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Drake vs. everyone, explained

Drake onstage with his arms open wide. Rapper Drake at “Lil Baby & Friends Birthday Celebration Concert” at State Farm Arena on December 9, 2022, in Atlanta. | Prince Williams/WireImage

Everyone involved in Drake’s latest — and biggest — feud.

To borrow a phrase from our foremost cultural observer, Azealia Banks, the boys are fighting.

Since the explosive drop of producer Metro Boomin and rapper Future’s first joint album, We Don’t Trust You, on March 22, a cold war has broken out involving the duo and the rest of hip-hop’s top-tier (male) millennial roster: Drake, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, and A$AP Rocky. It’s been a strange few weeks, with shots being thrown in an extremely public and increasingly amusing way. In an utterly baffling move, Cole made a public apology for his own diss track, bowing out of the beef early. Meanwhile, like any argument you might see among a group of rich women on Bravo, Drake is being put on blast for his rumored plastic surgery. (Thank you, Megan Thee Stallion.)

This isn’t the first time this particular group of A-listers — all of whom dominated the mainstream rap charts of the 2010s — have exchanged lyrical blows. In particular, Drake and Lamar have sneak-dissed each other for a while now. However, to the average music listener, all these men have a more well-known history of collaboration, including features, a joint album, and tour stops. Lamar’s fiery verse, however, on the We Don’t Trust You track “Like That,” has shattered any remaining semblance of camaraderie. In the weeks since, Future and Metro have released yet another rage-fueled album, hilariously titled We Still Don’t Trust You. And Drake finally — if not clunkily — released his own sprawling diss over the weekend, name-dropping everyone from SZA to Maroon 5 to Swifties. Did I mention Uma Thurman is also involved?

After nearly 15 tumultuous years in the game, it’s no surprise that Drake has once again found himself on the receiving end of some hate. Still, this latest beef could be exactly what rap’s sensitive king needs in a rather uninspired era in his career, defined by a rather dull musical output and gross jabs at women.

Who’s beefing with who? Kendrick Lamar holding a Grammy Award. Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for The Recording Academy Kendrick Lamar wins Best Rap Album award for “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers” during the 65th Grammy Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 5, 2023, in Los Angeles, California.

A few weeks ago, Future and Metro essentially released a breakup album from their frequent collaborator and former comrade, Drake. (Drake and Future have nearly 30 collaborations combined, and Metro executive-produced their 2015 mixtape What A Time to Be Alive.) We Don’t Trust You is packed with subliminal messages seemingly directed at Drake, regarding his shady maneuvers. However, it was Kendrick’s relatively gentle prodding on the track “Like That” that was ultimately the most incendiary.

On the track — which has sat at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in a row now — he raps “Motherfuck the big three, it’s just big me,” renouncing his informal association with rap peers Drake and Cole. On the recent Drake song “First Person Shooter,” off his latest album For All the Dogs, Coleclaimed on his guest verse that he, Drake, and Lamar are the “Big 3” of the current era of hip-hop. Nevertheless, Lamar’s ire on “Like That” is mostly pointed at his noted frenemy Drake, brushing off his purportedly unstoppable commercial success. “Your best work is a light pack,” he asserts. “N—, Prince outlived Mike Jack.”

Cole responded first on April 5 with the track “7-Minute Drill,” featured on his aptly titled mixtape Might Delete Later. Cole throws shots at Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning discography, calling his latest album Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers “tragic” and claiming his Grammy-winning sophomore album Good Kid, Maad City “put [listeners] to sleep.” He also promises to “humble” Lamar if “push comes to shove.”

However, by April 10, Cole had rescinded his warning shot, including removing “7-Minute Drill” from streaming platforms. At his annual Dreamville Festival, he issued a heavily mocked quasi-apology to Lamar. “I tried to jab [Lamar] back, and I try to keep it friendly,” he told the crowd in North Carolina. “But at the end of the day when I listen to it, and when it comes out and I see the talk, that don’t sit right with my spirit.”

Before Drake could unleash his own diss, Future and Metro released the follow-up, We Still Don’t Trust You, on April 12. This time, A$AP Rocky got some punches in. On the song “Show of Hands,” he rapped “N—-s in they feelings over women. What, you hurt or something? I smash before you birthed, son. Flacko hit it first, son.” This is presumably a response to Drake apparently dissing A$AP and his partner Rihanna, whom Drake previously dated, on his song “Fear of Heights.” (Fans have also speculated that A$AP means he previously slept with the mother of Drake’s son.)

Another one of Drake’s most famous industry mates, The Weeknd, appears on both Future and Metro albums. However, on We Still Don’t Trust You’s eighth track, “All to Myself,” he sings, “I thank God that I never signed my life away.” Fans interpreted that as a jab about Drake’s label OVO Sound, which, despite his heavy association with the label, The Weeknd ultimately never signed to.

Who is Drake dissing on “Push Ups”?

On Saturday, April 13, Drake’s long-awaited response titled “Push Ups (Drop & Give Me Fifty)” mysteriously made its way to the internet. The seemingly unmixed demo made many social media users speculate whether the song was AI-generated before noted hip-hop commentator DJ Akademiks eventually played it — noticeably with some tweaks, like the omission of a line about P. Diddy and a different beat — on his livestream. Hip-hop radio station Power 105 also streamed a high-quality version of the song. Given Drake’s comments on Instagram over the weekend, including a photo of Uma Thurman single-handedly taking on a group of fighters in the 2003 film Kill Bill, all signs point to the track being legitimate.

That said, “Push Ups” is a hefty (and expectedly humorous) diss record, taking aim at Drake’s aforementioned opps while pulling some other parties into the crossfire. One of them is the Weeknd’s manager, CashXO, who he accuses of “blowing Abel’s bread trickin.” He also takes shots at Memphis Grizzlies player Ja Morant, who fans are speculating he was previously in a love triangle with.

In probably the silliest development of this multi-pronged feud, he throws some digs at rapper Rick Ross, another frequent collaborator of his. “This n— turning 50,” Drake raps. “Every song that made it on the chart he got it from Drizzy.” Ross swiftly followed up with his own diss called “Champagne Moments,” which quickly went viral. Among other insults and accusations, he calls Drake, who’s mixed, “white boy” and claims he got a nose job.

Drake and Rick Ross at a party circa 2013. Johnny Nunez/WireImage Drake and Rick Ross at P. Diddy’s Ciroc The New Years Eve Party at his home on December 31, 2013, in Miami Beach, Florida.

As for Lamar, Drake offers a pretty comprehensive rebuttal, poking fun at Lamar for apparently wearing a “size 7 shoe” and his collaborations with pop acts like Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood.” (Lest we forget, Drake has also linked up with Swift for a check.) He also names some artists who he feels have surpassed Lamar’s stardom, including SZA, who’s signed to Lamar’s own Top Dawg Entertainment label. (She apparently doesn’t want to be involved.) There’s also a bar that many listeners, including DJ Akademiks, interpreted as an audacious mention of Lamar’s fianceé, Whitney Alford (“I be with some bodyguards like Whitney”). However, this could also be a misreading of a more obvious reference to the Whitney Houston film, The Bodyguard.

The industry may be against him, but Drake has always thrived in a beef

“Push Ups” aside, Drake has handled his public gang-up with an expected sense of humor and irreverence. In addition to an exchange with Uma Thurman, he shared a perplexed text message from his mother, Sandi Graham, inquiring about his alleged cosmetic surgeries on his Instagram Stories. He’s also used the platform to further troll Metro, who he told to “shut up and make some drums” on “Push Ups,” in the following days.

As anyone who’s even slightly followed rap over the past decade and a half can attest, this isn’t Drake’s first time engaging in warfare with his peers. Most famously, his career has seen headline-generating battles with Meek Mill, Pusha T, Joe Budden, and Kanye West. Arguably, his most infamous tiff was the culmination of a long-brewing beef with Pusha T in 2018, where the Virginia rapper exposed Drake’s formerly hidden son Adonis to the world.

Despite the brief moment of humiliation, Drake ultimately emerged the victor — that is, if you’re using chart numbers and general popularity as a determining metric. After his moderately received victory lap of an album, Views, he was given a more gripping narrative to fuel his blockbuster 2018 album Scorpion. At the same time, he was once again proving his mass appeal outside of the rap audiences with party bangers like “God’s Plan,” “Nice For What,” and “In My Feelings,” all of which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

More recently, however, Drake has been involved in several seemingly one-sided beefs with famous women. On his 2023 song with 21 Savage, “Circo Loco,” he threw out a not-so-subtle diss at rapper Megan Thee Stallion (“This bitch lie ’bout getting shots but she still a stallion”), joining a chorus of famous men disputing her now-proven claims that singer Tory Lanez shot her in the foot in 2020.

During the rollout of For All the Dogs, he vexed actress Halle Berry, who claimed he used a photo of her for the artwork for his single “Slime You Out” without her permission. Additionally, he’s attempted to reignite drama with his former fling Rihanna. Aside from his digs on “Fear of Heights,” he played their collaboration “Work” at one of his concerts just to claim that he “doesn’t sing [the] song anymore.”

Drake’s songwriting is often propelled by a sweeping sense of grievance and an obsession with the past and his haters (he’s not that different from Taylor Swift after all!). However, his constant feelings of victimhood within his relationships with women — and the subsequent, more blatant misogyny that’s grown out of that — has begun to wear on critics and parts of his female fanbase. That said, his appropriately savage (yet funny) handling of his latest attack feels reminiscent of a more palatable, forgone iteration of Drake. Watching him navigate the constant betrayals and routine pitfalls that come with fame has been the basis for his more compelling work, like his breakthrough 2015 mixtape If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, his 2017 mixtape More Life, and the more melancholic parts of Scorpion.

It’s unclear who, if anyone, will respond to “Push Ups” next. The track mostly aimed at Lamar, who has been quiet so far. Right now, Drake may be outnumbered, but as he often does, he’s still finding a way to take the W.


Read full article on: vox.com
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The fact that the US has to resort to building a pier to get aid into Gaza underscores how fraught the US-Israeli relationship has become — and how the Biden administration seems unable or unwilling to make any broader changes in its policy toward Israel. How will the pier work? Biden first announced the plans for the maritime corridor in his State of the Union address on March 7, emphasizing the immense need for humanitarian aid in Gaza. Government officials have repeatedly stressed that the pier is meant to be a temporary addition to overland aid flows through border crossings, and that US troops won’t be entering Gaza. Aid is supposed to come via ship from Cyprus to the new port’s staging area, where the cargo will be inspected by the Israeli military and then handed over to the World Food Program and international NGOs for distribution. The US, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, France, the European Union, Cyprus, and the United Nations are all contributing either logistical support or humanitarian assistance. The route to get there, though, is immensely complicated. Donors will send humanitarian aid via air or sea to Cyprus, where local authorities and Israeli representatives will screen the cargo and pack it for transit to Gaza — a process which can take between two and three days, Juan Camilo Jimenez Garces, a representative from World Central Kitchen, told the New York Times. Then, commercial ships will transport the approved goods from Cyprus to a floating platform two miles from the floating pier — a journey that can take anywhere from 15 hours to a couple of days, according to the Times, depending on the type of ship and weight of the cargo, as well as weather conditions. Once the ships arrive, the cargo will be loaded onto trucks which are then driven onto US military vessels — much like driving a car onto a ferry. Unlike commercial vessels, those ships can navigate the shallower waters close to the Gaza coastline. The military ships then transit to the pier itself, where the trucks will disembark and drive to the shore, under the close observation of the Israeli military. As of Thursday, ”We have about 500 tons of humanitarian assistance loaded on ships,” Vice Admiral Brad Cooper said in a news briefing. “That’s about a million pounds ready for delivery in the coming days,” with thousands of tons of aid “in the pipeline.” The Department of Defense says it anticipates about 90 truckloads per day of aid to get into Gaza through the maritime corridor, ramping quickly up to 150 trucks per day. Why is the pier needed? One of Israel’s first steps following the October 7 attacks was to launch an all-out siege on Gaza. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant instituted that policy on October 9, saying: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.” Siege warfare is against international law, and Israel was eventually forced to let in aid, albeit only via the Rafah crossing that Gaza shares with Egypt. That crossing opened to allow aid through in late October but still only allowed in a fraction of the aid Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people had prior to the war. Israel opened the Kerem Shalom crossing, also in southern Gaza, in December, but there have been periodic blocks to aid delivery, right-wing Israeli protests blocking entry to the crossing as well as a closing early in May because of an attack by Palestinian fighters near the crossing killed four Israeli soldiers. Gaza has been under blockade by Israel to some degree since Hamas took over the region in 2007. Hamas as the governing body has no control over Gaza’s borders, limiting the territory’s ability to trade and leaving Gaza heavily dependent on outside aid. Though the area is very densely populated and highly urbanized, domestic agriculture was a significant part of the economy prior to the current war; about 44 percent of household food came from Gaza-based production, according to a January report from the International Food Policy Research Institute. By January, a third of all the agricultural land in Gaza had been rendered unusable, according to the report, and war and displacement had essentially halted the agriculture industry. The outside aid that is still getting in is not nearly enough for people to survive on, experts say. “One-fourth of calories needed is what’s getting in,” Tak Igusa, a contributor to a joint Johns Hopkins and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine report on death projections in Gaza due to the war, told Vox in March. “So just imagine having one-fourth of what you usually eat for such a long duration. And it’s getting worse.” There was a temporary increase in aid following international backlash to the Israeli killing of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen, an NGO that had delivered 43 million meals to Palestinians in Gaza prior to the incident. But the increased aid has not been sustained, especially since Israel began operations in Rafah earlier this month, interrupting the flow of goods through the border crossing there, which Egypt has now closed. Will this fix the crisis? In short, no. The scale of this preventable crisis is just too big for this one effort alone to solve. Other solutions are quite clear: keeping the land border crossings open, pushing the Israeli government to allow sufficient aid in, and prioritizing deconfliction processes so humanitarian workers can safely do their jobs. Overland mechanisms like trucks can move faster, and more than 2,000 trucks filled with supplies are already on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, according to Jesse Marks, senior advocate for the Middle East at Refugees International, unable to get their cargo to people that need it. There is also concern about the safety of the people involved in the aid operation, given the fact that more than 250 aid workers have been killed over the course of the war. Just this week, an aid worker was killed by Israeli fire while working for the UN in Rafah. The person was riding in a clearly marked UN car. USAID and the World Food Program will oversee aid distribution in coordination with other NGOs. USAID Response Director Dan Dieckhaus told reporters in a briefing Thursday that “deconfliction” processes — coordination with the Israeli military so that aid workers can perform their jobs — is a serious concern. “We’re not at all satisfied with where they’re at now,” Dieckhaus said of discussions with the Israeli government around those processes. Hamas could also see Israeli military presence at the port as a threat, opening the risk of attack. 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T.J.
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