- Police were called to Drake's home again
- There was an attempted break-in
- A connection to the recent shooting is investigated
Officers returned to the rapper’s palatial home around 2 p.m. on Wednesday, after a person "attempted to gain access to the property," police said. One suspect was taken into custody, and will undergo medical evaluation. But the beef at hand has a whole lot more to delve in to.
Drake has issues
This incident, and yesterday’s shooting, which left one man seriously injured, come just days after rapper Kendrick Lamar made references to Drake’s home, dubbed "The Embassy," in his scathing diss tracks "meet the grahams" and "Not Like Us."
In “meet the grahams” Lamar suggested that Drake’s home would be the subject of a raid, similar to Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, whose homes were recently raided as part of a sex trafficking lawsuit. On the cover of "Not Like Us," Lamar included a picture of Drake’s home, with markers to signify the locations of known sex offenders. There has been no evidence to support Lamar’s claims.
Throughout the morning Wednesday, it seemed things had returned to normal with delivery vans dropping off packages, and service personnel going through the gates, including a person belonging to an interior decorating company based out of Oakville.
One neighbor, who has lived in the affluent area for 20 years, said Drake’s home is like a tourist trap on the weekend. The man, who didn’t wish to be identified, said he sees vehicles pulling up regularly at the residence and people thrusting cellphones out car windows to possibly catch a glimpse of the international mega-rap star. There’s always more traffic on weekends.
A long stem of problems
The conflict was sparked by what now seems like a quaint dispute: Who’s the greatest rapper? A verse by J. Cole on a Drake song last fall postulated himself, Drake, and Lamar as hip-hop’s "big three."
Earlier this year, Lamar replied with a correction: "It’s just big me," he rapped in a tone of seething hostility. Cole issued and quickly retracted a reply, but Drake took Lamar’s bait, and the two men began volleying diss tracks.
Over eight songs—plus one interlude!—in less than a month, the question of who’s a better rapper has given way to a more profound debate about hip-hop, masculinity, and nothing less than the nature of evil.
The most consequential rap beef ever, between Biggie and Tupac, simmered for months and unfolded via physical releases, local radio, and in-person dustups. By contrast, Drake and Lamar are using fast-twitch digital technologies to record tracks at whim, circulate them around the planet instantly, and feed a teeming ecosystem of commentators, remixers, fans, haters, and voyeurs.
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The rap world is ablaze
The latest chapter
Beef is older than rap, but this showdown is new in its scale and velocity. When Jay-Z and Nas scrapped in the early 2000s, they did so at a time when rap was not quite yet synonymous with pop.
Police will not comment on whether Drake was home at the time of the shooting or whether it had anything to do with an ongoing feud between the Toronto icon and Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar...
