The Mac Miller lyrics that weren’t meant to be shots at Drake and Jay-Z
Mac Miller released his fan-favourite Faces mixtape in 2014 just months before dropping his GO:OD AM album. On the song ‘Here We Go’, the Pittsburgh rapper references Drake in the first verse with the lyric, “I did it all without a Drake feature,” then delivers the same line except with Jay-Z’s name at the end of the second verse.
During a podcast episode, Miller addressed the name-drops, joking that he “invited [Drake] to [his] birthday party and he didn’t come one time.” Instead of being disses, the lines are simply Miller bragging about making a career for himself without the need for a big-name artist collaborating with him.
“I’m a huge Drake fan. It was less about the actual Drake features,” he said on The Juice. “At the end of the day, I by no means have done it by myself, I have great people around me at all times. It’s just dope to kind of be where I’m at and be the head of my whole thing. It’s not like a shot.”
At the same time, he wasn’t shading any artists who have collaborated with both of them. “Even for the rappers that do get the Drake verse, that’s awesome,” he said. “I was actually thinking this one day, sitting there thinking, ‘Could I actually picture myself on a song with Jay-Z? Would that make any sense?’ I would love to. Wouldn’t that be weird? Would that sound right?”
Miller previously did an interview with Noisey where he responded to comments on his ‘I Am Who Am (Killin’ Time)’ video from Watching Movies with the Sound Off. When a YouTube user commented, “The song itself and the music video is something Drake would do,” he replied, “Thank you, that’s all I can say. Thank you. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I do love Drake.”
Following his death in September 2018, Drake paid tribute to Miller at Boston’s TD Garden before playing ‘Emotionless’ from his Scorpion album. “Tonight, I wanna dedicate this show to my late friend Mac Miller, who was always a kind man to me,” he said on stage.
Jay-Z also once gave Miller the ultimate tribute by listing his favourite rappers. In a post on Twitter (now known as X), he tweeted, “Black people really magic. Mac Miller nice too though.” Mac famously framed the compliment and took a photo of himself next to it hanging on his wall.
As much as possible, Miller was always keen on keeping his focus away from what other rappers like Drake were doing. “When I’m worrying about what Kendrick [Lamar] is doing or what Drake is doing or what Chance [The Rapper] is doing, it stops you from focusing on what you’re doing,” he told Clique TV. “The 15-year-old hip-hop cypher junkie in me will always be competitive when it comes to rap.”