Drake seemingly took a shot at Kendrick Lamar during the opening night of his It’s All a Blur Tour this week — or so fans think.
The 6 God kickstarted his joint tour with 21 Savage at Chicago’s United Center on Wednesday night (July 5), marking his first cross-country trek in half a decade.
AD LOADING...
During the show, Drake paused for a brief intermission where he addressed the crowd and spoke about his upcoming album For All the Dogs, which he announced last month to coincide with his new poetry book Titles Ruin Everything.
The OVO Sound hitmaker promised that the project is “coming out soon” while throwing shade at artists who take years-long breaks in between albums.
AD LOADING...
“I look around at all these faces. I know it’s summertime, I gotta give you shit!” he said to a roar from the crowd. “I don’t know about these guys that go away for three, four, five years and wanna chill out and all that shit. That’s not me.
“With that being said, I got an album coming out soon for y’all. It’s called For All the Dogs. I always hear people talking about, ‘Damn, we miss that old Drake.’”
He continued: “I understand what you mean. You need more music so that you can, you know, feel good about your new lover, shit on your exes, get fly, get drunk, show love to your family, show love to your friends.”
Drake confirms For All The Dogs will be “old” drake pic.twitter.com/s7oIrJXNNk
— Alijah ⁶🧣 (@Drakesoldmore) July 6, 2023
While Drake declined to name names, his longtime rivalry with Kendrick Lamar and the Compton native’s tendency to take his time crafting albums led many fans to believe he was the intended target.
“Another jab at Kendrick lmao,” one person wrote on Twitter, while another reacted by saying: “Aubrey and Kendrick need to dead the tap dancing and squabble on wax. No more subs either!”
AD LOADING...
Kendrick’s latest effort, 2022’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, came five years after its Pulitzer Prize-winning predecessor, DAMN.
Drake, on the other hand, remains one of the most prolific artists in the game having dropped 13 full-length projects in as many years.
AD LOADING...
If For All the Dogs arrives in the next two months, it’ll mark his fourth project in a two-year span following Certified Lover Boy, Honestly, Nevermind and his 21 Savage collaboration, Her Loss.
Drake’s comments come after Kendrick Lamar was accused of mocking him on his song “The Hillbillies” with Baby Keem, which dropped in May.
The track not only has similar production to Drizzy’s Honestly, Nevermind cut “Sticky,” but finds K. Dot borrowing — or parodying — his flow.
Keem even referred to the track as a “Sticky Dub” when sharing it on Twitter.
AD LOADING...
Prior to this, Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s once-bitter feud — which saw them trade lyrical blows in the previous decade — had mostly faded into the background.
The 6 God even publicly supported his Compton counterpart last year by attending his Big Steppers Tour stop in Toronto.
Meanwhile, Drake also took a shot at Childish Gambino during his tour opener in Chicago, albeit in less subliminal fashion.
While he performed “Headlines,” faux news headlines flashed on a digital ticker on stage, including one that read: “The Overrated And Over Awarded Hit Song ‘This Is America’ Was Originally A Drake Diss Record.”
AD LOADING...
The derisive headline was in response to Gambino’s recent confession that his Grammy-winning 2018 song started out as a diss aimed at Drizzy as a “joke”.
“I had the idea three years before,” he told GQ. “I told [director] Hiro [Murai] the idea, and he’s like, ‘I really want to do that.’ The idea for the song started as a joke. To be completely honest, ‘This is America’ — that was all we had was that line.
AD LOADING...
“It started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like, this shit sounds kind of hard though. So I was like, let me play with it.”
