Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” became a No. 1 hit and an internet meme when it dropped in 2018, but don’t count Drake as one of its fans. Drizzy shaded the song at a recent show in Chicago, calling it “overrated and over awarded.”
To be clear, Drake himself didn’t criticize “This Is America” — he let his stage design do it for him. As HipHopDX points out, a news ticker ran across the stage as Drake performed “Headlines,” recounting the message, “The overrated and over awarded hit song ‘This Is America’ was originally a Drake diss record.”
The fact that Childish Gambino’s 2018 hit — which famously reflected on systemic racism and the Black American experience at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement — was originally meant as a Drake diss did actually become a headline earlier this year. Donald Glover revealed the song’s less-than-serious origins in an interview with GQ, explaining that he opted to write more intense subject matter after realizing how powerful the song’s music was.
“I had the idea three years before,” Glover said. “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.”
Glover continued, “It started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like, this shit sounds kind of hard though. So I was like, let me play with it.”
Watch Drake call out “This Is America” below. The rapper’s “It’s All A Blur Tour” with 21 Savage continues throughout the summer, and aside from Childish Gambino beef, fans can also look forward to seeing Drake perform in front of holographic sperm cells. If that’s intriguing to you, grab tickets to an upcoming show here.
Drake shades Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” following diss song confession https://t.co/52WCdDsvQr pic.twitter.com/XayOQF3xj5
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) July 6, 2023