Does This Rapper's Explanation Excuse Drake's Controversial 'Blackface' Photo?
Pusha T’s “Story of Adidon” diss left Drake fans with much ado and speculations after the GOOD Music rapper pulled back the curtain on alleged secrets of the Toronto rap megastar’s past, such as a hidden lovechild and personal relationships with his loved ones.
But even before pressing play, the brow-raising actually starts at the cover photo choice for the diss record, which shows a young Drizzy done up in the derogatorily theatrical blackface and sporting a Jim Crow shirt.
As we’ve seen with King Push’s Daytona album artwork, the Virginia-bred artist has no qualms about artful controversy. But let Chicago emcee Lupe Fiasco tell it, that just so happens to be the same thing Drake was doing when he posed in the offensive, minstrel show-originative makeup, used in the mid-1800s by white performers to caricaturize and mock the appearance, likeness and behavior of Black citizens. In the “Kick, Push” rapper’s now-deleted tweets, he insists that he’s not defending nor deflecting Drizzy, but believes the photos have a deeper context.
In short, Lupe believes that the ‘artistic gestures’ was a play on the ‘powerful duality of representation and race and its expectations on art’
Despite stating that he wasn’t defending the blackface use, he believes that the meaning behind it does excuse the controversy, according to his response to a fan. In fact, he added, it happens to be the same sort of artful gesture used by Pusha himself when Kanye West opted to use the disturbing photo of Whitney Houston’s bathroom when she was “at her worst,” Lupe elaborated, for the same means. He concluded that Pusha’s use of Drizzy’s divisive photo was a mistake given the “real context and intention” behind it.
Unfortunately, Lupe’s sentiments aren’t shared by a significantly larg portion of hip-hop fans though, and they still want answers to some serious questions, comments and concerns for the Champagne Papi…
