Drake’s chart success, Kanye’s statements about Beyoncé’s children, Nicki Minaj’s closeness to Trump – Jay-Z doesn’t leave anyone out for four minutes at the Roots Picnic Festival and raps a cappella.
Drake is busy celebrating chart success after chart success. “Janice STFU” storms to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, catching Michael Jackson with his fourteenth number one hit. By the way, he also overtakes Jay-Z with his fifteenth number one album – but he reminds Drake that he’s looking in the wrong chart.
Drake himself dealt a lot on his most recently released album ICEMAN – against Kendrick Lamar, Pusha T, A$AP Rocky and also against Jay-Z. He didn’t hesitate and used the appearance at the Roots Picnic Festival to make his opinion known. In a four-minute freestyle, he ripped into Drake a cappella. Referring to the song “Janice STFU,” in which Drake rapped “The jig is up,” he countered: “The jig is up/ We got up 10/ Wrong chart champ/ You gotta look up again/ N—s look up to Hov/ I never looked up to them.”
Drake and Ye vs. Jay-Z?
Before Drake gets involved in another fight with a rap giant, he could team up with Kanye aka Ye. Because he also got his share of the beef despite playing tracks together. Amidst Ye’s increasingly frequent – let’s call it – paranoid mood swings, he again made derogatory comments toward Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s children: He questioned their cognitive abilities and speculated about artificial insemination. The same man who found his own 12-year-old daughter had cheated on him and who wore a swastika chain link next to right-wing extremist Nick Fuentes.
Jay-Z put the absurdities of these statements into perspective: “You ever heard of wonder-kin? My children are some of them,” he rapped. “Have you n—-s got no shame? You trying to get under skin? I’ll really get under skin.”
A dig at Nicki Minaj
As soon as Kanye was dispatched, there was a swipe at Nicki Minaj, who had recently caused a sensation with her GQ interview and the statement that she was Trump’s No. 1 fan. Jay-Z teased: “That lady back on that stuff, she sounds like she’s in love with ’em/ Her Ken can’t even… pick them kid… enough of them/ A rapper can’t be my opp, I got MAGA Republicans/ Those shots came from the very top of the government, good luck with them.”
So he wishes her good luck with the Republicans – and then tops it off without saying a word: Meek Mill, Nicki Minaj’s ex, came on stage. A four-minute freestyle rap to rebuke his rap colleagues.
Whether the whole thing results in a protracted beef remains to be seen. With this performance, however, Jay-Z is back at the top of the headlines and kicks off his anniversary shows for “Reasonable Doubt” and “The Blueprint,” taking place at Yankee Stadium in New York on July 10th and 11th.