21 Savage, whose new album WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STREETS? arrived on Friday, says he cautioned Drake against fully stepping into what became a full-fledged, chart-topping beef with Kendrick Lamar.
Deep into a three-hour interview with Big Bank on Thursday (Dec. 11), Savage first spoke briefly about Drake’s issues with Metro Boomin, ultimately speculating that the two will reunite in “the near future.” This led into a larger conversation about his feud with Kendrick, with 21 declaring the situation unwinnable for an artist in Drake’s position.
“Do I think he took a hit? Nah,” he said. “He’s still the number one streamed n***a this year. I feel like he took an internet hit. But then it be like, damn, did you take an internet hit? Because streaming, you gotta go on the internet to stream. … I feel like to certain people, they might say he took a hit. But I don’t look at that shit like that. I don’t know. I told that n***a not to even do all that shit anyway. I told that n***a to leave that shit alone.”
As 21 sees it, his Her Loss collaborator “felt like he was being challenged lyrically so he wanted to respond.” He then detailed what he told Drake on a phone call.
“He called me one of them days or I called him,” he said. “I think this was after the first song, the song with Metro and them, and I said, ‘You finna go into a battle that you can’t win, like, there’s no way you can win.’ No matter what, bruh. Certain situations, even if you win, you still don’t win.”
From there, 21 agreed that ego was involved with the back-and-forth, noting that both Drake and Kendrick have real “love” for the craft. Fans were pulling for Drake to lose in the feud, he argued, meaning an actual victory was never possible, even if he had been declared the winner.
“How can you win a battle if n***as want you to lose it?” 21, who later clarified that he wasn’t saying that Drake “lost” the feud, said. “Even if you win, you lose. No matter what. Even if Kendrick never responded, man. If Drake just dropped songs and Kendrick never responded or nothing, he still don’t win because his position didn’t change.”
21 went on to call the situation “rigged,” albeit not by Kendrick but by the general public.
“It’s rigged, man,” he said, as seen below. “Even if Drake won, he would have been the bad guy for winning.”
On his WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STREETS? album, available here, 21 is joined by Drake on the track “MR RECOUP.” In the song’s third verse, Drake again teases his forthcoming Iceman album, which was previously expected to arrive before year’s end.