Ninja Says Drake 'Pushed Gaming Into the Mainstream and Made It Cool'

Popular Fortnite gamer and streamer Ninja, real name Tyler Blevins, broke the internet earlier this year when he played the outlandishly popular video game with Drake, Travis Scott and JuJu Smith-Schuster. The stream hit a peak of 600,000 viewers, doing a lot to bolster both the popularity of Epic's Battle Royale game and Ninja's stream itself. In a new interview, Ninja credits Drake as the reason why gaming has become so popular.

“Drake, that is what pushed gaming into the mainstream and made it cool,” Ninja told Variety. It's a bit of an outlandish statement considering both the original PlayStation and Nintendo's Game Boy, both of which sold over 100 million, did a lot towards making gaming popular in the '90s. The 27-year-old, who holds the title of being the most popular gamer in the world, should probably know this.

Things haven't been too great between Ninja and Drizzy since that stream earlier in the year, however, as Drake unfollowed him on Instagram after he claimed he was used. "I feel like Drake saw that I was up-and-coming in the gaming scene, and he thought it would be a perfect way to just tap into another source of viewers by playing with me,” he said earlier this year.

Last month, someone reportedly hacked into Drake's Fortnite account to yell racial slurs at Ninja while he was doing a charity stream.