Drake & Rick Ross Leak Diss Tracks As Rap-Feud Landscape Heats Up

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Drake & Rick Ross Leak Diss Tracks As Rap-Feud Landscape Heats Up

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

It’s been a dramatic few days in the rap-feud trenches. Right now, the whole rap world still roiling in the aftermath of Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” the song where Kendrick Lamar came in swinging at his peers Drake and J. Cole. “Like That” still sits at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after debuting there last week. Last week, J. Cole responded with his Kendrick diss track “7 Minute Drill.” Then, playing his own Dreamville Festival on Sunday, Cole retracted and apologized for that song, saying it was the goofiest thing he’d ever done. (“7 Minute Drill,” which was on its way to being a hit, is now gone from streaming services.) Cole is attempting to opt out of this story, but nobody else is. This weekend saw a flurry of diss tracks, with Drake taking on many of his past collaborators.

The release of “Like That” was so impactful partly because Future and Metro Boomin are both heavily associated with Drake; they’ve worked with him many times before. The track’s release exposed divisions between Drake and many of his peers, including frequent collaborator Rick Ross, who posted a video of himself riding along while listening to Kendrick’s verse. On Friday, Future and Metro Boomin released We Still Don’t Trust You, their second collaborative album in three weeks. A few guests on that record — the Weeknd, A$AP Rocky — had lines that are presumably also shots at Drake. On Saturday, Drake clapped back.

On Saturday, an unreleased Drake track started making the rounds online, and plenty of people wondered whether it was really Drake or an AI prank. Yesterday, Drake sent a finished version of the song, with a different beat, to DJ Akademiks, who played it on his livestream. The track, which has the unofficial title “Push Ups (Drop & Give Me Fifty)” finds Drake dissing tons of different people. His main target is Kendrick Lamar, and he clowns Kendrick for his contract with TDE, his history of doing verses for pop artists like Maroon 5 and Kendrick Lamar, and his height: “I’m the hitmaker y’all depend on/ Backstage in my city, it was friendzone/ You won’t ever take no chain off of us, how the fuck you big steppin’ with a size seven men’s on?”

Drake also has words for Future (“Your first #1, I had to put it in your hand”), Metro Boomin (“Metro, shut your hoe ass up and make some drums”), the Weeknd (“Claim the Six and you boys ain’t even come from it/ And when you boys got rich, you had to run from it”), Rick Ross (“Every song that made it on the chart, he got from Drizzy/ Spend that lil check you got and stay up out my business”), and basketball star Ja Morant (“Shoutout to the hooper that be bustin’ out the griddy/ We know why you mad, n***a, I ain’t even trippin'”).

Drake alludes to long-simmering conflicts and disagrees with J. Cole on the Kendrick “Like That” verse: “This shit been brewin’ in a pot, now I’m heatin’ up/ I don’t care what Cole think, that Dot shit was weak as fuck.” Drake also alludes to more beef to come. “Push Ups” still doesn’t have an official release, and we can argue all day about how good it is, but it’s the Drake response that people have been waiting on.

UPDATE 4/19: “Push Ups” is officially out now.

Rick Ross responded with his own leaked diss track, which now seems to be known as “Champagne Moments.” (UPDATE: It was officially released with that title on Monday evening.) On that song, Ross repeatedly refers to Drake as “white boy,” makes fun of him for using ghostwriters, and accuses him of getting a nosejob and setting a cease-and-desist letter to keep his verse off of French Montana’s last mixtape: “Flow is copy-and-paste, Weezy gave you the juice/ Another white boy at the park wanna hang with the crew.”

On his Instagram story, Drake responded to the Ross track by posting screenshots of himself texting with his mom.

He also posted a Drumline meme aimed at Metro.

Meanwhile, Rick Ross is continuing to clown Drake on his own Instagram story.

And Uma Thurman has entered the chat:

This story is far from over, and everyone involved seems to be benefitting from it.

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