JPEGMAFIA has sent direct shots at Drake on his new album using a unique approach in which he reverse engineers the Toronto rapper’s own rap beef strategy against him as a symbolic sneak diss.
The New York-born, Alabama-bred rapper, who released his collaborative project SCARING THE HOES with Danny Brown last year, dissed Drake on two back-to-back tracks embedded within the front half of his new album I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU.
One of the tracks, entitled “New Black History” features Vince Staples who has publicly spoken out against the recent rap battle spawned from Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s beef, referencing his view that it furthers the music industry’s corporate agenda to devalue Black music.
That same track Vince is featured on, JPEGMAFIA flips the trending “No Diddy” phrase into “No Drizzy” and flat-out refers to Drake as a “r####.” While both records don’t necessarily serve as full-blown Drake diss-tracks, it’s interesting JPEGMAFIA decided to sequence the records one after another, as if a nod to Drizzy’s “Back-To-Back” Meek Mill diss track.
Maybe it wasn’t an intentional move, but it also feels like an eerie symbolic reference to Drake’s tendency to release consecutive diss tracks when battling opponents.
This isn’t the first time that JPEGMAFIA has appeared to diss Drake. In 2018 he was featured on Denzel Curry’s fan-favorite project TA1300. In his guest verse on the album cut “VENGANCE,” JPEGMAFIA raps, “I ain’t Drake, this ain’t 6ix, issa 9ine.”
Sure, it could be viewed as a stray, or at most a subtle jab. However, to reprise the verbal attack some five years later with subliminal shade attached to it feels a bit more intentional. No matter the case, now Diddy and Vince are caught up in this mess.
