Drake is in his feelings and it’s about his dad making claims that the 32-year-old rapper fronted that Dennis Graham was an absentee father in his songs so that it would “sell records.” Drizzy posted an Instagram story on Oct. 8 that read, “Woke up today so hurt man. My father will say anything to anyone that’s willing to listen to him. It’s sad when family gets like this, but what can we really do that’s the people we are stuck with.” Drake added that, “Every bar I ever spit was the truth and the truth is hard for some people to accept.”
He seems to be reacting to his dad going on Nick Cannon’s Power 106.1FM morning show on Oct. 1 and claiming that Drake made up a strained relationship with his Memphis-living dad while he was growing up with his mom in Toronto. Nick said that he was “intrigued” by what is going on because his own father “wasn’t there the entire time. There was a large amount of time that he wasn’t around,” when he was growing up and noted that Drake seemed to have the same situation, as it’s been evidenced in his song lyrics.
“I had a conversation with Drake about that. I always been with Drake,” Dennis responded. “I talk — I talk to him if not every day, then every other day. We really got into a deep conversation about that. I said, ‘Drake, why are you saying all of this different stuff about me? Man, this is not cool. He [said], ‘Dad, it sells records.’ Uh-okay. Okay, well [we’re] cool,” he continued as Nick laughed and said, “I wish my dad was that understanding!”
Drake’s parents divorced when he was five, and he stayed living in Toronto with his mom Sandra while Dennis returned to his native Memphis. While Drizzy spent some summers with his dad early on, they had limited contact until the rapper’s adulthood as Dennis did several prison stints in Tennessee on drug-related charges. Drake has made direct references to that in the song “Look What You’ve Done” from his 2011 album Take Care. The bars go, “And my father living in Memphis now, he can’t come this way/Over some minor charges and child support/That just wasn’t paid, damn/Boo-hoo, sad story — Black American dad story.”