a few days earlier with a game against Vanderbilt and the season proper the day before Drake’s March 10 concert with a final battle against Tennessee in Knoxville. That leaves a few days for the Cats and crew to crash Drake’s show at Rupp before heading off to Nashville for the SEC Tournament, so it will be anyone’s guess if the team and one of their most celebrated fans will meet up.

What’s for certain, though, is there won’t be too many tickets left for Drake’s concert if the Cats have the time to attend. As of this writing, only a few handfuls of seats, mostly singles, remain for the performance starting at $299.50 (excluding fees.)

How much does that reflect Drake’s ascension to stardom? Well, let’s look at it this way. For an April 2010 performance at the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Coliseum, general public tickets were $30 with seats for UK students going for $15. The show came a mere two months before the release of Drake’s debut album, “Thank Me Later,” which would eventually hit platinum status in sales four times over.

That tells us the story of Drake’s popularity, bankability and his ongoing kinship with UK basketball. But what about the music itself?

In a New York Times review of “For All the Dogs” last fall, critic Jon Caramanica remarked how Drake’s star status has done little to settle the dour lyrical undercurrents of his songs.

“‘For All the Dogs’ is an album full of caustic songs about heartbreak, which have added tension now that Drake is a world-beating pop star,” Caramanica wrote. “There is incredulity cutting through the sadness. These 23 songs are less generally wounded than the early ones that marked him as a signature figure in hip-hop, as fluent in vulnerability as bombast, but they’re scarred nonetheless.” Caramanica added that “where most rappers aim for the gasp, Drake sometimes pointedly goes for the groan.”

While the Times headline outlined such morbidity in more succinct fashion (“It’s Drake’s Season of Discontent, Again”), the online music publication Pitchfork was less forgiving. Wrote critic Julianne Escobedo Shepherd: “Thirteen years into his career, Drake keeps turning the dial of his music away from lovesick bachelor, past vulnerable playboy, and towards vile cretin. Whether this new setting is sincere, performative, or a bit of a troll, it’s at best repetitive and at worst severely off-putting.”

Musically, “For All the Dogs” is as accessible as the most textured turns of modern R&B. Lyrically, it’s as confrontational as such comparatively newer hip-hop subgenres as drill. And the whole recording is produced like a symphony, perhaps because it lists nearly 60 artists as producers.

But we’ve got one slightly more personal bone to pick with the Big Blue-loving Drake. It relates to an old promise, perhaps off-handedly made.

“I ask one thing this year, and Coach, you have got make it happen for me,” Drake told the Rupp crowd at Big Blue Madness in 2017. “This is the only favor I ask, and I want everyone to witness this. I just ask that before the school year is over, you allow me to come into this building and do a free show for all you students.”

Ah, well. Nearly seven years on, Drake is finally returning. But a free show in the midst of a sold-out tour? That’s madness.

Drake, J. Cole and Lil Durk

When: March 10, 8 p.m.

Where: Rupp Arena, 430 W. Vine

Tickets: $299.50-$461.50 through ticketmaster.com