It has often been said that rap is wrestling — meaning that a lot of the supposed “beef” that goes on within the genre is just performers doing a job, rather than holding legit animosity toward each other. If that’s the case, then the only way to buy into the brewing feud between Childish Gambino and Drake is to go full-blown mark, because both are surely in on the joke.
A few months ago, Gambino — aka multitalented actor/director/producer/writer Donald Glover — admitted his 2018 megahit “This Is America” started out as a Drake diss, so at last night’s It’s All A Blur Tour opener, Drake himself chimed in to strike back, calling the song “overrated” with his stage design. A text scroll above and on the sides of the stage declared: “The overrated and over-awarded hit song ‘This Is America’ was originally a Drake diss record.” Considering that many of the other quotes scrolling during his performance of “Headlines” were culled from negative press coverage Drake’s received over the years, it seems likely this is also a blog headline, but Google hasn’t turned anything up as yet.
Drake called This Is America “overrated and over awarded” at the first show of his tour after Childish Gambino said it was originally a Drake diss
pic.twitter.com/A6UPfLQkhW
— SK
(@raptalksk) July 6, 2023
Obviously, Drake and Donald have both had a lot of fun messing with media who run stories like this, so it seems fair to say all this is probably a bit of kayfabe to keep the fans entertained. However, depending on how sensitive Glover is to criticisms of “This Is America” — and there have been plenty since it dropped in May 2018 — Drake and ‘Bino could mess around and work themselves into a shoot, and I don’t know who actually wants to see that. You can find more about the Drake tour, including the setlist, here.