J. Prince sat down with AllHipHopTV Thursday to discuss the Drake/Kanye West/Pusha-T beef, and explained some of his motivations and strategies leading him to pull Drake back from releasing an allegedly hard-hitting diss track against Kanye, as well as letting everyone know that beef on wax can quickly turn violent.
“First of all I hadn’t heard about it being recorded of him, but I do know about the ingredients that was in the song,” said Prince. “I do know about him moving forward to bring that to fruition. My reasons for pulling the plug and having that conversation with him to pull the plug was simply because it crossed a line of music, you know what I’m mean? That’s a song I’m sure everybody heard about now that's disrespecting Drake’s mama, his daddy, his friend that’s sick, 40, you know what I mean? That crosses the line of music.”
When prodded as to why he believes it’s better to squash this thing before it went any further, Prince was adamant that not only have Pusha’s disses taken things too far, but that things have escalated negatively for Drake and Kanye, were things to go any further.
“It just went too far, and when it goes there that’s a situation where people are angered, feel some kind of way, and it’s easy to escalate into other areas,” he explained. “And not only that, from a business perspective, for Drake to have to go somewhere out of his character, to do what I know what he was about to do to Kanye and both of them, would have been damaging.”
He also explains that he and Kanye had a private discussion on the matter, and that Ye wasn’t eager to keep the beef brewing. “No doubt about it,” answered Prince on whether or not Kanye would’ve suffered from the smoke. “And Pusha and his family members would have, as well. Getting in the pig pen requires getting dirty, and that ain’t worth Drake. That ain’t how we got where we are.”
“And I spoke with Kanye, so Kanye explained to me, ‘Man, I’m a family man and I don’t want this either.' And me and Kanye got a history through my guy Mike Dean who produced and engineered for Kanye, and when I analyzed everything, the song, and everything—it just ain’t worth it,” he said. “It just ain’t what we do.”
Naturally, a large part of Prince’s decision making is rooted in them greenbacks—and he’s self-aware enough to know that, while navigating this somewhat complex situation the three rappers have found themselves in.
“It would be hard for me to sit here and not think about business along my decision making, but at the top of the line what it was is that it got outside of music,” he said. “You’re dealing with an issue that becomes real personal, to the extent where you’re hurting family members, you’re affecting friends, you’re affecting a lot of different feelings and emotions where people are concerned, and now it comes time for you to answer, which requires you to get into the pigpen and get low down and dirty with this man, and you’re gonna hurt his situation.”
When it comes to Drake and Meek’s beef, though, J. Prince saw that differently entirely. “That was fair ground,” he said. “That’s him and Meek…that’s one on one.” As for the word on the street being that Drake needed his daddy to come and help him out of a jam, Prince doesn’t sweat it.
“We can live with the decision we made because we know that we’re about a movement, and not a moment,” he said.
