Kanye crowns Drake as No.1 rapper right now, confirms his collaboration on 'Yikes'
Kanye West is the subject of a new sprawling, insightful interview by The New York Times. Over a course of two days that Kanye spent with journalist Jon Caramonica at his Wyoming retreat, the duo touched upon a range of subjects. From Kanye's defense of his slavery comment during his recent scandalous interview with TMZ, to his stance on Trump, his battle with bipolar disorder and everything in between, the multi-Grammy winning rapper let loose in his own typical style to reveal some interesting nuggets of information.
A particularly noteworthy confession came further in the interview, as Kanye discussed his latest, eight studio album 'ye', which dropped just a few weeks ago via his own G.O.O.D. Music label. Days after the release of 'ye', Hot 97 co-host Peter Rosenberg made bold claims that Drake wrote the hook to the album standout cut 'Yikes.' Drake was eventually credited as a songwriter on the track and during the NYT interview, Kanye confirmed that Drizzy indeed penned the hook.
In fact, as Kanye revealed, Drake had even penned an entire first verse on 'Yikes,' but it didn't make the song's final cut. Drake even snuck a reference to the whole affair into the lyrics of 'Duppy Freestyle', his latest diss at Kanye's G.O.O.D Music label-mate Pusha-T, as part of their now longtime feud. "I just left from over by y'all puttin' pen to the sheets," Drake raps on the track.
As any novice hip-hop fan will excitedly tell you, there has been an ongoing beef between Pusha T and Drake ever since the G.O.O.D Music signee took a shot at Drizzy on his latest album, 'DAYTONA.' The closing track 'Infrared' featured the lyrics: “Your hooks did it/ The lyrics pennin’ equals to Trump’s winnin’/ The bigger question is how the Russians did it/ It was written like Nas but it came from Quentin.” The verse was widely received as taking a shot at Drizzy using ghostwriters on his songs.
Drake hit back with 'Duppy Freestyle', a three-minute flow that called out Kanye directly and held no punches back, hitting everything from Pusha’s age to his dying career. Ultimately, Kanye called an end to the bitterness with a tweet that couldn't be any more Kanye.
Kanye even spoke about his tweet during the NYT interview and while addressing the whole Pusha-Drake beef, along with how he made the leap to make a comeback into the public eye, he sort of let slip that he admits Drake is the number one rapper right now.
"And it was this thing where it’s like okay, you’re not the No. 1 rapper, Drake’s the No. 1 rapper, but you’re the No. 1 with shoes, or this or that. And it’s like yo, no more No. 1s. What’s the No. 1 tree over there? Just be one of them. All of them are beautiful," Kanye explained, in his typical scatter-brain style.
There were some other interesting snippets about Kanye's latest album that spilled out during the interview. For instance, Yeezus revealed that none of the lyrics to 'ye' were written just eight days prior to the album launch, but he had meanwhile made time to watch 'Deadpool 2', not once but twice!