Month after diss track, Drake emerges unfazed with new album
NEW YORK — A month ago, Drake’s world was crumbling.
Now, he’s untouchable. Pusha T’s infamous diss track — where he was in full investigative journalist mode, divulging new information about Drake while also shading his mother, father and bestie — hit Drake hard. Drake’s reply — well, lack thereof, marked a low for the rapper-singer, who had surprised music fans when he won his rap beef with Meek Mill in 2015.
But Drake, who has been criticized by some as too commercial and too soft, is back on top seemingly unfazed. And those fans who enjoyed the revelations in Pusha T’s “The Story of Adidon” are likely listening to “Scorpion,” the highly anticipated, 25-track album by pop music’s No. 1 player released Friday.
“It’s not going to hurt him,” Carl Chery, Spotify’s creative director for urban music, said of the diss track. “If Drake comes out with his new single, you’re not going to listen to it? Everyone is going to run and play it. And it’s going to become an Instagram caption.”
“Scorpion,” which features songs with Jay-Z and a previously unreleased Michael Jackson track, includes the massive No. 1 hits “God’s Plan” and “Nice for What.” It’s expected to debut at No. 1, and it was already heavily trending on social media ahead of its release.
Over the last few weeks, Drake memes were also trending, but it wasn’t advance publicity he would have hoped for. Instead, the rapper — derided for being too sensitive by some hip-hop heads — was being roasted after the release of “The Story of Adidon,” which besides going for the jugular lyrically, also featured as its cover a photo of Drake in blackface (which the rapper explained was a publicity shot from his acting days from a project about the difficulties black actors face).
Pusha T started the beef with a line in his recently released album “Daytona,” and Drake responded with a whole track of digs in the song “Duppy Freestyle.” It seemed he won the battle until Pusha T released his track — and Drake went silent.
Damien Scott, Complex’s editor-in-chief and vice president of content and development, said that he thought Drake might have gone back in the studio to re-record “Scorpion” following Pusha T’s shocking revelation that Drake was a father (“A baby’s involved, it’s deeper than rap/We talkin’ character, let me keep with the facts/You are hiding a child, let that boy come home”).