Joe Budden Says Drake’s ‘Takedown’ Started With Him: ‘I Passed the Baton’

“That’s how I feel in my head and my heart,” he added.

Budden is referring to his rocky relationship with Drake, filled with periods of conflict and reconciliation since 2016. Budden’s criticism of Drake’s Views album led him to release “4PM in Calabasas,” which took subliminal shots at the “Pump It Up” rapper.  Budden responded with “Making a Murderer Pt. 1” and “Afraid.”

In 2018, Pusha T’s tensions with Drake reached a boiling point with his “The Story of Adidon” diss track where he exposed that Drizzy had secretly fathered a son, Adonis.

Absent from Budden’s narrative is Megan Thee Stallion, 29, whose chart-topping single “Hiss” arrived in January and is widely believed by some to be about Drake as she rapped about “cosplay gangsters” with “fake-ass accents.” Megan also included a nearly premonitory bar about BBLs, rapping, “These n***as hate on BBLs and be walkin’ ’round with the same scars.”

Many fans of the Houston-bred MC credit her with starting the “takedown” of Drake, although she seemingly gets excluded from this narrative.

Dot’s scathing verse on 30-year-old Metro Boomin and 40-year-old Future’s “Like That” arrived in March and took shots at both Drake and J. Cole, 39, in response to the “big three” verse on “First Person Shooter,” and the rest is history.