In a telling interview on NPR Music’s Louder Than A Riot podcast, rapper ILoveMakonnen opened up about his falling out with Drake and his record label, OVO. The 34-year-old artist recalled the moment when his relationship with Drake took a turn for the worse in 2015 at the Wireless Festival. “That’s when I knew something was weird. Just ’cause when I came out on set…and I started losing weight too, right — Drake had made a little joke like, ‘He a little Eric Benét-ass looking n***a,'” he said. “You know, like, ha-ha. And then I just started to feel this vibe.” Makonnen then elaborated that while sharing the stage with Drake, his verse was unexpectedly cut.
Although Makonnen was confused by the snub, he made it clear that their riff has nothing to do with his sexuality, but with his previous tweets dissing Drake. He said the Toronto rapper’s fans went so far as to leave negative comments on social media. “Y’all need to drop him because he said your song ‘Practice’ was lame back in 2011,” one person commented, according to Makonnen.
Still, he insists that his jabs at Drizzy were all in good fun. “[It’s] our little outlet. That’s our only way of attention,” Makonnen said. “It ain’t nothing personal.” Yet, a freestyle rap he performed on Tim Westwood’s radio show only added fuel to the fire. He threw shots at the label over Drake’s very own beats from “Jumpman” and “I’m the Plug.”
“Tim Westwood playing all these Drake beats, and I’m freestyling, eating s**t up,” he said. “Then everybody was saying, ‘You’re going after Drake.'”
After his controversial freestyle rap, Makonnen dropped his EP, iLoveMakonnen 2, but says he felt slighted by Drake’s OVO label due to a lack of promotion. He added, “Drake didn’t put it up. And I felt like, you know what, I don’t even want to be over here.” This led to Makonnen leaving OVO less than two years after signing his deal.
Listen to Makonnen’s entire NPR Music interview below:
