By now, Drake's narrative of being a textbook "nice guy" has been well-established. He's a sensitive mama's boy who wears his heart on his sleeve and just wants to wrap his sad-eyed self in a stylish Chanel poncho. And so when he brought out the powerpoint of Meek Mill memes out last night at OVOFest, it bothered me, especially because he chose multiple ones that included Nicki Minaj, who has now become a strange object of advantage in this (extended) beef between two men.
After all, it seems that as of late Minaj has been reduced to nothing more than a measuring stick between two men competing for dominance. A point that's reinforced by one particular, ireful image; a Drake-endorsed meme that takes his "Back To Back" diss and sticks it atop a fake wedding snap of Minaj and Meek -- an image where she is wearing the tux as a groom and Meek Mill is her bride in a wedding dress. Because while Minaj does run circles around Meek's career, it's an image that's nothing more than a backhanded compliment; an image that at its core chides Minaj for her "poor choice" in men.
Just look at the lyric used here: "shout out to all boss bitches wifing n****s," a diss that makes it pretty clear that he thinks Meek's a straight-up scrub, and that Minaj "should be" attracted to someone more on her level, i.e. him -- the smart, successful one.
As Complex's Claire Lobenfeld put it earlier, Minaj shouldn't have been dragged into this into the first place. Inserted into this drama, Minaj is reduced to a weird trophy wife of sorts when she could likely out-spit both the men at its center. And beneath this idolization of her is the disturbing implication that having the friendship and love of this wonderful, talented woman isn't reward enough. Instead, she's simply used as a tool to chip away at the ego of another man.
Like most rappers in the game right now, Meek Mill projects an image of alpha male authority -- the kind of guy who positions himself as the second coming of Tupac and proudly proclaims that, "Bitch I'm a boss, I plan the shots, I call the costs" -- while Drake is known as rap's sensitive guy. And because Meek's schtick revolves around performing this sort of dominating, lavish braggadocio, and because he's gotten together with a female friend and peer that Drake has been romantically linked to in the past, it feels a lot like this beef has been Drake's chance to emasculate his rival and hammer home the fact that he's just as hard. All at the expense of Minaj.
What makes Drizzy's behavior even worse is his supposed "friendship" with her. There's something particularly unappealing about his verse on Minaj's "Only" -- "I never fucked Nicki, cause she got a man / But when that's over, then I'm first in line" -- in a way that's reminiscent of classic beta male moves, which has similarly plagued the indie rock community for forever: put a woman on a pedestal, and wait until your opportunity comes, because you are entitled to her affections.
Drake didn't need to objectify one of the most powerful women in pop culture when his (or Quentin's) verses were already better than Meek's on their own. Meek's track was so weak that Drake could've won this battle by just letting his talent speak for itself. Or maybe this was a simple smoke and mirrors trick to distract everyone from the original ghostwriting accusations? Either way, it's time for her to move on from both of these boys, or at least as far away from this virtual dick-measuring contest as possible.