Drake has responded to what he calls “the circus” in his feud with rapper Pusha-T, explaining a photo that shows the former Degrassi star in blackface was to “bring awareness to the issues we dealt with all the time as Black actors at auditions.”

The latest salvo in the beef between the two rappers came Tuesday night when Pusha-T released a diss track “The Story of Adidon,” that took a number of personal digs at Drake, including a claim that he’s a “deadbeat” father of a child with former porn star Sophie Brussaux.

Perhaps most startling was the artwork used with the track, showing a smiling Drake in blackface. There was no explanation of where the photo came from, and in what context they were taken, which drew immediate questions on whether the picture was real.

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Drake’s rap feud with Pusha-T gets ugly

“I know everyone is enjoying the circus but I want to clarify the image in question,” Drake posted on his Instagram story late Wednesday night.

“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 typecast. The photos represented how African Americans were once wrongfully portrayed in entertainment.”

He said he and his best friend at the time Mazin Elsadig were trying to “highlight and raise our frustrations with not always getting a fair chance in the industry and to make a point that the struggle for Black actors had not changed much.”

Pusha-T later dismissed Drake’s response in a radio station interview Thursday.

“You are silent on all Black issues, Drake,” Pusha-T told Real 92.3 in Los Angeles, despite the Toronto rapper having a huge platform to share his message.

“You don’t stand for nothing, you don’t say nothing about nothing. That’s just what it is. You have all the platform in the world. You were so passionate back then? No, you weren’t. That’s number one. That's what I know.”

The photo was taken from the website of Toronto photographer David Leyes, who posted on Instagram that the image was Drake’s idea and that he was “proud to be part of a strong statement made by a Black man.”

Too Black Guys, the Toronto brand that made the shirt Drake wears in the photo, defended both their satirical Jim Crow Couture/House of Crow collection and the rapper.

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“We feel that Drake, who is a long-time friend of the brand, was brilliantly illustrating the hypocrisy of the Jim Crow Era,” Adrian Aitcheson, founder of Too Black Guys, said in a statement.

“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.”

Drake has a new album, Scorpion, coming out in June, while Pusha-T just released Daytona, produced by Kanye West.

With files from the New York Times

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