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And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week
CMU Beef Of The Week #194: Drake v Rolling Stone
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 14 February 2014
Drake is unhappy. He did this big cover interview with Rolling Stone about an album he released almost six months ago, and then Rolling Stone went and gave his cover to some other guy at the last minute. Just because that guy was the greatest actor of his generation and died suddenly. It’s like the magazine thought it was important to pay tribute to a key figure in the wider interests of its readership or something. Unbelievable.
Drake’s response came after snippets of the interview, which goes on sale today, began to circulate online. In particular was a quote in which Drake seemingly suggested that he didn’t think that Kanye West’s last album, ‘Yeezus’, was 100% the greatest piece of art ever created.
There were other digs at fellow rappers in the interview, such as Jay-Z – “It’s like Hov can’t drop bars these days without at least four art references” – and Macklemore, whose text message to Kenrick Lamar apologising for winning the Best Rap Album Grammy Award Drake “felt cheap”. Drake also said of the SMS: “That shit made me feel funny”. Best quote of the interview there, by the way. “That shit made me feel funny”.
Anyway, once he was done laying into Jay-Z and Macklemore, he moved on to Kanye, saying: “There were some real questionable bars on [‘Yeezus’]. Like that ‘Swaghili’ line? Come on, man. Even Fabolous wouldn’t say some shit like that”.
Oh, I forgot to mention he had a dig at Fabolous too. Though on the subject of Kanye, he quickly re-stated the influence West had on his early career, saying: “Kanye’s the reason I’m here. I love everything about that guy”.
So, hey, all’s well then. Except it wasn’t. Because as far as Drake was concerned, when he made the comments about Kanye he wasn’t being interviewed, he was just talking to the journalist who was interviewing him. And that talk is off limits for publication.
“I never commented on ‘Yeezus’ for my interview portion of Rolling Stone”, he said, beginning a series of now mostly deleted tweets. “They also took my cover from me last minute and ran the issue”.
Oh yeah, the cover. Drake was supposed to be on the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone. But now Philip Seymour Hoffman is on it instead. This is probably the worst thing about the actor’s sudden and tragic death.
“I’m disgusted with that”, continued Drake. “RIP to Phillip Seymour Hoffman. All respect due. But the press is evil”.
After deleting these tweets, Drake followed up with a blog post. And, to be fair, he did clarify his position a bit better that time round, saying that he completely agreed with Rolling Stone’s decision to put Hoffman on the cover (which would explain the deleted tweets).
“My frustration stemmed from the way it was executed”, he wrote. “The circumstances at hand are completely justifiable (on the magazine’s behalf), but I was not able to salvage my story or my photos and that was devastating. They ran the issue without giving me a choice to be in it or not. I would have waited until it was my time because I understand the magnitude of the cover they chose but I just wasn’t given that option and that made me feel violated”.
Basically he’s saying he wishes the magazine had pulled the whole interview when a bigger story came in for the cover, and held everything back until a Drake-sized slot on the front page was available. Which perhaps is a reasonable request, given the interview wasn’t linked to any timely release or event. Though, at the same time, the interview was done and made up a significant portion of that issue of the magazine, so pulling it would have been a major arse for Team Rolling Stone.
Whatever. Maybe Drake will have better luck next time. Except, sadly there won’t be a next time. In his final tweet on the subject, which remains online, the rapper said: “I’m done doing interviews for magazines. I just want to give my music to the people. That’s the only way my message gets across accurately”.
If you’re interested in getting Drake’s message inaccurately, you can read the full interview here.
