In the 24 hours after Pusha-T’s Daytona arrived, Drake couldn’t help but feel sudden “shock.”
On the recently released album, which opened to glowing reviews, P licks off thinly-veiled subliminal shots at Drake on the song “Infrared.” The much-talked about lyrics go as follows: “The lyrics penning equal to Trump’s winning / The bigger question is how the Russians did it / It was written like Nas but it came from Quentin.” P’s reference comes from the now-infamous 2015 ghostwriting scandal that involved Drake and Quentin Miller. Taking some time away from album number five, which is weeks away from arrival, the rapper wasted no time with the clap back, dropping a swift response in “Duppy Freestyle.”
“Duppy,” which is Jamaican term for “ghost” or “spirit,” is just how Drake views his longstanding opponent. Over the three-minute, jazz-tinged production, the self-professed “6 God” expresses that aforementioned “shock,” calling out Push for bringing up Q. Miller-gate and then pulling in Kanye West, who, too, is no stranger to using collaborators. “I’ve done things for him that I thought he never would need,” he raps, before quickly clarifying, “Father had to stretch his hands out and get it from me/ I popped style for 30 hours then let him repeat.” Quick side note, Kanye, himself, even acknowledged Drake’s assistance on the Life of Pablo records, taking to Twitter to thank him in a since-deleted series of tweets.
After bringing up West’s ghostwriter history, Drake then focuses back on Push. “Don’t push me when I’m in album mode / You not even top 5 as far as your label talent goes,” he raps. He also went as far as questioning P’s drug-dealing narrative, rapping, “There’s no malice in your heart, you’re an approachable dude / Man, you might’ve sold the college kids for Nikes and Mercedes / But you act like you sold drugs for Escobar in the 80’s.”
The disagreement between these two rappers go back as far as almost a decade —a time when Drake was burgeoning on the scene with So Far Gone and Clipse were prepping their farewell on Til the Casket Drops.
As the story goes, Drake was originally set to appear on Clipse’s third studio album, specifically on the Neptunes-produced track “Showing Out.” However, things changed and that guest slot went to Yo Gotti. In 2010, the group were scheduled to hit the road with Drizzy as part of his Lights Dreams and Nightmares tour. Again, those plans, too, changed and Tyga went on to replace them. It’s also worth noting that at this time, Clipse and Lil Wayne feuding for almost five years (see: “Mr. Me Too”. So, those tensions eventually spilled onto Drizzy.
In 2012, Pusha released “Exodus 23:1,” a song that opened up Cash Money’s drama to the public. On the record, he famously alludes to the label’s contractual drama: “Contract all fucked up I guess that means you all fucked up/You signed to one nigga that signed to another nigga that’s signed to three niggas, now that’s bad luck.” A year later, on Nothing Was the Same, Drizzy would return the favor on “Tuscan Leather” with subliminal lines about “bench players acting like starters” and rappers “getting hype on tracks.” Following P’s darts on 2016’s “HGTV” (“These niggas Call of Duty cause their killings ain’t real/With a questionable pen, so the feeling ain’t real”) and Drizzy’s own on “Two Birds, One Stone” (“You made a couple chops and now you think you Chapo”), leads us to where we are today.
The war of words between these two is, clearly, far from over.