Kanye West and Drake are two of the most successful rappers of all time. Both rappers have broken all kinds of records with regard to record sales charting, Grammys and more, and the two have both seen an extreme demand for their music. With so much in common, one would expect that the two would get on exceptionally well. However, that was not the case for a long time.
Industry chat and rumours have it that the origin of the feud concerns ‘All Of The Lights’, a 2010 track by Kanye West. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is considered one of Kanye’s best albums ever, and the rapper has spoken many times on how he carefully crafted the album over the course of two years.
Recorded in Hawaii, the album has a lot of features on it, and a lot of individuals helped make it as great as it is. From audio engineers to rappers, singers and composers, many ingenious individuals helped make the album as great as it is. However, Drake (real name Aubrey Graham) was not one of them.
In an interview with Sway In The Morning, a popular New York breakfast radio show, Kanye admitted that for the track ‘Monster’ he was considering removing Nicki Minaj’s verse as it was so good he didn’t want to embarrass the other artists on the track, however, in the end, he decided to keep it.
This was not the case for Drake. The Canadian rapper was initially had a verse on ‘All Of The Lights’ and was featured on the album. However, after Drake’s verse was leaked online, West pulled the rapper from the song. Many have speculated that West became jealous of Drake and so removed him from the album as a power move.
Drake never commented on this move from Kanye. However, a year later, he spoke about West and how he influenced him but let it be known that he planned to surpass West musically. In a 2011 interview with magazine The Source, Graham revealed, “When I was a kid trying to figure out what I liked, it was Ye who I related to the most. He was an artist, in every sense, from his cover art to his music. Now, I would say he is a really great competitor…and friend, at the same time… My goal is to surpass everything he’s accomplished. I don’t want to be as good as Kanye, I want to be better”.
A seemingly harmless comment, many fans and even West himself felt the comment had undertones of vengeance. Furthermore, later that year, on DJ Khaled’s track ‘I’m On One’, the rapper delivered a lyric in which he said, “I’m just feeling like the throne is for the taking/Watch me take it”. This was shortly after West and Jay-Z had released their collaborative album entitled Watch The Throne.
Kanye, surprisingly, remained quiet, but Drake kept the jabs coming and in 2016, on his track ‘Summer Sixteen’ the rapper made another reference to Kante as he rapped, “Now I got a house in LA, now I got a bigger pool than Ye” he rapped at in the song. “And look, man, Ye’s pool is nice, mine’s just bigger’s what I’m saying”.
However, when Drake entered an ongoing battle with Kanye’s G.O.O.D Music label mate Pusha T, 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 a beat, gave it to him and said that he could have it for his album Scorpion. Drake has revealed that he was very excited about putting their feud to rest and working together.
West invited Drake to Wyoming, and they worked together on the record, and 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.
So the origin of the feud is the 2010 track ‘All Of The Lights’ when West removed Graham from the track. You can listen to the 2018 troll-track below, which was set to be released on Drake’s album but instead was released by Kanye to spite the rapper.
