Drake pulls no punches while fleshing out the circumstances behind his beef with Kanye West and Pusha-T on the latest episode of LeBron James’s The Shop, and he says that he won’t be holding back the punches he’s got with Pusha’s name on them should they ever cross paths, either.
The backstory and fallout from 2018’s most scandalous rap feud came up among a number of topics discussed during Friday night’s (October 12) airing of the HBO sports series. Fans will recall the impact of the rift being so far-reaching, at the time, that it came to engulf family, divide industry alliances, and according to what Rap-A-Lot Records mogul J. Prince told the Sway In The Morning listening audience, it even had loyalists for both sides prepared to clash in the streets. What the public didn’t know until Drake disclosed it to “The Shop” co-host Maverick Carter, is that in addition to reaching out for Prince to mediate to situation, he also touched base with LeBron to regrettably inform him that he wouldn’t be following up Pusha-T’s “The Story Of Adidon” diss track with a response.
Drake would go on to unveil a few more unreported details about how tensions rose to the heights that they had. In one instance, LeBron listened closely in his barbershop chair while the Toronto rapper elaborated on why he eventually came to determine that Kanye baited him into the battle. As he tells it, Kanye had invited him to Wyoming to contribute some writing to his Ye album – which by now is public knowledge. However, many have been left to wonder why Drake has accused the Kardashian-family in-law of leaking dirt on him to Pusha-T. As it turns out, while in Wyoming, Drake had blessed Kanye with an early preview of the Scorpion track “March 14,” which he was preparing to release as a means of going public about his illegitimate son, Adonis. But as fate would have it, Pusha-T beat Drake to it by exposing news of Adonis in his diss song.
Ultimately though, Drake told LeBron, Carter, and HBO viewers that it wasn’t Pusha putting his dirty laundry out or disrespecting his parents that has brought him to the point where music can’t settle the bad blood between them. It was in his rival mocking OVO producer Noah “40” Shabib’s battle with multiple sclerosis.
“I study rap battles for a living. When you mention defenseless people who are sick in the hospital, who have passed away, I just believe that there’s a price you have to pay for that,” said Drake. “It’s over! Someone’s gonna f***ing punch you in the f***ing face. The s***’s done, the event’s over. I wanted to do other things. I didn’t want to further your career by rapping back to you and having this exchange.”