Music

Drake showed respect to Ye from the early days of the latter’s career while freestyling over the thumping “Barry Bonds” beat on Drizzy’s 2007 Comeback Season mixtape. “Barry Bonds” was on Ye’s Graduation album as a Lil Wayne collaboration, which arrived shortly after Drake’s mixtape; it’s unclear how Drizzy got the beat ahead of time.

Rap’s ultimate posse cut arrived in ’08 with T.I., Jay-Z, Lil Wayne and Ye joining forces for “Swagga Like Us.” The braggadocios track peaked at no. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Drake wanted in on the hip-hop titans teaming up, and freestyled over West’s production to showcase he can go toe-to-toe with the best the genre has to offer.

Drake’s breakout mixtape So Far Gone included another hat tip to West by making the desolate electro-pop 808s & Heartbreak opener “Say You Will” his own canvas, which he repackaged as “Say What’s Real.”

Drake showered Ye with praise in a 2009 interview with MTV. Drizzy had met the “Good Life” rapper months prior in Hawaii while West was working on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

“Before I ever got the chance to meet him, Kanye West shaped a lot of what I do, as far as music goes,” Drake said at the time. “We always, always, always took the time to listen to Kanye’s music and appreciate it beyond. We searched the samples and we find out where his inspiration came from, because he has one of the best ears in music, period. He knows how to recognize great music that’s not his. He knows how to utilize great sounds and great music. So before I met him, I had the utmost respect for Kanye West. I’d even go as far as to say he’s the most influential person as far as a musician that I’d ever had in my life.”

Ye returned the favor when crowning Drake with the best line of 2009 on Young Money’s “Every Girl.”

West wrote on his Kanye Universecity blog: “Drake said, ‘Do you like girls like I do?? Les-bi-honest!!!!!’ Best line of the year so far!”

Drake later told MTV in response to the props: “I feel like it’s funny, because that’s something he might have said. [But] it’s an honor that he’s even looking at me as somewhat of an equal, somewhat of a peer. I think he’s one of the greatest to ever do it.”

Ye put his creative vision to work when hopping behind the lens to direct the visual for Drake’s “Best I Ever Had” anthem. West had Drake play the coach of a women’s basketball team that certainly wasn’t lacking in the breast department.

Drake may have missed out on “Swagga Like Us,” but he made sure to find his way on the next hip-hop posse cut. “Forever” served as a knighting of sorts with Eminem, Ye and Lil Wayne welcoming Drizzy into rap’s pantheon.

West wasn’t featured as a vocal guest on Drake’s Thank Me Later, but produced the island-tinged “Find Your Love” and is credited as a co-writer on the 2010 debut album track. Ye also produced a song titled “You Know You Know,” which didn’t make the final album’s cut and ended up leaking months later.

Drake is credited with providing additional vocals on the luscious “All of the Lights,” in which Kanye spared no expense and brought in myriad talented collaborators to contribute to the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy standout.

While he’s barely on the original album version, an unofficial “All of the Lights” remix arrived following the track’s release, and finds Drake alongside Lil Wayne and Big Sean.

Drake appears to take a jab at Ye and Jay-Z as they prepared to deliver Watch the Throne during his 2011 Tim Westwood interview.

“I heard some other guys are coming out with an album too,” Drake said while teasing that he and Wayne were teaming up for a joint project. “There’s two other rappers that are coming out with an album together. I don’t know where they got that idea.”

Drake shows love to Ye and says it’s an “honor” to be even compared to him, but makes it known it’s a competition out there, and his plans were to one day “surpass” West’s accomplishments in hip-hop.

“It’s an honor. When I was a kid trying to figure out what I liked, it was Ye who I related to the most. He was an artist, in every sense, from his cover art to his music. Now, I would say, he is [a] really great competitor and friend,” he told The Source. “My goal is to surpass everything he’s accomplished. I don’t want to be as good as Kanye — I want to be better.”

Ye made an appearance at Drake’s OVO Fest in 2013. “Me and Hov would’ve never made Watch the Throne if [Drake] wasn’t putting pressure on us like that, so I just want to pay my respects,” West said on stage. Drake called Ye’s support at his festival the “most important moment in my career to date.”

Drake jabbed at some of Ye’s bars on Yeezus. “There were some real questionable bars on there,” he told Rolling Stone. “Like that ‘Swaghili’ line? Come on, man. Even Fabolous wouldn’t say some s–t like that.” However, he saluted West as the “reason” he’s here.

Ye responded on the Yeezus Tour, not leaning into the feud and claiming it was all “love” between both parties. “They always be trying to pit n—as against each other and it ain’t going down no more. So, tonight it ain’t none of that. We love Drake,” West told the New Jersey crowd.

A decade into his career, Ye needed a push creatively, and Drake’s run of hits helped provide that inspiration to hit the studio and take things to another level in the mid-2010s.

“Someone who’s like, ‘Come on, man, get back up!’ I was sitting there getting fat. Sitting back, just knocked everybody out. And then this guy hits the gym, he’s just running around like, ‘Pow, 14 hits’ I’m like, ‘Whoa. Let me go to the studio, then. Let’s see what’s happening. Let me get these lyrics up,’” Ye told Clique. “So, that’s where we at right now, that’s where you getting these records from.”

Drake kicked off 2016 with “Summer Sixteen,” in which he flexed about allegedly having a bigger pool in his backyard than his Calabasas neighbors Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. “Now I got a house in L.A., now I got a bigger pool than Ye/ And look man, Ye’s pool is nice, mine’s just bigger’s what I’m saying/ I’m that n—a’s what I’m saying,” he raps.

Drake is credited as a co-writer on The Life of Pablo sleeper “30 Hours” featuring André 3000. Drizzy allegedly recorded an early demo, and the reference track leaked on social media following TLOP‘s arrival.

Ye made another OVO Fest appearance in Toronto, where he ran through a mini-set and teased that a collab album with Drake was on the horizon. “This man is the reason I’m on this stage. My biggest inspiration,” Drizzy said to the audience about Ye.

Later that month, billboards hinting at the joint project began popping up, reading “Calabasas is the new Abu Dhabi” with the logos of OVO and Ye’s G.O.O.D. Music.

West took the stage in Sacramento on Nov. 19, 2016, in what would end up being the final date of the Saint Pablo Tour, as he was hospitalized days later and canceled the rest of the trek due to extreme exhaustion and stress. In his final minutes on stage, the rapper went on a stream of consciousness in which he in part ranted about the success of DJ Khaled and Drake’s multi-platinum “For Free” dominating radio airwaves.

“We can love each other, but the rules gotta be fair,” he said. “Khaled, and Drake, and radio, and Doc, and 92.3 and everybody — is it just me or did you hear that song so many times? You say you wanna play it ‘For Free’? Ayy, ayy, you know what it is, though.”

Drake responded to Ye’s radio rant targeting his and DJ Khaled’s “For Free” in an interview with DJ Semtex. The OVO boss also alluded to how he and Yeezy were working toward a joint album, so dissing him didn’t make sense.

“Because in the same breath, I went from, like, working on a project with him, to him sorta publicly s—ting on me and DJ Khaled for being on the radio too much,” he said. “I’m not sure why we’re the target of your choice that you made that night. And yeah, I accept what you’re going through, and I just go and continue working on my own thing.”

Drake recruited West to appear on his More Life playlist, and the duo teamed up for the underwhelming “Glow.” At this point, the OVO honcho and Yeezy’s relationship was starting to fracture, and the rap titans haven’t collaborated on a track in the years since.

Pusha T sniped at Drake on Daytona’s closing track “Infrared,” which is produced by West (he helmed the entire project). King Push taps Drizzy with ghostwriting allegations by bringing up Quentin Miller, who was credited on several tracks of Drake’s 2015 mixtape If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. “It was written like Nas, but it came from Quentin,” Pusha raps.

Drake quickly responded to Pusha T with “Duppy Freestyle,” but it wasn’t only King Push in his crosshairs, as there was plenty of smoke for Ye too. Drizzy puts West on blast because Drake allegedly helped Ye complete a handful of recent records.

“I’ve done things for him I thought that he never would need/ Father had to stretch his hands out and get it from me/ I pop style for 30 hours then let him repeat,” Drake raps.

Drake released his Scorpion album in June 2018 while Ye was rolling out his string of G.O.O.D. Music projects. Fans and industry critics alike speculated Drizzy was jabbing at West throughout the album. Joe Budden theorized on his eponymous podcast that verses on “Emotionless” and “8 Out of 10” were connected and taking aim at Ye.

“He bodies this flip of the word ‘good’ throughout this whole song. So much so, if you’re not really paying attention you think he’s just using the word good — he ain’t. Owls are a sign of good luck, correct? What I think he’s saying is they’re switching camps,” Budden suggested.

Pusha T alleged that Drake was hiding a son in diss track “The Story of Adidon.” Fans speculated that Ye was the one to feed Push the information about little Adonis — whose existence was previously not public knowledge — since Drake reportedly headed to work with Kanye in Wyoming months earlier, but West denied sharing the news.

“I’m Ye. I got major things to do other than be telling him some information about Drake,” Ye said to WGCI. “I honestly don’t care that much, in all honesty. When we talk about the Drake thing, it hits me in a really sensitive place because you hang around people and they come to your house and be around your family and this and that.

“And then they get mad about a beat and send you purple demon emojis. We understand that he got upset about [‘The Story of Adidon’]. I feel that it was insensitive for him to, in any way, stress me out in any way after TMZ, while I’m in Wyoming healing, pulling all the pieces together, working on my music.”

Yeezy attempted to broker a peace treaty between OVO and G.O.O.D. Music with Drake and Pusha T’s feud simmering. West sent his well wishes andtried to clear the static.

“Sending good energy and love to Drake and family and crew,” West tweeted at the time. “I haven’t seen the show in person but the images look incredible online. I understand where the confusion started.”

Ye also went on to publicly deny giving Pusha the information about Adonis for “Story of Adidon.” He apologized for stepping on Scorpion‘s release date with his string of G.O.O.D. Music releases in June 2018, in addition to how he released “Lift Yourself” himself as a troll after promising Drake he could hop on it.

“There should have been no songs with my involvement that had any negative energy towards you,” Ye added.

West’s wife at the time, Kim Kardashian, shut down rumors that she had been romantically involved with Drake in the past. The Shade Room posted an Everyday Struggle clip of Nick Cannon and DJ Akademiks speculating whether the reality star and Drake had ever hooked up, and she hopped into the Instagram comments section to deny the rumors. “Never happened,” she wrote. “End of story.”

Ye went on another Twitter rant calling for Drake to put an end to the speculation tying “Kiki” — whom Drizzy references on “In My Feelings” — to Kim Kardashian.

“The fact that people are making rumors and thinking that you f–ked my wife and you’re not saying anything and you’re carrying it well like that,” Ye said at the time. “Don’t sit well with my spirit. You know, if I had a girlfriend from Chicago and her name was Ranita and you were married to Rihanna, I wouldn’t make no song called RiRi. So when you’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t know where it comes from.’ You’re too smart for that, bro. You know where it came from.”

Months after the dust settled following the Drake and Pusha T drama, fans were still searching for answers. The 6 God pulled up to The Shop, where he opened up about his trip to Ye’s writing camp in Wyoming earlier in 2018.

Drake revealed he allegedly played Weest unreleased music, including “March 14,” which includes references to his son and baby mama that the public didn’t know about yet.

“He sold me on this whole speech of like, ‘I’m in a great place, I’m making money, and I’m a father, and I wanna be Quincy Jones and help you,’” Drake said. “‘But in order to do that, you’ve gotta be transparent with me, you gotta play me your music and you gotta tell me when you’re dropping. And I know you don’t like to do things like that.’ I guess we all kind of felt a genuine vibe from it, so I played him my music and I told him when I was dropping.”

He continued to say he felt manipulated and betrayed by Ye for confiding in him about certain things regarding his growing family. Drizzy reportedly even showed him a photo of his son, and claimed that Ye lied about working on an album slated for the summer (ye dropped in June).

“I tell him I’m having trouble with my son’s mother. We had a conversation,” Drake added. “Oh, this guy’s trolling me. This was like a manipulative, like, ‘I wanna break you’ thing. I said, ‘Alright, I’m gonna go back to distancing myself again. I know what this is.’”

Another day, another Ye rant in 2018. West used an alleged text seeking clearance for Drake’s “Say What’s Real” to go to streaming (The So Far Gone track sampled Ye’s “Say You Will”) to go after the 6 God once again.

“This proves s–t faker than wrestling for mentioning the 350s and trying to take food out your idols kids mouths,” he tweeted, seeking an apology for Drizzy’s “No Stylist” jab. “Been trying to meet with you for six months bro. You sneak dissing on Travis [Scott] records and texting Kris Jenner talking bout how’s the family. Sending purple emojis when I’m dealing with mental s–t I need my apologies now. Not through Scooter [Braun] either. Not through Travis.”

Ye exploded in a lengthy tweet rant that went on for more than 125 messages, reigniting his feud with Drake. It was seemingly sparked by a phone conversation between the two during which Ye claimed Drizzy threatened him. “So Drake if anything happens to me or anyone from my family you are the first suspect — so cut the tough talk,” he wrote at the time.

“There would never be a Drake without a Kanye West so never open your mouth with a threat,” Ye continued.

West didn’t stop there: He referred to Drake as a “bully” and demanded Drizzy “leave … [his] family alone.” The epic rant also spawned the famous “He running around like he Pac” tweet.

Drake sat down for a two-hour interview with Rap Radar, discussing a multitude of topics, including his issues with Yeezy, which he said he had no interest in patching up.

“That’s where all of this stems from,” he said of West and his war with Pusha. “It’s all rooted in that situation, yes. I think that [Ye] definitely recruited a guy with a similar dislike for me no matter what he says in interviews. I know that there’s something there that bothers him deeply and yeah, I can’t fix it for him. It just is what it is.”

However, he’s wasn’t going to walk back the past praise he’d showered on Ye. “He’s still my — obviously with the exception of Lil Wayne and if I look at Hov — as the guy who truly shaped the majority of my thinking, skillset, all those things, Kanye West would be my favorite artist all around,” Drake declared. “And that’s just facts. I have no problem saying that. 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.”

Drake reignited his beef with Ye ahead of their album showdown with his guest verse on Trippie Redd’s “Betrayal.” The OVO mogul wasn’t considering any kind of armistice. “All these fools I’m beefin’ that I barely know/ 45, 45 (Burned out), let it go/ Ye ain’t changin’ s–t for me, it’s set in stone,” he raps.

Ye got wind of the jabs and appeared to dox Drake by revealing what may have been Drizzy’s Toronto address before later deleting the tweet. He entered his “Joker” era with more threats at the 6 God. “I live for this. I’ve been fucked with by nerd a– jock n—as like you my whole life. You will never recover. I promise you,” he declared.

Drake didn’t take anything too seriously, as he shared an Instagram Story laughing off West’s latest antics.

The feud reached a head with Ye stepping on another Drake release date by cutting him in line with Donda arriving four days before Certified Lover Boy. Both albums debuted atop the Billboard 200. Donda moved 309,000 album-equivalent units in less than a full sales week before being replaced at the summit by Drake as CLB sold 613,000 album units.

Drake and Ye agreed to put their differences aside for the greater good in a prison reform fundraiser spreading awareness surrounding the incarcerated Gangster Disciples leader Larry Hoover. Rap-A-Lot Records co-founder J. Prince helped broker a meeting to arrange the unlikely peace treaty as Ye and Drizzy agreed to hit the stage for the Free Larry Hoover Benefit concert.

The pair of rap titans put on a united front while running through plenty of hits from their decorated discographies at the Coliseum show in Los Angeles.

“I appreciate Kanye for having me up here tonight,” Drake said on stage of the surreal scene that didn’t seem possible a couple of months earlier. “It’s important that we make this happen. When we were walking through the arches right there it felt like a dream. It felt surreal. It was something I always wanted to do being on stage with my idol as he’s running through one of the best catalogs in music, period.”

Drake stirred the pot with Ye once more with his “Search and Rescue” single. Drake elected to use himself and a mystery woman in motorcycle helmets as the cover art, which some speculated to be Kim Kardashian. However, it was quickly debunked and uncovered that the woman in the artwork is artist and model Lilah Pi.

Although Kardashian’s voice is sampled on “Search and Rescue,” it was a quote from the reality star talking to her mother on Keeping Up With the Kardashians about her divorce from Kanye that ended up making the cut. “I didn’t come this far, just to come this far and not be happy,” she cryptically said on the series finale.

2023 couldn’t expire without Drake getting another dig in at Ye. The 6 God returned in November 2023 to deliver his For All the Dogs Scary Hours Edition. Drake blasts West on “Red Button” for using their truce as a setup to go behind his back, and he’s not falling for any of his olive branches anymore.

“Every time you need me for a boost, I never hesitated/ Every time that Yeezy called a truce, he had my head inflated/ Thinkin’ we gon’ finally peace it up and get to levitatin’/ Realize that everything premeditated,” Drake raps.

West was only going to stay quiet so long as a rap war waged, especially with a plethora of rappers ganging up on Drake. Yeezy delivered a remix to Future and Metro Boomin’s Kendrick Lamar-assisted Drake diss track “Like That” on April 20.

The remix isn’t on streaming services, but is available on West’s website. Ye took aim at Drake and brought up the 6 God’s reported massive licensing deal with Lucian Grainge’s Universal Music Group.

“Where’s Lucian? Serve your master, n—a/ You caught a little bag for your masters, didn’t ya/ Lifetime deal, I feel bad for n—as/ Y’all so outta sight, outta mind/ I can’t even think of a Drake line,” he raps.

Days later, on April 22, Ye hopped on Justin LaBoy’s The Message podcast, where he credited the “elimination of Drake” as his inspiration for dropping the remix.

“[Future] called me and I went to the studio and laid that. We went through the creative process of adding the chords and called the Hooligans out in London to get on the joint,” Ye explained. “Everybody was very, very energized about the elimination of Drake.”

He continued: “You say rich baby daddy it’s like Drake has a rich baby daddy named Lucian and Universal. It’s like, ‘My daddy got it. My daddy control the spins. My daddy got the DSPs.’ Drake has a rich baby daddy named Lucian.”