Sometimes, someone says something and your brain starts racing. It doesn’t matter if they’re talking a load of cobblers or not, you’ve already internally fired off down seventeen different tangents, and circled around the drain six more times, hoping that someone more diligent will make a documentary about it, or a long-form reader, because this site sure as hell isn’t going to do it.
What are we talking about? Well, in the world of hip hop (which sometimes is so filled with innuendo, politics, in-fighting and complicated histories, that you could argue it needs it’s own dedicated 24 hour rolling news channel and talk radio to keep up. In this instance, it features Kanye West, J Prince, Hitler and Drake. There’s some huge stars in there, but not everyone knows who J Prince is, but we’ll get to that.
The hip hop rumour mill (easily the finest rumour mill on the planet) has it that Drake and Ye’s beef was about to culminate in the release of a diss-track from Drake which detailed how much Hitler worship Yeezy was doing and just how anti-semitic he was back 2018. Of course, West’s actions of late make this less surprising now, but back in ’18, it would have created some very serious gasps.
For those that don’t quite remember the spat, Pusha T and Drake got involved with each other, and we saw the release of ‘The Story Of Adidon’, which basically saw Pusha T announcing to the world that Drake had a secret child, and that Drake was to dedicate a new Adidas line to said child. There was other stuff, but it was hard-hitting, but effectively, it resulted in Drake confirming the rumours. The heat from Pusha came from Drake’s ‘Duppy Freestyle’, which saw the Canadian include Ye: “what do you really think of the n**** that’s making your beats? I’ve done things for him I thought that he never would need. Father had to stretch his hands out and get it from me”, with the whole thing being something of a culmination of tension that had been simmering for years.
Around the time of the public boiling point, Push was the head of Ye’s G.O.O.D Music label, so as well as including the reference to ‘Father Stretch My Hands’ from West’s ‘Life Of Pablo’ LP, Yeezy was getting dragged into the soup by Drizzy: “You not even top 5 as far as your label talent goes; I really shouldn’t have given you none of my time coz you older than the n**** that you’re running behind” before asking Kanye to invoice him for giving Pusha T clout.
Now, to Drake and Ye. Way back when, Drake revealed a snippet of his feature on ‘All Of The Lights’, but come release time, Drake found himself chopped. After some largely vague back and forth, Drake once again found himself chopped in the edit from a Ye track (‘Wolves’), before Drake’s ‘Pop Style’ got a release, where he’d chopped Kanye’s verse, because fuck it, we’re all in it for the mess right?
Just before boiling point was reached, Drake discussed Ye, saying he “really sure what he’s referring to half the time… because in the same breath, I went from being… like… working on a project with him, to him sorta publicly shitting on me and DJ Khaled for being on the radio too much. I’m not sure why we’re the target of your choice that you made that night. And yeah, I accept what you’re going through, and I just go and continue working on my own thing.”
Now, we’re back and full circle to the diss tracks. How did Pusha know Drake had a son? Kanye collaborator Malik Yusef implied that West had heard Drake’s ‘March 14’ before release where he talks about his son, and told Pusha this information. Things between Yeezy and Drake heated up again, with accusations of sneak disses in ‘Sicko Mode’ (by Travis Scott there, married into the same family as Kim Kardashian – Kanye’s then wife), and it was around this time that Kanye starts screenshotting everyone’s messages with him, which he’s so known for doing now, because nothing’s ever truly off-the-record with a mad man.
And of course, Ye leaked his own track ‘Lift Yourself’, which features a great beat hijacked with a verse that is basically Kanye saying “poopity scoop” over and over [here]. Drake, offered the beat, saying:”‘Lift Yourself’ comes out with him just talking nonsense. Oh this guy’s trolling me. This was like a manipulative, like, ‘I wanna break you’ thing.’”
What’s this about Hitler and J Prince? What on Earth is going on here? Don’t worry, we’re getting there. We literally said at the top of this article that hip hop was so “filled with innuendo, politics, in-fighting and complicated histories, that you could argue it needs it’s own dedicated 24 hour rolling news channel and talk radio to keep up.” Would you believe us when we say we’ve missed loads out and that we’re genuinely trying to keep this succinct, but it’s getting away from us already?
Anyway, it was J Prince who hovered over Kanye when he made the video to squash the beef with Drake. J Prince must have some influence to exert such sway right? Well, he absolutely does. J Prince is a music executive with a knack for finding talent. He introduced Drake to Lil Wayne, and Drake signed to Young Money in ’09 as a result. He’s one of the ‘godfathers’ of rap in music industry terms (listen, he’s also a pretty big deal in boxing too, dealing with Floyd Mayweather Jr, Andre Ward and more – but we’re writing about music here). J Prince has helped and inspired half of the South, including Bun B, Scarface, Birdman, Master P, Geto Boys, and more.
J Prince told Diddy and Biggie to leave LA, as he was concerned for their safety, weeks before the ’97 murder of The Notorious B.I.G., and Matthew Knowles saw J Prince as someone to shape the career of his daughter’s R&B outfit, Destiny’s Child. A powerful, canny man.
Hang on a minute, the headline at the top says PROBABLY IMAGINARY SONGS WE WANT TO HEAR JUST FOR THE GOSSIP and all we’ve done is talk about beef and some fella called J Prince. And Hitler. Is this some kind of joke?
Okay, fine. Back to the beef with Pusha/Ye and Drake. Well, beef is usually like a tennis rally, with more verbal sparring on record than what we saw with Push and Drake. Pusha T is not a man willing to back down – he’s triple six evil once he gets limbered up. Drake? Well, a beef with Kanye seems a more even match, because there was a sense of watching Pusha’s response through your fingers. Like someone bring a knife to a napalm bomb fight.
However, rumour has it that Drake wasn’t finish and was about to get the nuclear codes. In 2018, Drake was APPARENTLY all set to expose Kanye for being anti-semitic and praising Hitler, and was going to corner Pusha T by implying ‘is this the guy you’re in bed with?’, in a bid to end some careers. J Prince is the man that got Kanye to back down. J Prince is the man who told Drake to cool off, apparently apparently, apparently…
Great. Now we’re writing overly long pieces based on a bunch of tweets you’ve read, which only came up based on some very specific searches you made?
Maybe. But the fact is, proper music journalists have been doing their bit too, with Rolling Stone magazine writing a piece [here] noting that Kanye may have been using Hitler as inspiration for 20 years. Even when he was wearing backpacks – a period where your favourite uncle says that Yeezy was unproblematic and made music that reminds them of the very narrow type of hip hop they like – he was inspired by Nazis. Nazis?!
You won’t click the link, so here’s a snippet we stole with credit: Beyond just fascination, two sources claim, West allegedly took inspiration from Nazi propaganda strategies and power-gaining tactics to achieve his own fame and success. “It’s not a stretch to now compare Kanye’s ‘by any means necessary’ methods and tactics with Adolf Hitler’s,” a former longtime collaborator says. “To know that a Hitler/[Joseph] Goebbels playbook has been a central inspiration to Kanye’s own media playbook helps bring a great deal of clarity to the exact types of moves he’s been making over his career.” (West did not reply to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.)
Until West received an answer he was satisfied with — which allegedly included some form of acknowledgement of the “good” the Nazi leader had done — West would continue to press people until he felt his views were validated, the music industry source says. “It sometimes became heated depending on the person,” says the source.
And now in 2022, almost 2023, Kanye has obliterated a marriage, business deals, gone off the deep end, double/tripled/quadrupled down, appearing on Alex Jones’ INFO WARS to embarrass the crackpots by praising Adolf Hitler (ADOLF HITLER?!?!?!), sidling up with America’s Alt Right figureheads and… honestly, the whole thing is one gigantic and very ugly mess.
While Kanye plots his next move (our money is on a cult – he’s already got loads of desert land, a school to start ’em young, and of course, the unsavoury views and a load of clothes to dress them in. At the Donda Academy (uncredited by official government and education boards), you stump up $15,000 a year, with students dressed entirely in black, parents signing nondisclosure agreements… and… well… look at these kids here.
He’s starting a cult. Charles Manson with money.
Did you accidentally tell us about the song you hinted at in the headline already? That section where you mentioned nuclear codes? And you’re persisting with this italicised and in bold trick you’re doing, like a reader is pulling you up on your long, unfocused piece about… well… nothing?
Okay. You got me. Basically, somewhere on a portable hard-drive, there might be a smoking gun. Drake has always seemed like someone playing the role of a lifetime – that of a rapper with criminal connections. It’s Kaufman like and he’s fully committed to the whole bit and become an absolute megastar in the process. He’s not the same as Pusha T. He’s not even the same as Kanye. We know he was an actor on a Canadian kids/teens TV show, and here we are, watching him stare down actual hard lads from the corner. It’s crazy.
However, the commitment to the bit is not without process or fire. The beef was ramping up. It looks almost certain that Drake was ready to return fire. We know Pusha T is good for it. However, J Prince gets involved and the whole thing goes away.
We want to hear the Drake track. Someone leak it. Yeezy is off the deep end, so fuck his feelings. J Prince has the small matter of a separate rumour mill swirling around him and his family (notably, regarding the absolutely tragic and utterly senseless murder of Takeoff from Migos) and Pusha is a coiled spring, good to go. If the track exists, which it probably doesn’t (look – you read the headline and got this far – you’ve only yourself to blame at this point), then let Push summon all of his bile and destroy Drake AND Kanye in the process, and call the track ‘Scorched Earth’. Pusha already stated very bluntly in ‘The Story Of Adidon’ “if we all go to hell it’ll be worth it”.
So there’s two tracks we’d like to hear then. Fuck’s sake.
The Pop Corporation 
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