Hip-hop has a short attention span. Just the other day the masses were saying Pusha T’s career was over and he should never have went at Drake. People all over Toronto were probably saying, “Pusha’s a wasteman still. Duppy.”
Then last night Pusha T dropped The Story of Adidon. Since last night a few people have hit me up in my DMs letting me know Pusha “violated” Drake.
Now listen. I’m a bit of a Drake stan. I’m from Toronto and anyone that talks about finessing down Weston Road has my loyalty for life, but let’s look at this objectively.
The artwork for the track (Drake in blackface) is genius; like Back to Back artwork level genius. Right away you get the black community in an uproar and it calls into question Drake’s “blackness”. Along with the The Story of OJ reference in the title he paints Drake as a caricature of a black man.
When it comes to the music, it was smart for Pusha T to immediately dismiss the drugs and ghostwriter debate and move on to something else. He can’t win those arguments and they’ve been butchered to death. Nothing else to see here.
But when it comes to the disses, at first I wasn’t impressed. I thought it was getting too personal, but Drake brought up Pusha’s fiancée Virginia Williams and his brother No Malice so Drake’s love life, including his fling with a porn star, and Drake’s dad were fair game.
When I heard the man say, “Monkey-suit Dennis, you parade him. A Steve Harvey-suit nigga made him” I had to crack up. Drake’s dad does rock some crazy Steve Harvey type suits.
There were a few lines that I felt in my chest, like, “You are hiding a child. Let that boy come home” and “Confused, always felt you weren’t Black enough. Afraid to grow it ‘cause your fro’ wouldn’t nap enough” reinforcing the idea of Drake being a caricature of a black man.
But dissing Drake’s mom about not getting married and being left by Drake’s dad, and making fun of 40’s battle with Multiple Sclerosis is going too far for me. It reeks of desperation. Like when someone’s kicking your ass and you decide to kick them in the balls when they’re not looking.
Listen to the The Story of Adidon below
But if I look at The Story of Adidon objectively, it’s a very good diss track. It’s probably the most personal out of any diss track I’ve ever heard. Was it as clever and intelligent as “Duppy Freestyle”? No, and that’s why I was a bit disappointed. I was looking forward to seeing two MC’s match wits, but that’s not what we got (which is smart on Pusha T’s part).
This whole thing reminds me of the Nas and Jay-Z beef. On one side you had the top rapper in the game, Jay-Z. A cerebral assassin. A boss. Playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers. On the other side you had the guy who represented the streets, but hadn’t had a hit or classic in a few years. Sounds familiar.
Everyone expected Jay to win. He played cat and mouse with Nas, but instead of trying to match Jay with metaphors and wordplay, Nas took it to the streets and got personal. He changed the rules on Jay-Z and he never recovered. And “Ether” became a verb.
When this Drake-Pusha T beef first started I had no doubt in my mind that Drake would destroy him. He’s always a step ahead. But that’s what we thought about Jay-Z in the early 2000’s. Looking at this beef through the lens of Nas vs. Jay-Z, for the first time I’m having my doubts that Drake can rebound. I mean, if Jay-Z couldn’t craft a proper response to Ether, there’s a chance Drake has already emptied his clip and has nothing left.
For Drake to redeem himself he needs to respond quickly. Even faster than it took Pusha to respond. And he needs to be even less of a nice guy and get personal, verging on ignorant, like hiring some overseas hacker to find some nudes to use for the artwork on his comeback, or breaking into Pusha T’s house and taking a picture of himself taking a bath in Pusha T’s bathtub.
Right now we’re in Game 7 and Drake is down with a few minutes left. Like Lebron showed us this week, Game 7’s are when GOATS are born. If Drake rebounds it will cement his status as the GOAT of this generation; the Lebron to Jay-Z’s Jordan.
But everyone can agree, this is the best beef we’ve seen in years. Lyrically speaking, probably the best since Nas and Jay-Z. The only thing that could make it better is if it led to an all out Young Money/OVO vs. Good Music beef.
