Drake Seemingly Takes Aim at Rivals Kanye West, Pusha T and ‘Ex-Musician’ Joe Budden on New EP
Drake decided to run it back and take a few shots at longtime rivals Kanye West, Pusha T and Joe Budden while he was at it.
Less than a month after Drake, 37, dropped his new For All the Dogs album, the rapper dropped For All the Dogs Scary Hours Edition on Friday, November 17. The EP, his third entry in his Scary Hours series, came complete with bars dedicated to his enemies.
On “Red Button,” Drake called out West, 46, for being false when squashing their recurring beef. “Every time you need me for a boost, I never hesitated / Every time that Yeezy called a truce, he had my head inflated / Thinkin' we gon' finally peace it up and get to levitatin' / Realize that everything premeditated.”
Drake and West have always had a complicated relationship, starting strong as friends and colleagues in the mid-2000s before everything deteriorated. The rivalry picked up in the 2010s with an occasional truce. The gloves finally came off in 2018 when Pusha T dropped the West-produced “Infrared,” in which Pusha T alleged Drake doesn’t write his own raps. After a few online disses, Pusha T, 46, then dropped “The Story of Adidon,” exposing that Drake fathered a son with Sophie Brussaux.
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Though West and Drake publicly ended their feud in 2021 by appearing together on stage for the “Free Larry Hoover” benefit concert, it seems that the duo are on the outs again.
Drake also took time on his new EP to call out Pusha T. “I'm in that f–kin' bag right now I'm a lipstick / Sabbatical in Miami, this s–t was holistic / Man, I remember n–s was jokin' 'bout some tick, tick / And now that rapper broke as f–k, that boy statistic,” raps Drake on “Wick Man.”
The verse references a line from Pusha T’s “The Story of Adidon,” where he mocked Drake’s OVO Sound cofounder Noah “40” Shebib, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2005. “OVO 40, hunched over like he 80 — tick, tick, tick / How much time he got? That man is sick, sick, sick,” rapped Pusha T.
Budden, meanwhile, got a mention on “Stories About My Brother” when Drake rapped, “I got two Virgil Benzes, one that I'm whippin' right now / And the other one, I'm keepin' in mint condition / And n–s bound to slip eventually like they sent permission / Imagine us gettin' our validation from an ex-musician searchin' for recognition.”
The retired rapper-turned-podcaster upset Drake after the October release of For All the Dogs. Budden, 43, said he missed “the Drake that was rapping for the rappers.” Budden went on to say that he felt like For All the Dogs had Drake “rappin’ for the children … the streams, the accolades. He ain’t trying to rap for me. I can accept that.”
Drake initially responded with a lengthy screed online, saying that Budden had “failed at music” and that the “Pump It Up” rapper “retired, and we never hung up your jersey. We don’t even remember your number.”
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Drake announced the new EP just hours before its release. “I feel no need to appease anybody,” he said in an Instagram video heralding the drop. “I feel so confident about the body of work that I just dropped. I know I could go disappear for, whatever, six months, a year, two years — even though I’m not really into the super lengthy disappearances for the sake of mystery. But, you know, ultimately, it’s coming to me in a way that I haven’t experienced maybe since, like, If You’re Reading This, where I feel like I’m on drugs. I feel like I’m in that mental state without doing anything.”
“I did those songs in the last five days,” he added. “I didn’t have one bar written down for those songs on the night that For All the Dogs dropped. It’s not like I’m picking up from some unfinished s–t. You know, this is just happening on its own. And who am I to fight it?”