While people wait patiently for the next chapter of the hottest beef in music, Drake released a statement via Instagram last night to address the photos of him in blackface. He wanted to clarify the reason for its existence, and provide some context on why they were taken to begin with.
Pusha T released the photo as the artwork to his new Drake diss track, “The Story of Adidon,” which some people are already labeling as one of the greatest diss records post-2000.
This is what he posted:
“I know everyone is enjoying the circus, but I want to clarify this image in question. This was not from a clothing brand shoot or my music career. This picture is from 2007, a time in my life where I was an actor and I was working on a project that was about young black actors struggling to get roles, being stereotyped, and type cast. The photos represented how African Americans were once wrongfully portrayed in entertainment. Me and my best friend at the time Mazin Elsadig who is also an actor from Sudan were attempting to use our voices to bring awareness to the issues dealt with all the time as black actors at auditions. This was to highlight and raise out frustrations with not always getting a fair chance in the industry and to make a point that struggle for black actors had not changed much.”
Push has already given his thoughts on the statement via an interview with Big Boy on Los Angeles’ Real 92.3 earlier today:
“You are silent on all black issues, Drake. You don’t stand for nothing, you don’t say nothing about nothing.”
After the photo was released, reports were circulating that the photos were part of a promotional shoot for clothing like Too Black Guys. TBG founder Adrian Aitcheson released a statement of his own yesterday to address the rumour:
“Although this was not an image from any of our photoshoots, we feel that Drake, who is a long-time friend of the brand, was brilliantly illustrating the hypocrisy of the Jim Crow Era. The subtleties of Drake, a young black man, mimicking how white men used to mimic and dehumanize black people may be lost in a rap battle but we should not be distracted from the issues that are still affecting our communities.”
