All of the Subs Aimed at Drake on ‘We Still Don’t Trust You’

Song: “Show of Hands”

ASAP Rocky sends some of the album’s most direct shots at Drake on “Show of Hands” when he raps, “Call up Pluto, Metro, should’ve put me on the first one/ Niggas in they feelings over women, what, you hurt or somethin'?/ I smash before you birthed son, Flacko hit it first son/ Still don' trust you, it's always us, never them/ Heard you dropped your latest shit/ Funny how it just came and went.” 

Rocky’s bar about how Future and Metro “should’ve put [him] on the first one” has fans speculating that the duo called in even more artists to send shots at Drake on this new album. 

When Rocky says “I smash before you birthed son, Flacko hit it first son,” he doesn’t name any names, but people are interpreting it to mean that he was with Drake’s baby mother Sophie Brussaex before the birth of their child Adonis, and there were rumors in 2018 (around the same time as the Push-T vs. Drake beef) that support this claim. He goes on to throw shade at Drake’s last album, For All The Dogs, before he closes the song with, “Fuck keepin' this shit hip-hop/ I wanna see a fuck nigga bleed out.”

So why does Rocky have smoke for Drake? Well, fans originally speculated that Drake had dissed Rihanna and Rocky on 2023’s “Fear of Heights” when he sang about his past experiences with Rih: “Why they make it sound like I'm still hung up on you?/ That could never be/ Gyal can't run me/ Better him than me/ Better it's not me/ I'm anti, I'm anti/ Yeah, and the sex was average with you/ Yeah, I'm anti 'cause I had it with you/ Okay, I'm auntie like your daddy's sister/ Auntie like a family picture/ And I had way badder bitches than you, TBH/ Yeah, that man, he still with you, he can't leave/ Y'all go on vacation, I bet it's Antilles.” 

And on “Another Late Night,” Drake even mentioned Rocky by name, rapping, “I ain't pretty flacko, bitch, this shit get really rocky.” With this context, “Show of Hands” might be Rocky’s way of responding to that verse, implying that he was with the mother of Drake’s child first, after Drake had gloated about being with Rihanna first.

Song: “All to Myself”

Instead of making his potential subs at Drake sound venomous, The Weeknd does what he does best and sings the disses like an angel on the fluttery “All to Myself,” which samples The Isley Brothers’ “Let's Lay Together.” On the track, Abel croons, “They could never diss my brothers, baby/ When they got leaks in they operation/ I thank God that I never signed my life away/ And we never do the big talk/ They shooters makin' TikToks.” 

The first portion of the verse (“They could never diss my brothers, baby”) is likely a reference to Drake inevitably retaliating against Future and Metro, while the line about being thankful that he never “signed [his] life away” could be alluding to the fact that he chose not to sign with OVO back in 2011 and instead helped to write much of Take Care. Fans are also speculating that the line about “shooters makin' TikToks” is a jab at Drake’s mob persona being a farce, as some have pointed to his old bodyguard/artist Baka Not Nice making TikToks.

Drake and The Weeknd have a long and complicated relationship that dates back over a decade. On his 2019 song “War,” Drake even rapped about how they just had to “fix things,” alluding to on-again-off-again tensions over the years, and fans are speculating that Abel is taking advantage of this moment to express his persisting frustrations with Drake.

Songs: “Nights Like This,” “#1 (Intro),” “Nobody Knows My Struggle,” “This Sunday”

After dropping a bunch of subs at Drake on We Still Don’t Trust You, Future finds a special pocket in the third verse on “Nights Like This,” where he could be sending more shots: “It be times when I be honest, people take me for granted/ It be times when I'm alone, I know I need my sanity/ It was times I never should've gave away my energy/ Should've saved my energy, made me stronger, new enemies.” 

People are speculating that these could be allusions to Future recently falling out with Drake, thus making “new enemies.”

Future opens the second disc on the album (“#1 Intro”) with a clip from Drake’s known adversary Charlamagne tha God. To be more specific, it’s a soundbite from a recent episode of the Brilliant Idiots podcast, where Charlamagne sings Future’s praises: "I think Future had influence, people want to be Future. People want to sound like Future. It's wild to me that we don't—It's not a big three, it is a fantastic four. And Future is in that. You can put him, he might be two, three. He might—can even be number one."

It’s even more clever that the clip bleeds perfectly into “Nobody Knows My Struggle” where he raps, “You thinkin' I started this shit and then wasn't gon' finish, you gotta be crazy.” This line could be referencing the initial shots that Future and Metro sent on We Don’t Trust You, which they’re now doubling-down on. 

Even more subtly, the mere inclusion of “This Sunday” (a near-decade-old song that Drake used as the reference track for “Feel No Ways” and was leaked online in 2022) could also be a way of Future showing how much he’s influenced the OVO rapper. 

Additionally, there are lots of lines on the album where Future says things like “You fucked my bro behind my back” (on “Beat It”) that could be interpreted as allusions to his rumored beef with Drake over a woman. But Future has been writing lyrics like that for years, so it’s difficult to definitively say it’s about him.

Song: “Red Leather”

J. Cole makes an appearance on “Red Leather,” which is an older Future track that was leaked on the internet over a year ago. Cole’s verse was not on the leak, but despite what the internet might think, it is very unlikely that he recorded his portion of the song in the 4 days since he apologized to Kendrick Lamar. 

Rap social media accounts were quick to interpret lyrics like “My energy was never on some toughest nigga shit/ I was just a conscious rapper who would fuck a nigga bitch” and “Blicks get to blastin, I turn into a track star” as J. Cole’s response to his short-lived beef with Kendrick, but these are wild generalizations that don’t take into account when the verse was likely recorded. 

Lyrics about how he “was never on some toughest nigga shit” would have applied to Cole regardless of the recent situation with Kendrick because he’s always made allusions to caring more about his peace than anything else, so it’s a stretch to call this a “response.” 

It is certainly interesting (and a little surprising) that Cole still cleared the verse for the album, knowing the feud that Future, Metro, and Drake are currently in, so it was inevitable that Twitter would blow up when everyone heard his verse on “Red Leather,” but it’s misleading to read too much into the actual lyrics, since they were likely recorded before all of this happened.