Melyssa Ford feels that she was a target in the beef between Drake and Joe Budden because of her ties with both parties.
The podcaster and former video model, who previously co-hosted The Joe Budden Podcast, discussed the feud on the Tuesday (January 27) episode of All In with comedian Lil Rell Howery.
Ford, who dated Drake in the late 2000s around the time he was a rising artist, brought up Drizzy referencing her in his 2025 “Gimme a Hug,” where he calls the podcaster a “legend from the six,” meaning Toronto. On the track, Drake also raps: “Hate to see you with a dick sucker," a swipe at Budden after their years of not-so-subtle jabs.
Ford went on to say that her and the $ome $exy $ongs 4 U artist dated a “long time ago” around the time that his debut album released.
After denying that Drake tried to rekindle their relationship, Ford, around the 53-minute mark of the video above, expressed she felt like a “little bit of a pawn” in the pair’s feud. “I’m totally fine with it,” she said. “Saying ‘Melyssa Ford, you're a legend from the six.’ I'll take it.”
Ford amicably exited Budden’s podcast last August to start her own, titled Hot & Bothered.
As for Joe Budden, the retired rapper continues to take digs at Drake, and outright called him a “bitch” when he sued Universal Music Group for defamation over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”
“The Drake news broke about the lawsuit,” Budden said at the beginning of an October 2025 episode of The JBP. “To me, it's not that important. I was never one that believed that was going to go a different way … For the people that missed it, yesterday evening somewhere around 6 or 7 o’clock it was finally confirmed. The news broke that Drake's a bitch.”