Boosie Badazz was left shocked after learning about Drake’s Jewish heritage, something he was completely unaware of until this week.
In the latest clip from his lengthy interview with VladTV, the Baton Rouge rapper was chewing over Drizzy’s complicated relationship with Kanye West when he was informed that the 6 God is Jewish.
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DJ Vlad mentioned Drake’s apparent shot at Kanye on Her Loss (“Linking with the opps, bitch, I did that shit for J. Prince,” he rapped, implying their 2021 reconciliation was nothing more than a favor to the Rap-A-Lot Records boss).
Vlad then pointed out the oft-overlooked fact that Drake is Jewish, suggesting that could’ve been a factor behind him dissing Ye considering the antisemitic remarks the Donda rapper had made in the weeks before the album’s arrival.
“Oh yeah? Drake a Jew? Damn!” Boosie said after being told about Drizzy’s background. “Drake ain’t going nowhere for 80 years! [Laughs] He finna get mo’ powerful! I ain’t know that!”
“Drake’s mother is Jewish. Drake had a bar mitzvah, there’s footage of it,” Vlad explained. “Remember when he did that video with Lil Wayne where the had the whole bar mitzvah music video? You may have missed it.
“I remember someone hit me up about this who grew up around Drake — Drake was raised in a Jewish part of Toronto with his mother and his mother’s Jewish family. He wasn’t around his father; his father moved away to Memphis. He wasn’t raised with his Black family; he was raised with his Jewish family.”
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He added: “So how [is Kanye] shocked that you’re bashing Jews for two weeks, and the Jewish guy was like, ‘Fuck you’ on his new album? How is this a surprise?!”
Boosie replied: “Oh, yeah! See, Vlad, you educating me. I did not know all this shit! If I was Drake, I would’ve felt like that was another shot at me, shit.”
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While Drake’s Jewish heritage is news to Boosie Badazz, the OVO hitmaker has long been proud of his ancestry. In addition to throwing a bar mitzvah in his 2012 “HYFR (Hell Ya Fucking Right)” music video with Lil Wayne, he spoofed his bar mitzvah in an SNL skit in 2014 and threw a bar mitzvah-themed party for his 31st birthday in 2017.
More recently, Drake nodded to his heritage by rapping, “Yeah, I probably should go to yeshiva, we went to Ibiza” on last year’s Scary Hours 2 and cast an Orthodox rabbi in his wedding-themed “Falling Back” video that debuted this past summer.
“I never looked at it as [something to overcome]. I was just like, ‘Man, I just gotta be a good rapper,'” he said in a 2013 interview with CBC News. “But you know, to a lot of other people, they’re like, ‘Wait, what? You’re Canadian? You’re Jewish? You’re half [Black]?’ It’s mind-blowing things to them.
“It wasn’t like on my mixtape cover it said, ‘The new Canadian half-Black Jewish [rapper].’ People had to kinda go find out about me and I think when they did, it made the story even more interesting. I wouldn’t want that to change at all.”
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Meanwhile, Kanye West was recently crowned “Antisemite of the Year” by the American non-profit watchdog group StopAntisemitism.org for his continued attacks on Jewish people.
“Kanye uses his celebrity platform to push dangerous antisemitic tropes about Jews and power and he refuses to stop,” the group’s Executive Director Liora Rez told TMZ.
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“His continuous onslaught of bigoted statements has resulted in horrific antisemitic acts perpetrated by white supremacists, Black Hebrew Israelites and other fringe groups looking to cause Jews harm.”
She added: “Jew hatred is already out of control in the United States, and the last thing we need is a celebrity like Kanye to add fuel to that fire.”
