A photo posted by Baller Alert (@balleralert) on Sep 24, 2015 at 4:13pm PDT
On the heels of a victorious summer for the "Back to Back" rapper, Drake address ghostwriting, the Meek Mill beef and more in the Fader's 100th issue. In the publication's milestone issue, Drake sits down in his first interview since Rolling Stone in late 2014, and finally shares his thoughts on his well documented beef with the "Wanna Know" rapper, Meek Mill, his collaborative project, What a Time To Be Alive and his upcoming project, Views From The 6.
Back in July, Mill very publicly blasted the "6 god," accusing him of not writing his own verse for his featured track on Mill's Dreams Worth More Than Money, "R.I.C.O". In the infamous tweets heard around the word, Mill outed unknown rapper Quentin Miller as Drake's alleged ghostwriter. This started a snowball effect of a campaign launched against Drake, insinuating that he, in fact, did not write his own lyrics when Hot97's DJ Funkmaster Flex got involved and released reference tracks for songs off, IYRTITL. In Fader, he addresses the topic of Mill by saying:
"I'm just gonna bring it up 'cause it's important to me," he says. "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."
He goes on to reveal that the same night, he recorded "Charged Up," his first direct response to Mill. However, as the days grew on with no response from Mill, Drake almost became offended at the lack of preparation from Mill's camp when he in fact started the whole thing saying:
"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."
It was then that he decided to just go ahead and do another song. "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."
This resulted in the conception of "Back to Back" which declared Drake the victor in the short lived battle after Mill dropped his own lackluster response. He then went on to address the topic at hand of using a ghostwriter saying:
"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."
In summation the hip hop star adds, "It's just, music at times can be a collaborative process, you know? Who came up with this, who came up with that-for me, it's like, I know that it takes me to execute every single thing that I've done up until this point. And I'm not ashamed."
