Behind rap’s biggest beef: Drake vs. Pusha-T
From Tupac vs. the Notorious B.I.G. to Jay-Z vs. Nas to Lil’ Kim vs. Foxy Brown, the history of rap is full of juicy beefs. Now Drake and Pusha-T have been fueling the flames of this fiery hip-hop tradition with their back-and-forth battle.
The feud has erupted like a volcano to a nasty new level with Push’s freshly fired diss track, “The Story of Adidon,” which was unleashed Tuesday on Hot 97.
This spit in Drake’s face — set to the No I.D. beats of Jay-Z’s 2017 single “The Story of O.J.” — launches low blows about the Canadian rapper’s parents (“Your father walked away at 5/Hell of a dad thing”), his racial identity (“Confused, always felt you weren’t black enough/Afraid to grow it ’cause your ’fro wouldn’t nap enough”) and even the multiple sclerosis of his producer Noah “40” Shebib (“OVO 40, hunched over like he 80/Tick, tick, tick/How much time he got?/That man is sick, sick, sick”).
Pusha’s track also accuses Drake of hiding a son that he supposedly has with a porn star. And the song’s cover features a photo of Drake in blackface makeup that Pusha claimed hasn’t been digitally altered in a tweet Tuesday.
This long-running bad blood goes back to a conflict in 2006 between Drake mentor Lil Wayne and Pusha-T’s duo, Clipse, over Wayne wearing Clipse’s favored BAPE brand of gear on a cover of Vibe magazine. Then Pusha-T and Drake threw jabs in 2012’s “Exodus 23:1” and 2013’s “Tuscan Leather,” respectively.
The battle later continued, with Pusha questioning Drake’s lyrical cred (“It’s too far gone when the realest ain’t real” on 2016’s “HGTV Freestyle”) before Drake retaliated by calling into doubt Push’s drug-dealer rep (“You made a couple chops and now you think you Chapo” on “Two Birds, One Stone”).
But things have definitely escalated in this most recent renewal of their rivalry: First, Pusha asserted in his lyrics on “Infrared,” a cut from his Kanye West-produced “Daytona” album that was released this past Friday, that Drake uses a ghostwriter, Quentin Miller.
Then on Saturday it was Drake’s turn, when he dropped “Duppy Freestyle,” professing, among other things, that Pusha was using this beef to pump up his sales: “Tell ’Ye we got a invoice comin’ to you/Considerin’ that we just sold another 20 for you.” For good measure, Drake even posted a bill on Instagram.
But as Drake prepares to release his new album “Scorpion” in June on the heels of Push’s “Daytona,” both rappers stand to benefit from the exposure. This ongoing diss-fest has gotten social media buzzing all about them.