MEEK MILL DRAKE FEUD: Is The Boy becoming a bully? A look at Drake, post-beef

If you’ve been following our breathless coverage of all things Drake in recent weeks, then you probably know the Toronto rapper closed his sixth annual OVO Fest Monday with a thunderous headlining performance. He brought out a wide array of guests — Kanye West, Pharrell, Future, Skepta, Big Sean, and Travi$ Scott, but who’s counting — and ripped through almost all of his best recent tracks and features, from "Energy" to "Tuesday."

But Monday night’s show isn’t going to be remembered for its slate of surprise cameos, and it’s not going to be remembered for its dense setlist. It’s going to be remembered for Drake’s Philadelphian contemporary, Meek Mill, and the way the festival’s host stomped all over their nascent spat like a high school prom king shoving a teenage pleb into an empty locker.



 Drake was juvenile, petty, malicious, and undeniably thorough

It was that kind of humiliation: juvenile, petty, malicious, but undeniably comprehensive. There’s no need for a roundtable anymore; Drake has emerged from this challenge triumphant. But there are some questions that warrant answers: Why did Drake feel the need to respond with such force? What skills gave him a decisive edge over Meek when it came to capturing the court of public opinion? And what did, if anything, did this cost him?

A brief recap, for those of you who’ve managed to make it this far without a clue what’s going on: about two weeks ago, Meek lit into Drake on Twitter and accused him of using a ghostwriter, a volatile assertion given the importance hip-hop places on authorial intent. (Meek’s tirade came after Drake failed to promote his new album Dreams Worth More Than Money, which happens to include a Drake feature on the song "R.I.C.O.") Drake responded with a warped, oblique diss track, "Charged Up," which premiered during his OVO Sound radio show on Beats 1 on July 25th. A few days passed without word from Meek, enough time to Drake to jab again with the pugnacious "Back to Back" on July 29th. By the time Meek cobbled together and released "Wanna Know" on the night of July 30th, Drake had accrued enough momentum to mute the song’s impact. (It didn’t help that it was terrible.)
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