Music
Toronto fans defend Drake by trolling Meek Mill
by Jeremy Mersereau
July 29, 2015
From homemade t-shirts to faux fundraisers to diss tracks, here's a primer on the beef so far.
The ongoing Drake/Meek Mill feud, a.k.a. The Most Reheated Beef Story of the Week, continued its manufactured escalation last night. Toronto attendees of the Nicki Minaj show (featuring her fiancée Meek) arrived at the Molson Amphitheatre wearing homemade pro-Drake T-shirts:
Meek was supposed to hit the stage at 8 p.m. last night, but when he was a no-show at the scheduled time, Drake fans everywhere were buzzing, certain they’d defeated their nemesis with their homemade “Charged Up”/FUCK MEEK shirts. However, the rapper did perform a four-song set, albeit to a chorus of boos later on in the evening, blaming border issues for his late arrival. Attendees said that at one point, Meek raised his middle fingers to the crowd as the words “F*** YOU” floated behind him on a video screen.
Drake fans are adding insult to injury at every opportunity: A tongue-in-cheek fundraising web page, SaveMeekMill, has just been launched, with its mission statement saying that it aims to save the rapper’s rapidly declining brand by giving back to Philadelphia youth.
And now, as a public service, a quick primer for the approximately 17 people on the planet who aren’t up-to-date on this reheated glop that’s being passed off as beef:
– JULY 21: Philadelphia rapper and former Aubrey chum Meek Mill accused Drake of not writing his own raps in the Tweet That Launched A Thousand Blog Posts:
– JULY 22: Meek dropped the name Quentin Miller during his deluge of tweets, saying that this was the person responsible for much of Drake’s lyrical output. Atlanta rapper OG Maco pointed out a Q. Miller listed prominently among the credits for Drizzy’s surprise February mixtape If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, echoing Meek’s sentiments that rappers should eschew the use of outside help writing lyrics, and pride themselves on coming up with 100% original material. “With rappers, you’re only coming to them because they can rap. So if you’re not rapping, what are we doing, why am I here?” asked Maco.
The uproar grew louder when Hot 97 DJ Funkmaster Flex played an alleged Quentin Miller reference track for Drake’s song “10 Bands” live on the air, which he claimed to have acquired from ‘someone within Drake’s camp”. Et tu, OB OBrien?
For some unfathomable reason Toronto city councillor Norm Kelly also decided to get in on the action:
Stay in your bike lane, Norm.
– JULY 24: The shadowy Quentin Miller broke his silence, explaining that he “is not and never will be a ’ghostwriter’ for Drake” and expressing his admiration of Aubrey. “I’m proud to say that we’ve collaborated but I could never take credit for anything other than the few songs we worked on together” he added… on Tumblr. Yep, this guy’s a Drake fan alright.
– JULY 25th: Drake drops “Charged Up”, which takes shots at Meek, who is less than impressed:
-JULY 26th-28th: Meek lives up to his name and doesn’t respond, aside from a bizarre 15-second clip of what sounds like him crying. That’s uh, one way to reply, I guess.
– JULY 29th: Drake fires a second salvo with the fiery “Back to Back Freestyle”:
Great, now you’re caught up! “This is definitely worthy of my time and emotional investment, and certainly isn’t being stoked by entertainment blogs everywhere for clicks,” I hear you saying. You’re absolutely right! Whatever your allegiance, I think we’d all agree it’s high time to crown a winner and quit talking about this forever… as long as we agree the winner is Drake.
