Elliott Wilson has revealed how he helped JAY-Z and Drake mend fences following their rift in the mid 2010s.
During the latest episode of HipHopDX‘s The Bigger Picture, the veteran Hip Hop journalist said he encouraged the two rappers to reopen their line of communication and hash things out after their relationship had soured.
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“I got them back together, I got them to talk,” Wilson said. “Around the time when Drake was doing the tour with Lil Wayne and they had a show in Queens, Drake came backstage and hugged me and was like, ‘I spoke to Hov. We’re figuring it out.’ He was excited that they had finally talked.”
When asked how he helped broker a truce between Drizzy and Jigga, with co-host Jeremy Hecht jokingly asking if he put them in a text thread together, Wilson replied: “No, just encouraging them to talk to each other, that’s all. I’m not Farrakhan. I didn’t put the play together [laughs].”
Watch the segment at the 29:50 mark below.
Despite forming an early collaborative relationship on “Off That” and “Light Up,” a friendly competition between the two rap titans soon emerged when Drake put JAY-Z, as well as his Watch the Throne collaborator Kanye West, on notice.
“I’m just feeling like the throne is for the taking / Watch me take it,” he rapped on DJ Khaled‘s 2011 hit “I’m On One.”
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Drake quickly denied that the lyrics were anything more than a light jab, though, tweeting: “Hov diss? Hov of all people has not lost it…that’s god body flow.”
The pair linked up again on “Pound Cake” in 2013, but the love was short-lived as Drizzy slighted Hov in an interview with Rolling Stone the following year.
“It’s like Hov can’t drop bars these days without at least four art references!” he told the publication. “I would love to collect at some point, but I think the whole rap/art world thing is getting kind of corny.” (As Elliott Wilson explained in the above episode, Drake thought he was speaking off the record when making these comments.)
This sparked a more direct back-and-forth between the OVO and Roc Nation bosses, with Jay quickly firing back on Jay Electronica‘s “We Made It (Remix)”: “Sorry, Mrs. Drizzy, for so much art talk / Silly me rappin’ ‘bout shit that I really bought / While these rappers rap about guns they ain’t shot / And a bunch of other silly shit that they ain’t got.”
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In response, Drake took aim at Jigga’s elder statesman status on “Draft Day” (“I’m focused on making records and gettin’ bigger/ Just hits, no misses, that’s for the married folk”) while also taunting the former Brooklyn Nets owner when the team faced his hometown Toronto Raptors in the NBA playoffs.
“This is the people’s team out here tonight, you know what I mean? Toronto Raptors. JAY-Z’s somewhere eating a fondue plate,” he said during an on-court interview.
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Hov didn’t take the shots lying down as he returned fire on DJ Khaled’s aptly-titled “They Don’t Love You No More”: “N-ggas talking down on the crown / Watch them n-ggas you ‘round got you wound / Haters wanna ball, let me tighten up my drawstring / Wrong sport, boy, you know you’re as soft as a lacrosse team.”
After patching things up, JAY-Z and Drake eventually reunited on 2018’s “Talk Up” and have seemingly remained on good terms since.
[Ed. note: Elliott Wilson is the Editorial Director of Hip Hop Journalism at DX’s parent company, UPROXX Studios.]
