This week, Daily Bruin A&E is counting down to the New Year by looking back at the best and worst events in the arts and entertainment world of 2015.
Today, A&E contributor Sean Lee recounts the Drake and Meek Mill beef that established 2015 as the year hip hop feuds entered the social media age.
Audience members captured Drake’s performance of “Back to Back” on Snapchat and Instagram at the 6th annual OVO Fest, held in Toronto Aug. 1-3, which included the onstage spectacle of a fully charged iPhone transitioning through various memes directed at Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill.
The two rappers’ feud marked 2015 as the year hip hop established itself in the social media age. Rather than addressing beef through album sales and physical altercations, rappers Drake and Meek Mill took hip hop feuds out of the streets and onto the Internet by foregoing trigger fingers for Twitter fingers.
Mill initiated the feud in July when he took to Twitter to vent about Drake’s lack of promotion for Mill’s new album “Dreams Worth More Than Money.”
Stop comparing drake to me too…. He don’t write his own raps! That’s why he ain’t tweet my album because we found out! �
— Meek Mill (@MeekMill) July 22, 2015
Mill’s Twitter accusations of Drake hiring a ghostwriter were met by a slew of social media responses from other producers and rappers. Atlanta rapper OG Maco supported the accusations and provided a name, Quentin Miller, as the ghostwriter for the tracks “10 Bands,” “6 Man” and “Know Yourself” on Drake’s 2015 album “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.” In response, Drake’s longtime producer Noah “40” Shebib tweeted that Miller had indeed been credited as a contributing writer on the album.
Drake remained silent during the social media brawl until he dropped a series of response tracks online. The first, “Charged Up,” debuted on his Apple radio show, OVO Sound. After Mill failed to respond, the second track, appropriately titled “Back to Back,” was posted on Drake’s label’s SoundCloud page.
“Back to Back” turned hip hop feuds in 2015 into cyber conflicts. The song’s heavy airplay on the radio and in clubs led to its breaking into the top-10 charts of Billboard’s hot hip hop and R&B tracks, paralleling its online popularity generated through SoundCloud shares and Twitter. Free music streaming and social media became part of a new arsenal for rappers attempting to address beef on the Internet.
Aside from the online distribution, Drake meticulously constructed a song that listeners could quote within 140 characters. Lyrically, “Back to Back” showed Drake’s songwriting ability to deliver the punches without a contributing writer. His lines comparing the track to the “cover of ‘Lethal Weapon‘” and dedicating it to those “that don’t think I write enough” became the subjects of popular Twitter memes.
Drake’s most blatant punch, however, is when he asked, “Is that a world tour or your girl’s tour?,” a reference to Mill’s engagement to Drake’s labelmate Nicki Minaj that arguably became the song’s most quoted lyric online. By using directed quotable lyrical attacks, Drake ensured his victory in the feud. His win was affirmed by the song’s 2016 Grammy nomination for Best Rap Performance, the first hip hop diss track to be nominated since LL Cool J’s 1992 Kool Moe Dee diss “Mama Said Knock You Out.”
Critical acclaim and commercial airplay, two of the standards an Internet audience measures a hip hop artist by, never came to Mill. He released a response track “Wanna Know” on his SoundCloud page, quickly removed it and then ended the feud by commenting online: “I’m not entertaining no rap beef over Drake, shout out a rapper.”
Meek Mill comes to his senses.. Posted and deleted this comment. Says he doesn’t have to prove himself. Good read. pic.twitter.com/8cEIb2DKxV — DJ Akademiks (@IamAkademiks) August 12, 2015
Mill hasn’t buried the hatchet completely, however. He took to social media again by Snapchatting a video previewing another shot at Drake rumored to be included on his upcoming album “Dreamchasers 4.”
“Back to Back” became the song that turned the 2015 rivalry between Drake and Meek Mill from a petty online squabble into one of hip hop’s memorable feuds worthy to join the ranks of N.W.A. and Ice Cube, 50 Cent and Ja Rule, and Jay Z and Nas. The combination of the song’s lyrics and commercial success nodded to the era of competitive hip hop in the ’90s and early ‘00s, while the song’s distribution and delivery over the Internet placed the competition in the modern world of social media. While there has not been a publicized hip hop feud since, Drake’s use of the online community for support has given a new audience for future rappers to target.
Creating a diss track that was eventually nominated for a Grammy makes one consider that, when it comes to social media, maybe Drake really does have the Midas touch.
– Sean Lee