Drake has been discussing his inevitable retirement for almost a decade, yet, for a variety of reasons, has continued to release music to much success and critique. T-Pain recently called him out for not living up to his word of “gracefully” leaving music behind.
“The one thing I learned from Drake, here’s the crazy thing, the one thing I learned from but one thing he hasn’t followed, his own words. Drake said ‘I want to be one of those people that gracefully bows out and not get kicked out,’” the 40-year-old singer said on a recent episode of the Crash Dummies podcast. Teddy was referencing Drizzy’s 2023 interview “A Moody Conversation” with Lil Yachty.
“I have ever since said, ‘Thank y’all, I appreciate y’all. I’ll see y’all when I drop—don’t worry about it, I’ll just drop something. Let me know if you heard it,’” Pain said with a joking tone. “Drake is like, ‘No, listen, OK, I got another one. Hold on, check this out. Y’all ain’t like that one? OK, real quick, just one more. Let me try one more.’”
The “Buy U A Drank” singer claimed that in just two years, the Toronto superstar has become the person that he “didn’t want to be.” He expounded on that point and how it related to his career: “Like, when he said that ‘I wanna gracefully bow out and not get kicked out,’ I was like, ‘You know what? I’m out this bi**h.’ I’m out this motherf**ker. I’m not trying to impress y’all ni**as. Y’all ni**as don’t give a f**k if I live or die. Why the f**k would I keep trying to impress y’all? I’m out. I’m done. I did everything that I’m trying to do. I changed the game. I made a sound. What else?”
The five-time Grammy winner did that interview with Yachty in February 2023, just under five months before his It’s All A Blur tour with 21 Savage. In October 2023, he released For All The Dogs and followed up with a deluxe version in November. That following February, he extended the It’s All A Blur tour and incorporated the Big As The What? edition co-starring J. Cole. Of course, in the middle of that tour, he was targeted by Kendrick Lamar, Future, Metro Boomin, and more, setting off the biggest rap beef in Hip-Hop history.
He released several diss songs from April to May, and followed up with a few singles and features that summer. This past February, he released a joint album, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, with PARTYNEXTDOOR while on the Anita Max Win tour in Australia. Drake is set to hit the road with PND for the $ome $pecial $hows 4 U tour in the United Kingdom and Europe from July to September, and has been teasing his next solo album.
With all of that said, T-Pain wasn’t wrong in saying that Drake hasn’t lived up to his word, but only if his perception of that statement was that the father of one planned to gracefully bow out that year. The “Nokia” artist has been a high volume act throughout his career, and is also the same man who rapped “The most successful rapper 35 and under/ I’m assumin’ everybody’s 35 and under/ That’s when I plan to retire, man it’s already funded” on the 2016 Views cut “Weston Road Flows.”
Leave a comment