The Drake album DMX thought was insulting: “Your balls ain’t that big”
DMX never minced his words about Drake. Dark Man X disapproved of Drizzy’s lyrics and image on several occasions. One of his main issues with the Toronto rapper was related to an album he worked on in the early 2010s.
Drake and his longtime producer, Noah ’40’ Shebib, were putting together a posthumous Aaliyah album following her death in 2001. The pair released a song called ‘Enough Said’ in 2012, which included vocals that the Princess of R&B recorded before her passing.
During an appearance on RapFix Live that year, DMX spoke out against Drake, claiming it was insulting that the proposed album didn’t include any of her collaborators. DMX acted alongside Aaliyah in the 2000 movie Romeo Must Die and collaborated on the song ‘Come Back in One Piece’.
“You’ve been given the opportunity to do an Aaliyah album, yet you don’t include anyone that she worked with personally,” DMX said. “What part of the game is that? How do you do that? How do you disregard what this woman did? What this beautiful angel did? How do you just go with it? Your balls ain’t that big, son.”
DMX wasn’t the only person against the album, with Aaliyah’s brother, Rashad Haughton, even dismissing its release. “There is no official album being released and supported by the Haughton family,” he said in a statement. Ultimately, the project was scrapped in 2014 due to the backlash, despite being halfway through its creation.
Speaking to Vibe, 40 said, “The world reacting to Drake’s involvement so negatively, I just wanted nothing to do with it. Ultimately, I wasn’t comfortable and didn’t like the stigma. Aaliyah’s label Blackground – the Hankersons, her uncle and cousin – came to me and said if she was around, she’d want you to do this project.”
He continued, “I’ve been obsessed with Aaliyah forever, and I know Drake has his relationship with her. But that opportunity was mine. Drake said, ‘Can I do it with you?’ And I was like, ‘Of course, we’ll do it together.’”
40 explained that his decision was made easy after finding out they didn’t have the support of Aaliyah’s mother. “That was a very sad experience for me,” he said. “I was naïve to the politics surrounding Aaliyah’s legacy and a bit ignorant to Timbaland’s relationship and everybody else involved and how they’d feel. Tim said to me, ‘Don’t stop. Make the album.’
“I think that was Tim taking the position of, ‘I’m not going to stop you. If you’re not going to do it, that’s your decision.’ We released [‘Enough Said’], but I was seven songs deep. [Aaliyah’s] mother saying, ‘I don’t want this out,’ was enough for me. I walked away very quickly.”
DMX slammed Drake during his appearance on The Breakfast Club in 2012. “I don’t like anything about Drake,” he said. “I don’t like his fucking voice. I don’t like the shit he talks about. I don’t like his face. I don’t like the way he walks, like nothing. I don’t like his haircut.”