Drake said he was uninterested in squashing his feuds with Kanye West and Pusha T in an interview on Elliott Wilson and Brian “B.Dot” Miller’s Rap Radar podcast, via Tidal. He also discussed his new album and getting booed off stage at Camp Flog Gnaw.
Speaking on Pusha T, Drake said he had “no desire to mend anything with that person” after the pair got into a nasty back-and-forth back in May 2018 (in one diss track, “The Story of Adidon,” Pusha revealed that Drake had a son he had not yet gone public about). Speaking now, Drake said he once had a lot of admiration for Pusha T’s music and his drug dealing sagas, but added that the music no longer appealed to him because he no longer believed it. “And I like to listen to guys I believe,” he said (via Complex).
Of the actual diss tracks he and Push released during that time, Drake said, “I sleep well at night knowing I didn’t get out-barred… It was just, you know, he told the world that the biggest artist at the time has a kid that he hasn’t told you about. I knew, kind of, for me, it was over at that point. It wasn’t even about battle rap.”
Drake went on to acknowledge that his feud with Pusha T stemmed from his rift with Kanye West. And while West has made various attempts to get back in touch with him, Drake said he wasn’t interested in reopening lines of communication with West at this time.
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“I think that he definitely recruited a guy [Pusha T] with a similar dislike for me no matter what he says in interviews,” Drake said. “There’s something there that bothers him deeply and, yeah, I can’t fix it for him. It just is what it is. I could never ever, ever, ever turn my back on the things that I’ve said about him in a positive light… Things have changed. I’m not just some kid that’s a fan anymore. Now we have personal situations, and, like I said, a lot of his issues with me, I can’t fix them for him.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Drake talked about a recent incident where he was announced as the surprise guest at Tyler, the Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw Festival and was promptly booed off stage by a crowd that was expecting Frank Ocean. Drake seemed relatively good natured about the embarrassing incident, saying he could sense the crowd wasn’t on his side from backstage and that he joked to someone at the time, “How long you think it’s gonna take for them to boo me off stage?”
Drake continued, “I was a little confused. I was kind of sitting there, going like, ‘You guys know Frank’s not here, right? You may as well get over that… let’s rock, I’m the guy, I’m the replacement. I got a couple joints if you wanna hear them.’ In hindsight, I wish I would’ve said, ‘Yo guys, Frank…’ or just broke out into, ‘A tornado flew around…’”
Drake also offered some insight into his current music-making process as he continues to prep the follow-up to his 2018 album, Scorpion, which he’s said will arrive in 2020. While the musician didn’t offer any specific details, he said he was taking his time with the project, and that giving himself that kind of space was having a positive impact on his songwriting.
“I’ll go like three weeks in between making songs, just because I’m just kind of enjoying life,” he said. “I’m enjoying living, going out with people. Investing in personal connections. And it’s just making my music better.”