Though it was reignited with the recently released “Infrared” track, the beef between Pusha-T and Drake has existed for many years. Hip-hop heads and music journalists have traced the feud to the 2000s, when Clipse—a group composed of Pusha and his brother No Malice—exchanged disses with Young Money’s Lil Wayne. As, Pusha tells it, the beef truly started after Weezy was accused of biting Clipse’s personal style. The New Orleans MC denied the accusations in a way that seemingly disparaged Pusha and No Malice.
“They asked Wayne, or said something to him about, ‘You’re taking their style. You’re taking their style about drugs, and you’re wearing the BAPE,’ whatever it may be,” Push said in a Hot 97 interview with Funk Flex, which you can view above. “I remember it was an interview [Wayne said] something crazy, like, ‘Man, I’m on million-dollar buses. You think I wanna be like them?’”
Push continued: “It was a bit aggressive, for me […] And I’m through something. I was on hiatus for four years.”
The DAYTONA rapper agreed with Flex that this specific Wayne interview “turned on his competitive light.” Push admitted Drake was brought into the beef because he was part of Wayne’s camp.
“Coming to G.O.O.D. Music, right? I feel like when I got there, there were a few things that also happened. I remember a Birdman interview, he was like, ‘Man, ain’t nobody on G.O.O.D. Music but Kanye, anyway.’ He was just talking about how great they (Cash Money) were,” Push said around the 18:15 mark. “There were so many different barbs, songs, back-and-forths […] It was just a lot of weird things going on.”
Pusha insisted that his exchange with Wayne’s camp was strictly competitive and that was nothing too serious—even after he unleashed “Exodus 23:1,” a blistering track that included shots at Drake’s contract with Young Money Entertainment: “Contract all fucked up I guess that means you all fucked up/You signed to one nigga that signed to another nigga/That's signed to three niggas, now that's bad luck,” Pusha rapped on the 2012 track.
Drake and Pusha would go on to exchange a number of lyrical disses in the following years; however, according to King Push, there came a time when “certain lines were crossed,” so he decided to take aim at Drake on his new DAYTONA track “Infrared,” which referenced Drake's alleged ghostwriter Quentin Miller.
The Toronto rapper quickly fired back with his own diss track called “Duppy Freestyle”; however, Pusha speculates Drake was more hurt by the slew of upcoming G.O.O.D. Music records and how they would take the spotlight away from his highly anticipated Scorpion album.
“It’s a real estate issue,” he explained. “I feel like I was light. [‘Infrared’] was light and it spoke to something that was old, people know what it is. […] I do feel like his issue is a real estate issue. He was dropping his album in June. ‘Ye comes out of nowhere, ‘Hey, I’m dropping five in June.’ […] But I feel like the real estate got a little weird for him. I’m just gonna be all the way honest with you, and not even on no funny, no nothing. I’m sure [Drake] is gonna put out an album that does numbers, so on and so forth. Great. But it’s not gonna be better than DAYTONA.”
You can check Pusha’s full interview above.
