Drake’s new double album, Scorpion, is out, and one of its recurring themes is fatherhood — specifically, Drake reportedly fathering the son of a French actress. “That shit is in stone, sealed and signed,” he raps in the song “March 14.” “She’s not my lover like Billie Jean, but the kid is mine.” Elsewhere on the album he works out his contentious feelings toward the child’s mother, his overwhelmed reaction to learning he was a dad, and his resentment at the publicity around the event. The news that Drake is owning his parental status is big — so big it’s overshadowed nearly everything else about the sprawling album, including what is apparently new vocals from the late Michael Jackson. But there’s a lot more to Drake’s rhymes on this subject than his own personal reflections on what it means to be a dad. It might be a stretch to say that the 2018 album Scorpion only spends as much time on fatherhood as it does because Lil Wayne wore Bape once — but then again, it might not. Such is the delightfully labyrinthine rap feud behind the story of Scorpion — which starts with “The Story of Adidon,” the mystifying killer diss track of Drake that Pusha T released in May. Like many rap artists, Drake is no stranger to beef. But the latest involving Pusha T and “The Story of Adidon” has left some fans and onlookers scratching their heads. Why was Drake in blackface? Where did Pusha get that photo? Does Drake really have a secret love child? And what’s all this about invoices and fashion wars, again? Pusha T dropped “The Story of Adidon” on YouTube without a lot of fanfare, but it immediately caused a sensation, garnering 2.5 million views in less than a day. And no wonder — was that Drake in blackface on the cover? (Yes. Yes it was.) Pusha’s track was a full-on Drake diss, containing lyrics like, “Let’s have a heart-to-heart about your pride / Even though you’re multi, I see that your soul don’t look alive.” The song mocks Drake’s dad, skewers Drake’s attitude toward blackness, and accuses Drake of being a deadbeat dad to Adonis, the son he’s rumored to have fathered with a French woman named Sophie Brussaux, a former porn actress, in October 2017. Drake seems to have publicly acknowledged the relationship at last in multiple tracks from his new album Scorpion, in which he raps that “the kid is mine,” apparently in response to the uproar. If Pusha going all in on Drake’s approach to fatherhood seems a little harsh, hold up. In fact, the feud between Drake and Pusha may be all about an entirely different set of rappers — but we’ll get to that in a minute. For now, let’s break down the many things happening in “Adidon,” and what led to Pusha turning in one of the most glorious installments in rap feuds since the halcyon days of 50 Cent. “Adidon” tackles complex, intermingled themes of fatherhood and blackness Pusha T’s thesis for “The Story of Adidon” is basically twofold: Drake’s confusion about his biracial identity has led him to adopt a hypocritical attitude toward fatherhood. The result, so sayeth Pusha, is that Drake is simultaneously abandoning his son while clinging to his own father for a sense of authentic blackness, even as he enjoys the privileges of wealth and his ability to “pass” as a white man. Pusha achieves this complex layering by structuring “Story of Adidon” after Jay-Z’s 2017 track “Story of O.J.” Pusha raps over the “Story of O.J.” backing track, and both songs explore the intersection of class, wealth, and black identity in America. Quoting O.J.’s famous apocryphal claim “I’m not black, I’m O.J.,” Jay-Z fills his video with cartoon racist stereotypes. The song serves as a wry critique on gentrification and modern attempts to use wealth to overcome one’s perceived blackness. The song also samples Nina Simone’s famous song “Four Women,” which explores the generational impact of slavery and skin-tone prejudice in America. Each woman is without a surname, left to speculate about who her father could have been based on the color of her skin. This basic theme — of being connected and/or disconnected from black identity through paternity — plays out directly in “Story of Adidon.” The name “Adidon” refers to Drake’s long-rumored upcoming partnership with Adidas. Pusha T’s track fuels rumors that Drake had intended to name his forthcoming sneaker line “Adidon,” a hybrid of Adidas and Adonis, after Brussaux’s 7-month-old son. Pusha thinks that’s a bit hypocritical of Drake, for a few reasons. For starters, he says Drake is a “deadbeat mothafucka, playin’ border patrol” when it comes to his alleged son. “Adonis is your son / and he deserves more than an Adidas press run, that’s real,” he admonishes. At the time of Pusha’s diss, Drake had yet to publicly acknowledge any connection between himself and Adonis. If he had been planning to do it with a line of shoes, it would have been an odd start to fatherhood; but in Scorpion, Drake instead defends his actions in what is apparently a direct response to Pusha. “I wasn’t hiding my kid from the world,” he protests, “I was hiding the world from my kid” — specifically from “empty souls” like Pusha who just want to “debate” him: From empty souls who just wake up and look to debate Until you staring at your seed, you can never relate Pusha argues on the track that it would also be in keeping with Drake’s history with his own father. See, Drake’s father, Dennis Graham, abandoned Drake and his mother in Toronto when Drake was 5 years old. Drake spent much of his rap career publicly working out his well-known issues toward his father in song. In recent years, however, the two seem to have fully reconciled. Drake frequently appears in his dad’s celebrity Instagram and put Graham’s picture on the cover of his 2017 song cycle More Life. Graham, for his part, recently got a giant tattoo of his son’s face. All good stuff, right? Not to Pusha.<doc-sep>Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window) Pusha-T isn’t going to hear Drake out. Shortly after Pusha used a picture of Drake in “blackface” as the cover for his diss track “The Story of Adidon,” Drake tried to explain how the controversial photo, which he dubbed “art,” came to be. “This picture is from 2007, a time in my life where I was an actor and I was working on a project that was about young black actors struggling to get roles, being stereotyped and typecast,” the rapper wrote in a note on social media. “The photos represented how African Americans were once wrongfully portrayed in entertainment.” “This was to highlight and raise our frustrations with not always getting a fair chance in the industry and to make a point that the struggle for black actors had not changed much,” he added. But Pusha, who’s been trading jabs with Drake since last month, doesn’t buy what the Canadian rapper is selling. “See, I don’t know. I just know that me being a black man, that’s something I’m totally against,” the rapper told GQ. “I’m just like, ‘How could you be that comfortable, ever?’ Just for me, there’s no way that’s ever comfortable.” When reminded that Drake said it was to highlight the struggle for black actors to get roles, Pusha responded, “That’s not an explanation that I would accept.”<doc-sep>The feud between Drake and Pusha T may continue, even though Pusha announced late last week his beef with the Canadian superstar is over. Though Drake has yet to publicly respond to Pusha’s scathing diss track, “The Story of Adidon,” according to “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli a Drake response track does exists; and Shkreli is in possession of it. Continuing to boast about his alleged connections within the hip-hop world, Shkreli claims he has a USB with Drake’s response on it. Asking a friend to help announce the news, Shkreli made a statement over Facebook, which can be seen below: I’m pleased to hear Lil Wayne’s Carter V will be released soon and his litigation has been settled. It is a great addition to his already impressive corpus. Additionally, I am pleased to report my offices have received an unmarked USB disk containing what appears to be unpublished and newly created tracks by Drake, referencing recent events with respect to Pusha-T and Kanye West. There are 10 tracks and some appear to be demo tracks by an unnamed artist to inspire a forthcoming, fully-produced “disrespect” musical piece. I would normally share a snippet as I have in the past but my present situation negates this possibility. Shkreli is currently serving a seven-year sentence in prison for securities fraud. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. In other music-related news, Kanye West hired a mentalist for his 41st birthday party.<doc-sep>“I just know that me being a black man, that's something I'm totally against.” Pusha-T, the coke rap extraordinaire, president of G.O.O.D. Music, master of rap beef, and an admittedly fox-fearing man recently sat down with GQ to discuss the finer details of the aftermath of his beef with Drake. Though Drake never replied to Pusha’s diss, “The Story of Adidon,” in rhyme, he did issue a statement about the blackface image Pusha used as his diss track’s cover art. That statement, and the mere existence of the photo series, according to Pusha-T, is far from acceptable. “I just know that me being a black man, that's something I'm totally against,” Pusha told GQ. “I'm just like, ‘How could you be that comfortable, ever?’ Just for me, there's no way that's ever comfortable.” When asked if context matters, what with Drake initially taking the photos to bring light to racialized struggles in entertainment, Pusha-T simply doubled down. “That's not an explanation that I would accept.” With the emotional weight and decades of violence tied to images of blackface and Jim Crow, Pusha-T's position is entirely understandable. While his bottom line remains fine after getting lyrically toasted by Pusha-T, when it comes to matters of respect, Drake is firmly in the red as far as Pusha-T is concerned.<doc-sep>
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Drake responded with Duppy Freestyle, in which he called out Pusha’s fiancee Virginia Williams, prompting the former The Clipse star to drop The Story of Adidon, claiming the God’s Plan hitmaker has been hiding a secret lovechild conceived during a fling with former porn star Sophie Brussaux. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. The Trouble on My Mind MC reignited their long-running war of words in late May with the release of his album Daytona, on which he took aim at Drake on the song Infrared, mocking him for using ghostwriter Quentin Miller to pen some of his rhymes on 2015’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. Hip-hop star Pusha T is putting his rap rivalry with Drake to rest, insisting “it’s all over with.” This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content He also stirred controversy by using an old photograph of Drake in blackface as the track’s cover art. The Canadian rapper didn’t fire back with a musical response, and his close associate J. Prince, the CEO of Rap-A-Lot Records, recently explained that he was the one who persuaded Drake to ditch the diss he had already lined up and walk away from the heated exchange. Prince, whose producer son Jas Prince originally discovered Drake on MySpace, also revealed Pusha T’s mentor, Kanye West, had reached out to him in a bid to help clear up the dispute. While Drake has yet to address the latest developments in the rap battle, Pusha T has now confirmed he’s putting the fallout to rest and moving on with his career. “These conversations have been had and, to my knowledge, it’s all over. It’s all over with,” he told Vanity Fair. “I mean, listen: I’m ready to be back to the music for real. Just feeding my (fan) base, that’s it. That’s the most important thing to me at all times.” Meanwhile, the rising rapper at the centre of the hip-hop beef, Quentin Miller, is also keen to leave the backlash in the past, three years after Meek Mill initially dragged his name into his previous feud with Drake. “I kind of am tired of it being brought up,” he told Rolling Stone. “People want to give me credit for his (Drake’s) whole catalogue, but that’s not true. I was inspired by him, just like everybody else. We collaborated, and that’s that.” Miller also likens the drama to Kanye West’s infamous stage invasion at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, when he interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech. “Ultimately, I wanted people to just see that project (If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late) as a great project,” he continued. “I didn’t want all that negative s**t. That was the first major thing I was ever a part of. It was sort of like my Taylor Swift moment, and Meek Mill kind of Kanye-ed me. I got Kanye-ed by Meek, but it’s all good.