Kanye West and Drake have had a strange and complicated relationship that hasn’t always been pretty. Many have traced it back to West’s decision to remove Drake’s verse from his 2010 hit ‘All Of The Lights.’ However, its true origins are unknown. All fans know is that it has been ongoing for years.
The pair went at each other in lyrics for years. In 2016, on his track ‘Summer Sixteen,’ Drake (real name Aubrey Graham) made another reference to Kante as he rapped, “Now I got a house in LA, now I got a bigger pool than Ye / And look, man, Ye’s pool is nice, mine’s just bigger’s what I’m saying”.
Following this, Graham ended up in another beef with Kanye’s close collaborator, Pusha T, formerly an artist on his G.O.O.D. Music label. As Drake and Pusha T’s feud raged on, West became fed up, and in 2018, after a lot of back and forth between Pusha and Drake, Kanye made a power move.
Known as ‘Lift Yourself’, Kanye played Drake the beat, gave it to him and said that he could have it for his album Scorpion. Drake has since revealed he was very excited about them putting their feud to rest and working together.
West invited Drake to Wyoming, and they worked together on the record. Drake left very happy with the track which was set to appear on his album. However, shortly after, West released the song with no Drake and merely himself talking nonsense, effectively negating everything that Drake had worked on while in West’s presence and publicly trolling the Canadian rapper in spite.
In an interview with LeBron James on his YouTube series The Show, Drake unveiled the lead-up to the release of ‘Lift Yourself’. Breaking it down for the NBA star, Graham disclosed, “He played me ‘Lift Yourself’, and he was like ‘Yo you can have this if you want.’ I was hyped, and I started writing to it, and then he was like, ‘Yo, you gotta come to Wyoming!’”
He continued, “I’m in Wyoming. I play him ‘March 14’. I send him a picture of my son, and I tell him I’m having trouble with my son’s mother. I shared my life. The next two days, I wake up to this text from him, a passive…like..sends me something I did like ‘I Love You Brother’ then ‘Lift Yourself’ comes out with him just talking nonsense!”
You can listen to Drake explaining how Kanye West trolled him in the video below.
