No fake love between Drake, Pusha-T in rap feud
Rappers trade diss tracks as the 6 God is insulted for ethnicity, accused of using ghostwriters
The music world could be gearing up for a summer with the highest-profile rap feud in years as Toronto’s Drake and rapper Pusha-T trade barbs in rhyme.
Drake is 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.
To the average music fan, the 6 God’s level of fame is much higher than PushaT’s, although the latter is a well-known figure in the rap world, particularly for his work with his previous group, Clipse.
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,” he rapped, 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 West that 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 his track would give to his rival’s project: “Tell ’Ye we got an invoice comin’ to you/Considering we just sold another 20 for you,” it said, implying that he helped sell 20,000 more copies of Pusha’s 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.
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 Drake’s 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. “How much time he got? The man is sick sick sick,” Pusha rapped. 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 a 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.
Drake is no stranger to rap feuds, although he has mostly been quickly victorious. After Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill tweeted about Drake’s alleged use of ghostwriters in 2015, Drake 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.