Latest rap beef wraps in Drake, rhinoplasty and pastrami
Drake at a 2021 rap battle in Long Beach, California. Photo by Getty Images
This story originally appeared on J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and was reprinted here with permission.
From Tupac vs. Biggie to Jay-Z vs. Nas, the rap beef — a war of words between rivals, set to music — is a staple of hip-hop culture.
The latest beef finds Jewish rapper Drake at the center of a rather unprecedented pile-on that some observers believe has antisemitic overtones when viewed against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war and the spike in antisemitic incidents across the country.
“It doesn’t make sense that the most prominent Black Jew in entertainment is going through this right now,” Y-Love, the Jewish rapper and content creator, told J. on Monday. “I feel like there’s antisemitic forces at play here regarding the war.”
The beef started a few weeks ago, when Kendrick Lamar — a Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper from Compton who is widely viewed as one of the GOATs, or greatests of all time — downplayed Drake’s status as one of the “big 3” rappers in the world right now on “Like That,” a song on Future and Metro Boomin’s new album, “We Don’t Trust You.”
The situation escalated over the weekend when Drake’s response, “Push Ups (Drop & Give Me Fifty),” leaked online. In the diss track, he mocks Lamar for his short stature, calling him “pipsqueak,” and says his last album was a bust, among other things. Drake also takes shots at Future, Metro Boomin, The Weeknd and Rick Ross. Ross quickly released his own diss in which he repeatedly calls Drake a “white boy” (his mother is white and his father is Black) and accuses him of getting a nose job to look less like his father.
The allegation took many people by surprise, including Drake’s Jewish mother, Sandi Graham. She texted him to ask if the rumor was true.
“I can’t believe you would get one without me, cuz you know I always wanted one,” she wrote in a message that Drake shared on his Instagram story. He replied, “I would have got us a 2 for 1 deal if I went ma.” He went on to call Ross “angry and racist.”
Drake shares a text message with his Mom 👀 pic.twitter.com/U5cNZcyZXt
— DailyRapFacts (@DailyRapFacts) April 14, 2024
There is a history of Jews and rhinoplasty that Ross may or may not have been aware of. On his Instagram story, Ross also referred to Drake’s crew, OVO, as the “pastrami posse,” another possibly coded reference to Drake’s Jewishness.
Ross, who is not Jewish, appears to have a fascination with Judaism. In 2012, he released a mixtape titled “The Black Bar Mitzvah” that invokes Jewish stereotypes about wealth. One of the featured artists on the mixtape was none other than Drake, who contributed a verse to the song “Us.”
Drake has long incorporated his Jewish identity into his music and public life. The video for his 2012 song “HYFR” was shot in a Miami synagogue, and he performed in a bar mitzvah sketch when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 2014.
He has not made extensive public remarks about the Israel-Hamas war. In late October, he was one of more than 200 Jewish and non-Jewish artists who signed an open letter to President Joe Biden in support of a cease-fire.
Still, he has been targeted over his Jewish identity in recent months. In December, rapper Slim Thug mentioned Drake during a social media rant about Jewish involvement in the music industry.
“Jewish people should own Drake — Drake is Jewish,” he said on Instagram. “Jewish people should own Jewish music. I don’t like that Jewish people own Black music. I don’t want Jewish people who are not a part of the culture to own the culture. I want only Black people to own Black music.” (In 2022 during his antisemitic meltdown, rapper Ye asserted without evidence that “Jewish people have owned the Black voice.”)
Y-Love slammed both Thug and Ross for suggesting, in different ways, that Black Jews have to pick a side. “When Rick Ross calls him ‘white,’ it’s the idea of you’re not really Black because you’re Jewish, you’re not really down because you had a bar mitzvah,” he said. “Now you’re talking about noses. It’s not ok.”
He added that he does not believe that Ross is antisemitic or that antisemitism is endemic in hip-hop.
“Hip-hop holds a mirror up to the society at large,” he said. “If antisemitic incidents are rising around the world, if antisemitic sentiment is rising around the world, it wouldn’t be logical that you wouldn’t hear kids rhyming about it in a studio, and that’s what’s up.”
Is he worried that the beef will lead to real-world violence, as it did with Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G., both of whom were murdered in drive-by shootings in the late 1990s?
“Biggie and Tupac were very young at that point. Everybody involved in this is over 35,” he said with a laugh. “Nobody’s really out in the streets fighting.”
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