Drake claps back at Donald Glover during live performance; what is the root of the beef between the two?

Perhaps it was a fan of Childish Gambino, aka Donald Glover, who threw their phone at Drake’s concert Wednesday night at Chicago’s United Center, as the Canadian rapper kicked off his ‘It’s All a Blur tour’ with 21 Savage. But it wasn’t the only thing kicking off at that show, if the onstage production is anything to go by… and given Bad Bunny’s production team have done a similar thing with Harry Styles at Coachella, there might be some smoke being brought on this occasion.

Performing his track “Headlines” with a chiron on stage running through a series of headlines much like the scrolling bar found watching Sky News or BBC News, one keen-eyed TikTok user caught a particular line that threw shade at the former Community and The Lion King actor -  “the overrated and over awarded hit song ‘This Is America’ was originally a Drake diss record.”

But rather than it being a playful dig at the performer, which was the excuse Bad Bunny gave to Harry Styles, it would seem that Drake is none too happy with the revelation about “This Is America” Glover disclosed during an April interview with GQ Magazine. 

Glover revealed in that interview that the massively successful “This Is America,” which earned Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rap/Sung Performance and Best Music Video at the 61st Grammy Awards, actually started life off as a diss track towards Drake.

In the video interview accompanying the piece, Glover stated “I had the idea three years before, I told [director] Hiro [Murai] the idea, and he’s like, ‘I really want to do that.’ The idea for the song started as a joke. To be completely honest, ‘This is America’ — that was all we had was that line.” 

“It started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like, this s**t sounds kind of hard though. So I was like, let me play with it.”

It would appear however that the joke was something Drake did not find any amusement with, and already contesting with artificial intelligence creating songs based around his flow and vocal styles alongside trepidation over his new poetry book, perhaps the opening night of the tour was the perfect chance for the rapper to blow off some steam - still, that’s a long time to have held a grudge over an innocuous comment, right?