The rules might be re-written by the vast majority now but at the end of the day its still Hip-Hop. You can't take away all the competitive aspect and replace it with pass aggressiveness. Drake certainly didn't have an issue at keeping it "Hip-Hop" when he went at Meek Mill verbally on the mic when his credibility came into question.
He kept it hip-hop then, but why not now? Why he gotta play the "He's beneath me, I'm not responding" card now? Budden sure wasn't irrelevant enough for Drake to be friends with him, appearing on his youtube channel, bigging him up and hanging out at clubs.
Just look at all the greats....Jay dissed rappers beneath him all the time (even if it was short bars/sublims).
2Pac at the height of his career of being the biggest rapper on the planet dissed fukking Chino XL
.
Nas was sending shots at mad underground rappers from Queens who had no mainstream relevancy (Lake, Cormega, Nature, etc)
50 Cent while on top of the game didn't shy away from going at anyone whether they were relevant or irrelevant.
Its not like Joey is a D-list rapper from Idaho who gets only 10 plays on his soundcloud lol. If Drake doesn't want to respond that's on him, but again he felt brolic enough to go at Meek, send shots at Tory Lanez & Meek again on Summer '16
Drake is only going to send shots at people he know he are easy targets. He can use memes against Meek, he can use his power to blackball Tory, but he can't do any of that to Joe to win.
He's gonna have to do something that is very hard to do which is to get out a pen & pad and write
But this diss track is better the one Joe dropped before. So many classic lines.....
