Drake’s rap feud with Pusha-T gets ugly
By
RAJU MUDHARStaff Reporter
Wed., May 30, 2018
The rap world and social media are embroiled in the ongoing beef between Drake and Pusha-T as the two rappers trade barbs in rhyme.
With Drake preparing to drop his new project,
Scorpion, sometime in June, and Pusha-T having just released
Daytona, his latest album, which was produced by Kanye West, the music world could very well be gearing up for a summer with the highest-profile rap feud in years. To the average music fan, the 6 God’s level of fame is much higher than Pusha-T’s, although the latter is a well known figure in the rap world, particularly for his work with his previous group, Clipse.
Drake may be in for a rougher ride in his current beef with fellow rapper Pusha-T, writes Raju Mudhar. (CITY OF TORONTO)
While the rappers have a long and convoluted history — which includes both praise and insults — things have really heated up in the past two weeks. It started with Pusha-T’s song “Infrared,” off his new album, which references the longtime accusation that Drake uses ghostwriters for his songs: “It was written like Nas, but came out like Quentin,” a reference to Quentin Miller, a rapper who has long been rumoured as Drake’s ghostwriter.
Within a day, Drake responded with
“Duppy Freestyle,” a song taking shots at Kanye West, and questions Pusha-T’s credibility and history as a drug dealer, something that has long been one of the main subjects he raps about. One of the lines in Drake’s song references the increased publicity that this song would give to his rival’s project: “Tell ’Ye we got an invoice comin’ to you/Considering we just sold another 20 for you,” implying that he helped sell 20,000 more copies of his album.
Pusha’s response was a tweet to
“Send the invoice for the extra 20.” So Drake did, creating an invoice for $100,000 for “Promotional assistance and career revival,”
which he posted on Instagram.
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That’s when things moved to the next level. On Tuesday evening, Pusha-T responded with
“The Story of Adidon,” a no-holds-barred diss track, in which, among insults aimed at his pride and multi-ethnicity, he accuses Drake of being the “deadbeat” father of a child with a porn star and takes a shot at producer Noah “40” Shebib, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, by saying, “How much time he got? The man is sick sick sick.” Shebib responded by pointing out the track came out just before World MS Day.
Likely the most controversial thing about “The Story of Adidon” is the imagery used to promote it: a photo of smiling Drake in blackface. It’s a real image, shot in 2008 by Canadian photographer David Leyes.
While the fuse has been lit between these two rappers, there is a long history between them and some of their rap affiliations. Lil Wayne is considered Drake’s mentor, and he and Pusha-T’s previous group, Clipse, also had some bad blood over various tracks. As well, Pusha-T released songs previously, like “Don’t F--k with Me” in 2011 and “Exodus 23:1,” which took aim at Cash Money and Drake.
Drake is
no stranger to rap feuds, although in the past, he has usually been quickly victorious. After Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill tweeted about Drake’s use of ghostwriters in 2015, the rapper responded with the track “Back to Back,” which featured an image of Toronto Blue Jay Joe Carter’s famous World Series home run trot after the team beat the Philadelphia Phillies in 1993.
In this case, though, considering the low blows that the two are already trading, and that both rappers have new albums to promote, this looks like it has the trappings of a much more incendiary feud.