Drake's producer Noah '40' Shebib admits Pusha T's multiple sclerosis diss track made him feel 'like s**t'
Drake's producer, Noah '40' Shebib, has revealed that the Pusha T diss track 'The Story Of Adidon' made him feel "like s**t." Celebrity feuds are not particularly new, and within rap and hip-hop, trading insults via diss tracks is an old tradition, one that rapper Drake is no stranger to.
His beef with Pusha goes back over 15 years, beginning with a dispute over a Birdman track titled 'What Happened to That Boy'. According to Hot 97's 'Ebro in the Morning', the dispute allegedly stemmed from Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams of The Neptunes, who worked on production for the song, being overpaid for their contributions while Pusha and his brother No Malice, who rapped together as the duo Clipse, did not see quite the same returns, and the fallout resulted in Pharrell never working with another Cash Money Records artiste again. When, a few years later, fellow Cash Money artiste Lil Wayne began rocking the Pharrell aesthetic in addition to donning pieces from Pharrell's 'Billionaire Boys Club' for his 2006 video for 'Hustler Musik', Clipse responded by releasing 'Mr Me Too' and calling out those who copied their style. Wayne, for his part, was mostly amused with the comparison, stating, in an interview with Complex, "[Pharrell] wore BAPEs and y’all thought he was weird. I wore it and y’all thought it was hot."
After years of back and forth and diss tracks filled with thinly-veiled insults, Drake entered the scene. Firmly in team Lil Wayne, owing to being Cash Money labelmates as well as Wayne being the one who helped kickstart Drake's career, Drake allegedly dissed Pusha in his 'Dreams Money Can Buy' track, which Pusha then sampled on his 2011 release 'Don't F**k With Me' which he then followed up with 2012's 'Exodus 23:1', a track that took direct shots at Drake and his contract with Cash Money. Since then, the two have continued to trade words on diss tracks, each more direct and hard-hitting than the previous.
But on Pusha's 'The Story Of Adidon', which reused the instrumental from Jay-Z's 'The Story of O.J.' that sampled 'Four Women' by Nina Simone, the rapper took things to a whole new level. The cover for the track features a 2007 image of Drake in blackface, which he would later state were meant to represent how "African Americans were once wrongfully portrayed in entertainment." In addition to bringing this image to light, the song revealed the existence of Drake's child Adonis with French model and former pornstarSophie Brussaux, referring to the rapper as a "deadbeat" dad who was "hiding his child", in addition to taking shots at his Adidas line which was allegedly going to reveal Adonis to the world and feature him heavily in advertising and promotion. Drake eventually confirmed he had a son named Adonis with Brussaux via lyrics on his album 'Scorpion'.
Apart from the bombshells, Pusha also took shots at OVO Sound co-founder Shebib, more specifically, at his multiple sclerosis diagnosis, featuring the lyrics, "OVO 40, hunched over like he 80, tick, tick, tick/How much time he got? That man is sick, sick, sick." When the track initially dropped, the producer didn't say much, instead choosing to spread awareness for the disease. But years later, he admits that Pusha crossed the line with that jab. "Like s**t, for sure," stated Shebib in an interview with Rolling Stone regarding how the bars made him feel. "Ultimately, I like turning things into positive situations or brighter sides. And if that brings awareness to my disease on a bigger level, I was happy about that. That’s what I used it for. That ultimately is a good thing for me. I like that transaction we had from that perspective. I’m very vocal about it."
For Drake himself, that particular lyric stung harder than the rest. "The part that hit me the most," he stated in an interview with Rap Radar, adding, "which is wishing that my friend who has an illness dies — that s**t, to me, is not really wavy. I’m just not with that."