Drake throws shade at Childish Gambino’s hit “This is America”.
Drake finally kicked off his “It’s All A Blur” tour with 21 Savage, which is his first arena tour in over five years. At the show, Drake performed a hit-filled solo set of 35 songs, with accompanied messages for the crowd in the bottom portion of the stage.
While the rapper was performing his 2011 hit “Headlines”, the message appeared for Childish Gambino. “The overrated and overawarded hit song “This Is America” was originally a Drake diss record,” it reads.
Drake called This Is America “overrated and over awarded” at the first show of his tour after Childish Gambino said it was originally a Drake diss 👀 pic.twitter.com/A6UPfLQkhW
— SK⚡️ (@raptalksk) July 6, 2023
The shots are in reference to Donald Glover revealing that his 2018 hit “This is America” was originally a Drizzy diss. “I had the idea three years before,” he explained. “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 sh*t sounds kind of hard though. So I was like, let me play with it.”
Childish Gambino says “This Is America” started as a Drake diss 👀 pic.twitter.com/bOGEN4P8yx
— Complex Music (@ComplexMusic) April 5, 2023
The song was released in 2018 with an accompanying music video with direction from filmmaker Hiro Murai. The track topped the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Gambino’s first number-one song on the charts. The song won in all four of its nominated categories at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rap/Sung Performance and Best Music Video.
Glover previously confirmed that his dance moves in the music video for “This Is America” were influenced by Michael Jackson’s iconic “Thriller” video. He confessed that he and his team thoroughly studied the “Thriller” clip for a prolonged period to draw inspiration for their own choreography. “I was like, ‘How do you make people care about anything anymore? There’s just so much sh*t.’ Well, you have to have a moment in real time – which was [Saturday Night Live].”
