See Message

Drake Vs. Kanye West: Swizz Beatz Suggests Verzuz Battle Between The Rap Greats & Fans Beg For It To Happen

Beenie Man performs onstage at the BET Awards at the Nokia Theatre, in Los Angeles 2013 BET Awards - Show, Los Angeles, USA
Alicia Keys & John Legend
View Gallery View Gallery 8 Photos.
Evening Writer

Swizz Beatz played with fire by calling on Drake and Kanye West to compare their greatest hits in a ‘Verzuz’ battle. The hip-hop artists don’t have the friendliest history, you see.

Imagine a “Verzuz battle” between longtime rivals Drake and Kanye West. This is exactly what the co-creator of the weekly Instagram Live battles, Swizz Beatz, suggested when he took to Twitter on Aug. 7! “Ayo Tim Drake VS YE #versuz,” Swizz Beatz tweeted. The suggestion warmed up to some fans, who tweeted comments like “Gotta squash the beef,” while others debated who would win. “Drake would easily win lmfaooo,” one such fan tweeted.

Not everyone was keen on the idea of Drake and Kanye replaying their greatest hits in the same Instagram Live session, though. “Nah we good , it would turn into something else bc Drake don’t talk to him . We just want the battle of music not a soap opera . Respectfully ,” one person responded, referring to the long-running feud between Drake and Kanye. Their beef exploded in 2018 in connection to Drake’s drama with Pusha T, and over speculation of an alleged affair between Drake and Kanye’s wife, Kim Kardashian.

Pusha T is Drake’s other rival, who memorably exposed the existence of Drake’s then-secret son, Adonis, on his track “The Story of Adidon” in May of 2018. Before that, Kanye had invited Drake to work on music together in Wyoming, and Drake revealed that he told Ye about his secret son.

“[In Wyoming] I play him ‘March 14,’ I send him a picture of my son, I tell him I’m having trouble with my son’s mother. We had a conversation,” Drake revealed while appearing on LeBron James and Maverick Carter‘s HBO series, The Shop, in Oct. 2018. Before this episode aired, though, Kanye denied having “any conversations” about Drake’s child with Pusha amid a string of apologetic tweets in Sept. 2018 (afterwards, Pusha confirmed that he “never told” Kanye about the diss track).

However, Kanye produced another one of Pusha T’s diss tracks around that same time — “Infrared” — in which Pusha T accused Drake of using a ghostwriter. And despite Kanye’s Twitter apology months later (mentioned above), the rapper reignited their beef just weeks later by calling out Drake for not addressing the wild theories that claimed Drake had an affair with Kanye’s wife, Kim. They sprung up thanks to Drake singing, “Kiki do you love me?,” in his song “In My Feelings” that was released earlier that year — fans wondered if “Kiki” was a nickname for Kim! Both Kanye and Kim shot down the speculation.

By Dec. 2018, Kanye claimed via Twitter that “Drake finally called” — seemingly a positive sign — until alleging just a few hours later that Drake allegedly “called trying to [threaten] me.” Fast forward more than a year later, and it looked like their relationship still hadn’t been patched up.

“You can not be in service [to God] to go and be mad at your brother. I go to Drake’s house with no security and leave my phone number,” Kanye said during an interview with Zane Lowe in Oct. 2019. However, two months later, Drake made it clear that he doesn’t really intend to forgive Pusha nor Kanye while appearing on the Rap Radar podcast in Dec. 2019.

“I think that he [Kanye] definitely recruited a guy with a similar dislike for me,” Drake said in the interview above. He added, “No matter what he says in interviews, I know that. He can tell whoever, ‘Oh, I got love for [Drake],’ but it’s not love. There’s something there that bothers him deeply. I can’t fix that for him. It just is what it is. I can never, ever, ever, ever turn my back on the things that I’ve said about him in a positive light, and I still feel all of those things. I would still say that Kanye West is my favorite artist all around. I have no problem saying that. But things have just changed — I’m not just a kid who’s a fan anymore. Now we have personal situations. A lot of his issues with me…I can’t fix them for him.” So, it looks like it would be difficult for Swizz Beatz and Timbaland to get Kanye and Drake in the same Instagram Live session — but you never know!