Drake

Although social media has been a huge boon in helping artists promote their work, it has also come with a huge drawback. In the era of the subtweet, any comment an artist makes in any medium will eventually make its way to Twitter, where overzealous fans will dissect it and reinterpret it for any trace of malice toward another artist (this is deranged behavior, by the way. Knock it off).

Savvy artists can do their best to get ahead of this phenomenon — or at least play defense a little — by making their own statements on Twitter to try and control the narrative. That’s what Kid Cudi did yesterday, perhaps sensing that one of his comments from a newly published Esquire cover story would be read the wrong way — or even seeing tweets already determining that he was being shady. In the story, he addresses his broken friendship with Kanye West, saying it’d take a “miracle” to mend fences and using another recently buried hatchet as an example.

“With all due respect, I’m not Drake, who’s about to take a picture with him next week and be friends again, and their beef is squashed,” he said. “That’s not me. What I say, I mean. I will be done with you. It’s gonna take a motherf*cking miracle for me and that man to be friends again. I don’t see it happening. He gon’ have to become a monk.” This, of course, is a reference to the two frenemies’ Free Larry Hoover Concert last year, which they held after years of trading passive-aggressive jabs in their music and social posts (to be fair, this also confused Kendrick Lamar).

But before fans could run with any speculation that Cudi has beef with Drake (which wouldn’t be entirely unfounded), Cudi himself made sure to clarify his meaning. “Just to be clear, I wasnt tryna throw a shot at Drake,” he wrote. “I got love 4 him. My point I was tryna make is that im not so forgiving. Meaning he might be a lil nicer than me in that situation w dude. Thats all. Maybe that came off wrong thru my words. So yea, all good w Drake.”

Although Kids See Ghosts fans were probably distressed by Cudi’s comments, there’s a bright side here. Despite his harsh words for Kanye, there was a time when it seemed Cudi would never reconcile with Drake. For that matter, plenty of seemingly insurmountable splits were repaired throughout the history of rap, including one of its most infamous ones between Jay-Z and Nas. So, nothing is impossible. And with Kanye becoming more and more of a recluse, he’s about halfway to being a monk as it is. We can only hope he actually, sincerely, makes amends.