Rap Rows: Pusha VS Drake
For a while I worked in a shoe shop. It was the Brighton branch of a famous well-known brand which used a misspelling of the German word for shoe as its name, a choice of name which no doubt came back to haunt them when they opened a Berlin store. So many times I heard customers mispronounce it as shoosh, which was only humorous considering that was also the name of a trashy local nightclub, the sort with sticky floors and whose ‘guest take over nights’ featured members of S-club 7 and Love Island contestants. At this said shoe store, KPI’s and targets reigned supreme, and I was fairly good at hitting them, but there was competition. A Scottish sales assistant with a cute accent and a warm glow was always beating me, not even my back handed tactics of lying to customers or not telling them prices of the canvas bags that we had to shift could help me. In hindsight a diss track may have helped, blaring it through it the work speakers, maybe calling out a secret child she may have had or discrediting her past credentials. Fiery rivalries, such as the one we shared, do not only exist in the realms of confusingly named kids shoe shops though, but also in the swoosh dripped, white powder covered pantheon of hip hop royalty.
The year is 2002, the world has been gifted with LOTR: The Two Towers and cursed with Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Berlusconi resides over Italy and Brazil reside over world football and our story begins. Cash Money, a successful subsidiary label of Universal music releases artist Baby’s new album ‘Birdman’ which included a song titled ‘What happened to that boy?’ which coincidently is a just question to ask as Baby would later change his name to Birdman and fall into relative obscurity, aside from a massive legal battle in 2014 where as a manager, he was accused of not paying artists (something to bear in mind). The song featured Hip Hop artists Clipse and was produced by The Neptune’s, a production duo of Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams, who would later rank among the most successful production teams ever with a value into the hundred millions. The song wasn’t particularly special, but is relevant as it was the release which started our rivalry. The song’s controversy came when The Neptune’s claimed to have not been paid for their work on the track, a claim supported by the featured duo of Clipse, whose members were brothers/rappers No Malice and one of today’s main characters… Pusha T. The Neptune’s never worked with Cash Money again.
Fast forward to 2006, Kanye has meteorically ascended to god status, Italy dominate world football and Nintendo release the Wii. Clipse along with close Friend Pharrell Williams are still working closely together, and Pharrell especially is currently championing a new designer brand called BAPE, helping it cross from Japan and gain hype in the USA. Meanwhile Cash money, the previous antagonists, now have a subsidiary of themselves, Young Money, spearheaded by Baby’s ‘third child’ Lil Wayne, who remembers his mentors beef. So in 2006, Lil Wayne wore BAPE on the cover of VIBE magazine as a dig at Pharrell. This worked and triggered the original BAPE trio to release a song together, sung by Clipse and produced by Pharrell. The song ‘Mr Me Too’ was very obviously aimed at Lil Wayne and called out the rapper for wearing the Japanese design house. Later that year Wayne, in an interview with Complex would state that people thought Pharrell looked weird in BAPE and it was his wearing it that made the clothes look ‘hot’. This started the friction between Lil Wayne and Clipse.
In the following years, a tit for tat between the two rappers carried on, and this is where Drake entered the fray. Drake became label mates with/got his career kick started by Lil Wayne, and joined the beef when he released “Dreams money can buy”. The track, among others released by the rapper, took jabs at Kanye, Jay-Z and of course… Pusha T, which lead to where it is often claimed the rivalry started in 2011 when Pusha released “Don’t f*ck with me”. “Don’t f*ck with me” sampled “Dreams money can buy” and featured the lyrics “Rappers on they sophomores / Actin’ like they boss lords.” Which is an obvious reference to Drake, on his sophomore album, having the tenacity to call out the then ruling legends Kanye and Jay-Z. If “Don’t f*ck with me” was too subtle then the following years track “Exodus 23:1” would leave no room for interpretation addressing Drakes complicated contract with Young Money and with their parent label, rapping the lines “Contract all f*cked / I guess that means you all f*cked up,” and the bars “You signed to one n***a that signed to another n***a / That’s signed to three n***a, now that’s bad luck.”. Young Money and Cash Money always endured complex management and financing, with many of the artists signed having a go running the former and legal battles with the latter.
Over the next few years, the war continued between the G.O.O.D Music affiliated Pusha and the OVO sounds creator Drake, with each rapper delivering shots at the other through dis tracks or the odd few bars on songs. Some of the stand out tracks between 2012 and 2018 were Pusha’s “Your Favourite Rapper”, “Suicide” and “H.G.T.V” and Drakes “Tuscan Leather” and “Two Birds One Stone”. The gist of these tracks is generally Pusha taking shots at Lil Wayne and Drake using a ghost writer and Drake threatening with violence and implying Pusha is lying about his drug dealer past.
2018 would signal the beginning of the end for one of raps most infamous match ups when Pusha released Daytona. The album was hailed as album of the year material (although famously lost to Cardi B at the Grammy’s) being produced by Kanye West, Pusha’s deft lyricism shined, especially on the scathing dis track Infrared. Infrared was the most obvious shot at Drake yet, going as far as to even name check one of Drakes ghost writers Quentin Miller “The lyric pennin' equal the Trumps winnin’ / The bigger question is how the Russians did it / It was written like Nas, but it came from Quentin.”. Drake’s use of ghost writers has been alluded by rappers and the media for years, being called out by Kendrick and even Idris Elba in his verse on ‘Boasty’ by Wiley. Although Infrared was the first to name check anyone, prompting not only a harshly worded tweet from Drakes old label buddy Nicki Minaj, but also the retaliation song ‘Duppy Freestyle’ from Drake himself (apparently so hastily released on the urgency of Baby/Birdman and Lil Wayne). ‘Duppy Freestyle’ justified the use of Quentin “And as for Q, man, I changed his life a couple times / N***a was at Kroger working double time / Ya’ll acting like he made the boy when I was trying to help the guy / Yeah, who gassed you to play with me? / Man, you made this shit easy as ABCs / whoever supposedly making me hits, but then got no hits sound like they need me / my hooks did it, my lyrics did it, my spirit did it.” The lyrics also claimed to have got Daytona more sales and that an invoice was on its way to Kanye, charging him for the service. The song also controversially called out Pusha’s wife, Virginia Williams and his label mate Kid Cudi, calling out his mental health. An interesting story that is mentioned in the song regards the Pusha T signed microphone that Drake bought for $200 in the 2000’s in the Clipse-era. It transpired that Drake was a hard core Pusha T fan, buying the microphone to only later compare the fading signature to Pusha T’s career.
And this brings us to the final chapter and quite possibly the most famous dis track of all time. Kanye and Pusha T pulled no punches when it came to dismantling Drake and ending the rivalry with the release of ‘Story of Adidon’. The track used an image of Drake in black face as the single cover and to play on this, sampled ‘story of OJ’ by Jay Z as the beat, also explaining the name of the track. The song is relentless, it reveals a secret child that Drake fathered with a former porn actress, mentions Drakes parents and their break up, the financial state of Drakes contract with Baby, Drakes racial insecurities and discusses OVO 40’s (a producer working for Drake’s OVO Sounds) diagnosis with MS. ‘Story of Adidon’ name checks Drake specifically and is nothing short of brutal.
The release of ‘Story of Adidon’ ended the beef. In the aftermath it is argued that the mention of Virginia Williams and the mocking of Kid Cudi was what tipped Pusha over the edge and triggered the game changing song. Over the next following days of May 2018 Drake had to issue an apology for the minstrel style image, hip hop mogul J Prince (CEO of rap-a-lot records) made an executive call to Drake and Cash Money almost ordering them not to retaliate and Drake switched all social media activity to push his new album. The source of the information also came under scrutiny, with Drake trying to blame Kanye and Pusha shifting it back onto one of OVO 40’s love interests, the source still has never been confirmed. Drake gave an interview after in 2019 to Rap Radar, within which he discussed at length the famous rivalry and explains that a wait for DNA test results was the reason Adonis wasn’t mentioned prior and that the Pusha beef was his first loss in the sport of rap. Since 2019 there’s been an onstage skirmish where Drake fans tried to attack Pusha in Toronto and there was a Pusha verse cut from a posthumous Pop Smoke release for being too spicy, but aside from that, it seems the conflict has died down.
Will the two rap titans ever return to the ring? Will Drake find his proof that Push has never sold a brick? Or will Pusha find a reason to release the Sequel of Adidon? Who knows, but both rappers seem to be in a calmer place, Drake has Adonis (wanted or otherwise) and Pusha has wife and Nigel. Time will only tell if the fire will reignite and the beef reheats. Just remember, next time you venture into a shoe shop with an unpronounceable name, blank the warm Scottish lady offering you a canvas bag and instead choose the cunning Essex lad, he might give you a discount.
