Drake Doesn’t Write His Raps, According to Meek Mill
Meek Mill is at least as outspoken on social media as his girlfriend Nicki Minaj is — and, like his love and current tour mate, he got people talking on Twitter last night (July 21). The rapper alleged that Drake, one of the current titans of rap, uses a ghostwriter.
The claim is surprising for a few reasons. For one, Drake has put in two notable features on Meek's songs: "Amen" from 2012 and "R.I.C.O." from Meek's recent release, Dreams Worth More Than Money, which entered at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. In addition to their fruitful collaborations, Drake is closely associated with Nicki, as the two are longtime friends, fellow Lil Wayne proteges and Cash Money label mates. But these ties may be exactly why Meek wanted to distance himself from Drake, lest naysayers think he owes his surge in success to that friendship — and for that matter, to Nicki herself.
Meek warmed up for his anti-Drake tirade with a tweet stating he'd hit it big without his girlfriend's help: "And it's get it clear Nicki or nobody not responsible for my success...I been had the culture with me..Don't ever get that confused!!!" While that sounds a bit defensive and maybe a smidge insecure, Nicki would likely agree with him.
An hour later, the "All Eyes On You" rapper set his sights on Drake:
WHOA. He continued, "[sic] The whole game know for real they scared to tell the truth! I can't wait tok these guys and sit back and act like they don't know!" He then reiterated his original claim about Drake's "R.I.C.O." verse, and his own personal commitment to spilling the metaphorical truth tea: "He ain't even write that verse on my album and if I woulda knew I woulda took it off my album..... I don't trick my fans! Lol."
Meek even went so far as to say his own lady is in on the secret:
He also happened to offer a name, sans context: Quentin Miller, who is credited in the production notes for Drake's If You're Reading This It's Too Late.
Because Twitter loves nothing more than a good pile-on, Rick Ross saw fit to weigh in with his opinion. Evidently thinking better of it later, Ross has since deleted the tweet (screen cap via the Daily Beast).
Chris Brown also made a somewhat self-deprecating joke about the situation (Brown has collaborated with both artists, and with just about every rapper and R&B singer of the past 10 years, for that matter). Brown then also deleted his post.
Meek continued to hold forth on subjects like Drake's "Anaconda" cameo, Rick Ross ("Ross is really with me") and, in case it wasn't extremely clear already, his own relentless dedication to uncovering rap-related lies. He reaffirmed that intention in yet another tweet this morning (July 22).
While Drake has yet to respond to the allegations, Meek's insistence that a guest verse on his own album was revealed to be ghostwritten is food for thought. While ghostwriters are something of a dirty secret in the rap world — in which an MC is supposed to be measured against his or her own rhyme-writing creativity — they're certainly employed by some high-profile rappers.
As the Daily Beast points out, some fans assumed Kendrick Lamar was referring to Kanye West in his "King Kunta" lyric, "I can dig rapping, but a rapper with a ghostwriter? / What the fuck happened? / (Oh no) I swore I wouldn’t tell / But most of y’all sharing bars like you got the bottom bunk in a two-man cell." But Kanye is far from the only rapper said to low-key enlist freelance scribes — and to join the conversation about it would make other rappers just as vulnerable to getting called out. Why, it's enough to make someone delete a tweet or Instagram post over it!
As we await further developments, let's all make like Chrissy Teigen: