Drake’s Scorpion isn’t about Pusha T…
Permit me to begin this article by proposing to you a hypothetical question set in an imaginary situation: if you were to go to the hospital with an ailment, would you prefer that the individual symptoms to be treated separately or for the sickness to be gone and dealt with? Short sighted people want to alleviate the symptoms such as coughing, sneezing and nausea. People with long term goals will take the medication and follow what is prescribed by the doctor to return to good health.
That is Drake's Scorpion Side A.
I've talked to people about their overall reactions to the album and they are for the most part, positive. A lot of the people who are adept at music are praising side B's soulfulness - as it is an R&B album - and a lot of people like Side A's overall flow's and bars. But the overall negative response was that there wasn't any overt shots taken at Pusha T after The Story of Adidon. But Drake wasn't going at Pusha T; he was nailing Yeezus to an upside down cross and making sure there's no resurrection.
Supposedly, the story of the album that we now know as Scorpion begins in April 2018, when Drake announced that the project would drop in June. As he neared the end of the album, he would go to Wyoming to help Kanye on his latest album, Ye. It's then that West would hear what we now know as Side B. It's at that time that Pusha T would've heard the content of the album, which includes the revelation of Drizzy's son on the track, March 14. Drizzy would leave and come back to the ranch to find that Kanye would've added to the group of people helping him on his album with people that Drake doesn't associate with or trust. All of this, compounded with the previous differences between West and Graham, led to the A side of the album being made.
While I could go on with multiple examples inside the album, I'll limit myself with two eyebrow raising instances of subliminal shots. The first shot comes from the opening bars of Survival, in which he says:
All of this disorder, no addressin'
The crown is broken in pieces, but there's more in my possession
There's a whole lot in my possession
Who do you really love? Well, that's sure to be in question
These are obvious shots aimed at Kanye's bipolar disorder, which he finally addressed, if not briefly, on both Ye and Kids See Ghosts. But what is telling is the following line, in which he talks about having the most pieces of a broken crown - a veiled allusion to Jay-Z and Kanye West's collective, The Throne. The killing blow of this line is Drake's positioning as both the best artist in the game and as the best producer in the game, titles that used to belong to both of them respectively. Drake continues the evisceration on the next track, Nonstop:
N***** pullin' gimmicks 'cause they scared to rap, ayy
Funny how they shook, ayy, got these n***** shook
Pullin' back the curtain by myself, take a look, ayy
I'm a bar spitta, I'm a hard hitta
Yeah I'm light-skinned, but I'm still a dark n****
The song has been called one of the highlights of the album for its blatant disregard for etiquette and its rawness. It's sonically impressive and lyrically similar with this gem being one of the key concepts when one wants to understand the beef going on. The first part, while Genius describes it as talking about the picture from The Story of Adidon, it would make just as much sense to attribute it to the outlandish antics that Kanye always does before he releases an album. It doesn't help that both of his last two projects have been loved due to their eclectic and powerful sounds but overall panned due to subpar rapping from the Chicago-native. Drake continues to say that he has Kanye shook due to him revealing to the world who Ye really is behind the curtain. Finally, the quote I took ends with a direct response to the ending of West's No Mistakes, in which he says "Calm down, you light skin".
After having explained those two lines, one can see the connection. All of Pusha's information about Drake can be brought back to Kanye because he let him listen to the album. It doesn't help either that T is the President of GOOD music - which is affiliated to Adidas through Ye. None of this would've happened if West hadn't sent T to see Drake at the expense of the good favors of Lil Wayne and Stunna. Pusha is the symptom to the sickness that is Kanye; Drake's finally addressing it. Drake is going at Kanye for a lot of the shady things that he's done without being explicit.
Why? Because of the world we live in. If Drake took this to heart and decided to go at Kanye and his crew, which was the original plan - which was nixed by J. Prince and Jay-Z after “The Story of Adidon” -, the narrative would no longer be Drake vs Kanye, but that Drizzy went after someone suffering from mental health problems. Ig would hurt Drake's brand more than Ye. Than why go at him at all? To prove to GOOD music that he isn't afraid of anything or anyone. He's done everything he needs to do now. He's gone to the root of the problem all while listening to the fans and giving them more than what they expected: you wanted a song and he gave you an entire album worth of shots.