In September 2007, a release date showdown between Kanye West and 50 Cent helped vault Kanye to the top of the charts (50 surely benefitted, but his Curtis still came in at No. 2 to Kanye’s Graduation). Fourteen years later, another Kanye feud—this time a fight with Drake that goes back years—appears poised to do the same with their looming releases. The two megastars keep finding new ways to jab at each other. What does it all mean? And what impact might it have on the rap ecosystem at large?
West is currently gearing up to put out his tenth studio album, *DONDA—*or at least to play it live, again, this time in a triumphant Chicago homecoming at the city’s football stadium. Drake, meanwhile, continues to bounce around town with a heart shaved into his head to promote Certified Lover Boy, his sixth LP that he said in a July radio appearance was “cooked” (translation: finished). Naturally, the two are fighting again: most recently, through passive aggressive comments via their entourage, social media, and even on wax, about whose event album gets to close out summer 2021.
The bad blood between the two hip-hop superstars goes back years and involves a slew of ancillary figures. Its recent iteration dates back a fight in 2018 over the beat that would become Kanye’s “Lift Yourself,”, which Drake wanted for himself, but West used as the canvas for a bizarre scatalogical freestyle.
From there, Pusha-T picked at the old scab of Drake’s ghostwriting allegations on the Kanye-produced “Infrared,” prompting Drake to return fire with “Duppy,” where he bragged about writing for West on The Life of Pablo. “I’ve done things for him I thought that he never would need/Father had to stretch his hands out and get it from me,” he says.
We all know what happened next. On “The Story of Adidon,” Pusha blasted Drake for keeping the identity of his son hidden, and planning to use him as part of a rumored Adidas campaign. According to J Prince, Drake had an atomic diss track that would have “ended [Pusha’s] career” and also done major damage to West, but he decided to shelve it.
Tempers cooled some throughout 2018, with occasional flare-ups through West’s Twitter and his appearance on David Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, where West referred to Drake as “an artist which I will not mention because I’m not allowed to mention him or any of his family members.”
This latest phase of the West-Drake saga began with something of a red herring. A tweet from well-known music industry personality Karen Civil claimed that the two had patched up their relationship, and that Drake would not pull any chicanery by releasing Certified Lover Boy on DONDA’s initial July 23 release date. Unsubstantiated reports from popular Instagram gossip account Deuxmoi even alleged the two had new collaborations in the chamber.
That peace didn’t last very long. The July 22 version of DONDA contained bars on two different songs that could be taken as subliminal shots Drake. On “Pure Souls” West raps, “I can give a dollar to every person on Earth/Man, it’s gotta be God’s plan/Man I swear these boys keep playin/We gon have to square up then.” (In the “God’s Plan” video, Drake gave away $1 million to unsuspecting strangers.) And most notably, on “Junya,” West warns, “Move out of the way of my release/Tryna get me off my Qs and Ps/Why can’t losers never lose in peace?/Ain’t nobody ’round me losing sleep.” One week later, Drake countered saying his album was on the horizon, and seemed to threaten “anyone in the way,” potentially including West.
From there, entourage members on both sides started chirping at each other on social media, as sure a sign as any that shit was getting real. Longtime Kanye confidant Don C took a jab at Drake’s new Nike sneaker on IG, prompting Drake’s loyal muscle Chubbs to reply, “See us outside.” (Drake, cryptically, also jumped into the fray with laughing and blind man emojis.) Rick Ross, who has worked with both artists, said “I love it” of the beef in an appearance on SiriusXM’s The Mike Muse Show, and added that Drake shared a cryptic text with him.
“He said, ‘Everything is unfolding. I’m about to be as free as a bird.’ And he put the caption with the owl,” Ross says. “And I just, I couldn’t do nothing but put ‘Hahahaha’ because to me, I understand the genius to both of these artists, and I understand this is nothing personal to them. This is two levels of creativity inspiring each other.”
Drake then brought the conversation back to wax (and mentioned West by name) in a verse on Trippie Redd’s “Betrayal,” released on August 20. “All these fools I’m beefin’ that I barely know/Forty-five, forty-four, let it go/Ye ain’t changin’ shit for me, it’s set in stone,” he says, alluding West and Pusha-T’s ages, as well as the incessant speculation over release dates. Kanye collaborator Consequence responded specifically to these bars on Twitter, writing “Fuck a Betrayal. It’s the Disrespect for me dawg.”
Then, as they so often do, things got nuclear in the group chat. On August 21, West briefly shared a screenshot of his phone on Instagram, specifically a nine member group text that featured Pusha-T and people by the initials J, M, B, V, F, B, T—and, most importantly, D (thought widely to be Drake himself).
West posted a picture of Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, and wrote, “I live for this. I’ve been fucked with by nerd ass jock n***as like you my whole life. You will never recover. I promise you.”
A few days later, on August 23, West appeared to truly go “Joker mode” by sharing what seemed to be Drake’s Toronto address in an Instagram post he eventually deleted. The Canadian rapper downplayed the leak by posting a video of himself chuckling on Instagram later that night.
The most consistent quality about the DONDA rollout has been West’s propensity for tweaks, so don’t be surprised if he adds more fuel to the fire in short order. As for Drake? His 2018 record Scorpion was loaded with lyrics many thought took Kanye and co. to task, and he’s never shied away from provocative lyrics that send the music internet into a tizzy.
Since we’ve heard very little of Certified Lover Boy—but we know it’s “cooked”—the appearance of any Kanye-related lyrics referencing the events of the last few weeks would imply that Drake went back to the studio to update it. Kanye’s focus, meanwhile, is seemingly on putting together a spectacle for his latest show. Pusha-T has remained silent on the matter—but, it should be noted, he’s also finishing up his own album. Three years ago he was the match that sparked Kanye and Drake’s cold war into a full on inferno. He’s just one of several wild cards that could make this weekend memorable one way or the other.
There will inevitably be another chapter in the storied Drake-Kanye rivalry, and both parties are surely hoping the animosity fuels the kind of sales spike West and 50 Cent enjoyed all those years ago. But West won that battle with a resounding victory. If the two albums do go head-to-head this weekend, it’s unclear who will emerge victorious this time around.