Yasiin Bey, formerly Mos Def, was buzzing on social media over the weekend following a clip discussing whether Drake is hip-hop.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he whispers before responding to the question posed by designer Recho Omondi on The Cutting Room Floor Podcast.
Then he would answer, “Drake is Pop … Drake is pop to me.”
When Omondi asked for clarification, he continued: “In the sense of if I was in Target in Houston and I heard a Drake song. So it feels like a lot of his music is compatible with ‘shopping’ – or, you know, it’s shopping with an edge.”
As expected, Drake responded via Instagram and incorporated an old Method Man interview clip explaining his perspective on Hip-Hop. Under the video, Champagne Papi would reference the hook to Yasin Bey’s 1999 classic “Umi Says.”
Social media resurfaced an apparent first shot fired at Yasiin Bey by Drake in June 2023 when he asked Complex to have Instagram models review his poetry book on Instagram.
The entire Cutting Room Floor Podcast episode featuring Bey is available now only on Patreon. The Cutting Room Floor Podcast YouTube channel posts a second clip of Bey discussing Palestine, colonialism, and humanity.
Yasiin Bey spoke with Hot97’s Ebro in the Morning with Peter Rosenberg and Laura Styles about returning to music and acting in 2017. Check out the full interview below.