enable rasterization

Turn on rasterizing to flatten the box view's sub-tree for better
performance.
set shadowPath

Set shadowPath to avoid an off-screen rendering pass just to calculate
the drop shadow.
Change label background to white

Doesn't affect the animation at all, but just on general principle,
make label background white instead of transparent to remove a Blended
Layer.
disable rasterization

Now that we're setting shadowPath, try disabling rasterization (as an
experiment).
re-enable rasterization

Ok, that didn't help (and seems to have hurt) performance, so re-enable
rasterization.
Avoid drawRect:

Switch from MyAwesomeView (implements drawRect:) to a plain UIView and
cornerRadius set on its layer
Experiment with masksToBounds

Turn on masksToBounds to see what that does to performance (Hint: it's
not good.)
Turn off masksToBounds

Ok that was a mistake. Disable masksToBounds as that just killed
performance. Performance is good where we're at.