Nicki Minaj released her reissued mixtape Beam Me Up Scotty last Friday, including a new track called “Seeing Green” featuring Drake and Lil Wayne. Naturally, hip-hop heads were excited to hear the song, but a few lines from Drake’s verse got Toronto rap fans especially worked up: “You niggas think you doin’ damage, you just hypin’ me up/Face who? I could see a wall of y’all, all of y’all and run straight through/Trust, it’s all fun and games until I wanna play too.”
Fans on social media ran wild with speculation that Drake’s “Face who?” line was a reference to rising Toronto rapper Moula 1st, whose catchphrase is “You can’t face me.” The MC from the city’s Rexdale neighbourhood has been trying to get The Boy’s attention for a while, dropping combative remixes of his songs—there was his bristly take on “War” last year, and most recently, his rendition of Scary Hours 2track “Wants & Needs,” which he retitled, “You Can’t Face Me Hours.”
Less than 24 hours after “Seeing Green” dropped, Moula returned with a remix of the track, “Seeing Red.” Over the same Tizzy Track-helmed beat as the original, the MC goes in on Drake with arsenic-dipped bars like: “Bird-ass nigga face who?/Nigga I’m 23, first strap you ever held you was like 33/Thought you would’ve learned by now, to some degree/Hire anyone I’ll fire shots at your company.”
Evidently, Drake took notice. He threw a like to Moula’s Instagram post about the song.
Moula has been featured on OVO Sound Radio several times and appeared in an OVO Roots commercial with Noah “40” Shebib a few years ago, leading some to surmise that this may just be a bit of friendly competition more than anything else.
Regardless, whether Drizzy was actually taking a shot at the rising MC in “Seeing Green” is anyone’s guess, but one thing’s for sure: Moula’s got his attention now.
