Drake-Eminem beef leads to an even better beef, with Hot 97
I’m starting to like where this is headed!
Internets,
I’ve heard it argued that a Drake-Eminem rap beef wouldn’t be any good, because Drake doesn’t even write his own rhymes and Eminem has spent the past 10-plus years writing white trash power ballads about his struggles with prescription meds.
On the contrary, I’d argue that this nascent beef, to the extent that it even exists, is already one of the most fascinating rap beefs of all time, in that it’s almost impossible to pick a side, despite how many people are already involved in it.
So many of the worst people in hip-hop in 2016 somehow figure into this beef. In addition to Drake and Eminem, there’s also Funkmaster Flex, Ebro and Peter Rosenberg at Hot 97, plus Joe Budden, Meek Mill, Drake’s ghostwriter, so on and so forth.
If only there was a way they could all take each other out–”mutually assured destruction,” as we were warned about in the ever-prescient War Games.
(Sidebar: In 1983, Ronald Reagan watched the movie War Games and then convened a special panel to determine if such a scenario could actually take place. There was an article about it in the Times a while back. He didn’t rub one out to the scenes with Ally Sheedy, one of the all-time underrated hotties, because he was like 90, and this was before Viagra was invented. Nullus.)
This beef, at least in its current iteration, seems to have begun the other day, when Ebro claimed to have had a discussion with Drake about the prospect of a beef with Eminem. I guess Eminem is friends with Joe Budden, and Budden has been dropping Drake dis songs left and right for the past few weeks. Drake said that Eminem probably wouldn’t dis him, and even if he did Drake had something for him. Oh, really?
I had very little time to research this, and these people are all liars, so who knows what’s going on here, but it seems that Ebro has since walked back the comments about his discussion with Drake. He claims he was just playing. I wonder if this was a matter of Ebro reporting things that were ostensibly said off the record, like when Rolling Stone quoted Drake saying that he doesn’t fuxwit Yeezus.
Anyway, I think Drake was correct if/when he said that Eminem probably wouldn’t bother with a beef with Drake. I can’t imagine that Eminem fuxx with Drake musically, even given the garbage rap ballads he’s been releasing for the past 10-plus years now, and maybe he does spend his ample free time sitting around writing Drake dis songs, but how would he stand to benefit from releasing them?
It would hardly be any different from Joe Budden’s beef with Drake. Maybe Eminem would positively ether Drake–but anyone who would buy a Drake album in the first place could give a rat’s ass about him losing a rap battle to Eminem. That would only play into his image as the guy who can’t stand on stage and rap at the same time without his knees threatening to give out on him. They appreciate the fact that he has certain weaknesses, because sensitive, ineffectual men are “in” in 2016.
Guys who could beat someone in a rap battle, meanwhile, are on their way out. Millennials don’t have any use for them. There was even a think piece the other day about how rappers shouldn’t be required to freestyle on radio shows, and it’s somehow bigoted to expect them to do so. Maybe Lil Uzi Vert (I’m just using him as an example; I don’t even know who he is) isn’t capable of kicking a freestyle; why should he feel any less entitled to a career in hip-hop?
Part of the problem with rap battles is that they involve saying mean things about people, which is a huge no-no in 2016. If, god forbid, Eminem were to release a song in which he called Drake the other f-word (which the TIs wouldn’t allow him to anyway), it would be a major international incident. It could affect his ability to tour in Australia, and oftentimes it’s that very last leg of the tour where you make your money. You spend the first few months just making back the cost of the buses, the venues and what have you.
Last night, Drake played a show in New York at which he spoke on his beef with Funkmaster Flex, Hot 97 et al. He said that Hot 97 (i.e. presumably Ebro) has been out here telling lies about him, and that the only way he’d go on the station to do an interview is if they fired Funkmaster Flex. You’ll recall that Flex leaked several Quentin Miller reference tracks for Drake songs during Drake’s beef with Meek Mill last year.
As of the wee hours of Friday morning, when I was forced to finish writing this, Ebro and Peter Rosenberg were on Twitter copping a plea, talking about how Drake didn’t say fuck Hot 97, he just said that Flex should be fired (there seems to be some confusion over Drake’s exact words), that Drake loves them and that they built his career.
No doubt, Ebro and Rosenberg are furiously pursuing back-channels to make sure they remain in Drake’s good graces, on the phone with the TIs trying to have people fired from their jobs, telling bald-faced lies about things we’ve got them on tape saying, touting their contributions to hip-hop relative to Chuck D, secretly shit-talking Flex and what have you. That’s their m.o.
They might even be able to patch things up with Drake without offering to fellate him on the basis of being cut from a similar cloth.
Take it easy on yourself,
Bol
Originally published at tinyletter.com.
