Drake gets into some beef every now and again, and now his latest feud is with Anthony Fantano, the music critic best known for his popular YouTube channel The Needle Drop. How it all happened is a bit confusing, though.
Last night (September 15), on his personal YouTube channel, Fantano uploaded a video titled “Drake Slid Into My DMs,” in which he shares a nice-spirited and clearly fake series of Instagram messages from Drake, in which the rapper shares a vegan cookie recipe. Not long after the video went live, Drake took to his Instagram Story to share a screenshot of the real DMs he actually sent to Fantano, which read, “Your existence is a light 1. And the 1 is cause you are alive. And cause you somehow wifed a black girl. I’m feeling a light to decent 1 on your existence.”
Fantano took to Twitter to celebrate, sharing an image of a W and writing, “That b*tch shared the salty ass DM to over 100 million people. [crying laughing emojis].” He added in another tweet, “I made that man leak his own DMs. [crying laughing emojis].”
That bitch shared the salty ass DM to over 100 million people.
pic.twitter.com/2V86NTPnkw
— anthone fantano (@theneedledrop) September 16, 2022
I made that man leak his own DMs.
— anthone fantano (@theneedledrop) September 16, 2022
It’s not clear what exactly prompted Drake’s messages, but Fantano has often given the rapper’s album negative reviews, most recently with this year’s Honestly, Nevermind, which he deemed “not good.”
Once the dust had settled, Fantano took to Instagram Live to break down the timeline of how this all happened. Fantano said this situation started with him receiving an Instagram message request from Drake late Wednesday (September 14) night. In his explainer, Fantano throws shade back at Drake throughout, saying at one point, “A couple of things were running through my head. One: Why is Drake messaging me? I’m not 18 years of age. That’s kind of weird.”
Fantano also wasn’t impressed by Drake’s insults, saying, “This is why he has ghostwriters. That is the quality of insult you get when that man is working solo-dolo. If I wanted a good insult in my inbox, he would have to have paid somebody else to come in and do it.”
As for the progression of events from there, Fantano said he decided to make his video with the fake DMs (a “silly sh*tpost,” as he called it), then Drake shared the DMs on Instagram. In the screenshot Drake shared, Fantano had left him on read, although Fantano did note he has since responded to Drake’s message, saying he asked him, “When is the interview?”
He later concluded, “He was so angry that he got left on read, he had to leak his own DMs. Leak his own DMs! That’s sad. That’s unfortunate. That is a sorry state of affairs. That is a sorry state of affairs, that you couldn’t bait me in the DMs, so you had to show the whole world, you had to show the whole… ‘Look, I messaged him…’ [laughs] What is he saying by sharing that? ‘Look look look, I messaged this man in the middle of the night yesterday to try to pick on him’ [laughs]. Like it’s the schoolyard. Like it’s school. This is not Degrassi [laughs]. […] We should both be adults, being adults, doing adult things. So, too funny. Silly. Silly, silly.”
Check out Fantano’s explanatory Instagram Live broadcast below.