Drake Opens Up About His Feuds With Pusha-T and Kanye
Drake was a guest on LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s HBO show “The Shop” tonight, where he opened up about his recent feuds with Pusha-T and Kanye West. In the episode, Drake explains why he never chose to release another diss track in response to Pusha’s scathing diss track “The Story of Adidon”:
Rap purists and people who love confrontation, they love to say, “There’s no rules to this shit!” There are fucking rules to this shit. I'm gonna tell you something, I knew something was gonna come up about my kid. They had to add the deadbeat dad thing to make it more appealing, which is fine. The mom and dad thing... Whatever. You don't even know my family. But wishing death upon my friend who has MS... I study rap battles for a living. When you mention defenseless people who are sick in the hospital, who have passed away, I just believe that there's a price you have to pay for that. It’s over! Someone’s gonna fucking punch you in the fucking face. The shit’s done, the event’s over. I wanted to do other things. I didn’t want to further your career by rapping back to you and having this exchange.
Drake then confirmed that he recorded a diss track responding to “The Story of Adidon,” mentioning that he said “terrible things” in it. Maverick Carter then asked Drake, “You wrote the song and never put it out?” To which Drake responded, “Yeah, because I got home, listened back to it, and I was like, ‘Man, this is not something I ever want to remembered for. This is not even a place I necessarily want to go.’” He also gave props to Pusha-T and “The Story of Adidon,” saying, “The song, I thought was trash, but it was a hell of a chess move.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Drake explains the origin between his beef with Kanye. Drake says that Kanye invited the Canadian rapper to Wyoming to work on “Lift Yourself.” Drake then claims that Kanye did not reveal that he had plans to release an album. Because they were collaborating, Drake says that Kanye had asked him to be “completely transparent,” inquiring about Drake’s then-in-progress album Scorpion and its release date.
“I’m in Wyoming. I play him March 14. I send him a picture of my son. I tell him I’m having trouble with my son’s mother,” Drake says, implying that Kanye revealed the information about his son to Pusha-T. Drake then insinuates that Kanye purposefully planned his string of G.O.O.D. Music album release within the same time frame as Drake’s Scorpion. Drake continues, “I wake up, and all these dates are out. One by one by one. All of them around June 15.” Watch clips of the episode below.
Pusha reignited his beef with Drake on his Daytona track “Infrared” by poking fun of previous allegations that Drake uses ghostwriters. Drake then responded with “Duppy Freestyle,” on which he takes aim at both Pusha and Kanye. Since the release of “The Story of Adidon,” Drake has issued a statement explaining the cover art which features a photo of the Canadian rapper in blackface, but has not escalated the feud with another diss track.
Scorpion and Drake’s subsequent “Behind Barz” freestyle include what many listeners believe to be veiled shots at Ye. In a tweet storm back in September, Kanye apologized to Drake and took responsibility for “negative energy” and clarified his role in the Pusha-T beef.
