Drake on Meek Mill Beef: “I Didn’t Get How There Was No Strategy on the Opposite End”

Drake will appear on The Fader's 100th issue. The announcement came after just under a week of his collab mixtape/album What A Time To Be Alive (his partner for the tape, Future, will appear on XXL's Fall issue that comes out next week). Drizzy spoke on just about everything.

On his beef with Meek Mill, Drake described how he found out. “I’m just gonna bring it up ‘cause it’s important to me,” he said. “I was at a charity kickball game—which we won, by the way—and my brother called me. He was just like, ‘I don’t know if you’re aware, but, yo, they’re trying to end us out here. They’re just spreading, like, propaganda. Where are you? You need to come here.’ So we all circled up at the studio, and sat there as Flex went on the air, and these guys flip-flopped [about how] they were gonna do this, that, and the third.”

The OVO Sound boss goes on to say how he was surprised to see Meek's lack of planning and aggressiveness plus why he released back-to-back diss tracks ("Charged Up" and "Back-to-Back"). “This is a discussion about music, and no one’s putting forth any music?" he said. "Nobody told you that this was a bad idea, to engage in this and not have something?...It was weighing heavy on me. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get how there was no strategy on the opposite end. I just didn’t understand. I didn’t understand it because that’s just not how we operate.” He continues, talking specifically about "Back-to-Back," “I was like, ‘I’m gonna probably just finish this.’ And I know how I have to finish it. This has to literally become the song that people want to hear every single night, and it’s gonna be tough to exist during this summer when everybody wants to hear [this] song that isn’t necessarily in your favor.”

The "6 God" also addressed the ghostwriting allegations and Quentin Miller reference tracks. “I need, sometimes, individuals to spark an idea so that I can take off running. I don’t mind that. And those recordings—they are what they are. And you can use your own judgment on what they mean to you.” When pressed, he added: “There’s not necessarily a context to them. And I don’t know if I’m really here to even clarify it for you.” Drake also later alluded to the larger conversation the controversy stirred up. “If I have to be the vessel for this conversation to be brought up—you know, God forbid we start talking about writing and references and who takes what from where—I’m OK with it being me.”

Read the full cover story right here. Check out our cover story with Drake from 2013 here also.