Remember on “Light Up” when JAY gave Drake the blueprint on how to handle rap beef? “Drake, here's how they gon' come at you/ With silly rap feuds, tryin' to distract you/ In disguise, in the form of a favor/The Barzini meeting, watch for the traitors.” Drizzy didn’t take Hov’s advice. He helped Kanye write “Yikes” off Ye and then turned around and took shots from Pusha on “Infrared.” This is what Drake alluded to on “Duppy Freestyle” when he rapped, “I just left from over by y'all puttin' pen to the sheets/ Tired of sittin' quiet and helpin' my enemies eat/ Keep gettin' temperature checks/ They know that my head overheats/ Don't know why the fuck you niggas listen to Denim or Steve/ Must've had your infrared wrong, now your head in the beam.” Had he listened to JAY, Drake wouldn’t have put himself in the position he’s in now.

Drake is the No. 1 rapper in the game depending on who you ask. If all you care about is sales, he’s been the guy for a while now. Every album he’s put out since Nothing Was the Same has broken some type of streaming record. Like most rappers these days, Drake attempted to bloat his sales with his latest release by putting out 25 tracks in a “double disc” format. This is just another distraction tactic like when he decided to make the “I’m Upset” video a Degrassi reunion after being advised against responding to Pusha T’s vicious diss track, “The Story of Adidon.” And some of you are falling for the jux, letting Drake’s gigantic sales cloud the fact that a good portion of the songs on Scorpion are formulaic, tired, and defensive.

What do sales matter if a rapper like Pusha T, whose lifetime sales pale in comparison, is able to put the top boy on his heels? He made the supposed best artist in rap sound defeated on a major release; an album that broke first-day streaming records as some of you like to point out. But what do sales matter when it comes to this rap shit? In the overall grand scheme of things they don’t matter as much as we make them out to be. If sales were so important then why did Drake go back to the drawing board and decide to place little subs like the line about his father’s suits in the Scorpion intro “Survival.” Drake needed to drop a Stillmatic, instead he gave us a Blueprint 2.

For those who started listening to rap when So Far Gone came out, the belief is that JAY lost the beef to Nas. A year after “Ether” Hov was still reeling from the record and the public opinion turning on him so he decided to make a double disc album to try and prove his pop reach, and storytelling and rapping ability. On Stillmatic, Nas rapped like he was reminding fans who really was the king; confident in his standing among hip-hop’s elite. All of this after JAY brought Michael Jackson out during the same Summer Jam where he put Prodigy (RIP) on the screen and waged war on Nas.

He subbed Jorja Smith and Kanye on Scorpion more than he did Push. Drake sounds unsure of himself throughout, as if he’s trying to convince himself he’s the Don Dada.

Fast forward almost two decades later and Drake puts a PowerPoint presentation of Meek Mill memes on the OVO Fest screen, grabs never-heard-before MJ vocals on Scorpion, and makes it a double album. He wants to be the JAY-Z of his era so bad, but the thing is he’s a pop star more than he is a rapper. He’d rather go at old flames about their Instagram behavior than really fuck with this rap shit. He subbed Jorja Smith and Kanye on Scorpion more than he did Push. Drake sounds unsure of himself throughout, as if he’s trying to convince himself he’s the Don Dada.

The thing is, Drake will never be what JAY-Z was in his heyday. Jigga had the unique ability to have the streets and the charts, a feat that only a handful of rappers have been able to achieve in the history of rap. Nas was also a commercially successful rapper who also was able to touch the streets. We really would argue who the best MCs where: JAY-Z, Biggie, or Nas and this beef tore families, friends, and whole communities apart. Barbershops were turned upside down, blunt cyphers would end in blown highs because of arguments. JAY vs. Nas was The Rock vs. Stone Cold type shit. You know what we never brought up when arguing about this beef? Album sales because although JAY outsold Nas, he was considered the loser once “Ether” dropped and he went to radio to apologize about the raps in “Supa Ugly” and was still subbing Nas a year later on Blueprint 2.

Pusha’s been baiting Cash Money and Drake for about six years and only got a few subs back in return, that is, until Daytona dropped. The jabs on the album’s last track “Infrared” apparently were the straws that broke the camel’s back. Drake strategically—or so he thought—dropped “Duppy Freestyle” and then “I’m Upset” immediately after with the goal of ruining Pusha’s album rollout; the Boy thought this was “Charged Up” and “Back to Back” all over again. He was too cocky, he was feeling himself, he believed that he was sitting on the throne, he thought he’d be able to but it backfired crazy this time around. This was the same feeling JAY-Z had when he decided to ramp up his Blueprint rollout in the summer of 2001 starting with going at Nas and Prodigy when he performed “Takeover” at Hot 97’s Summer Jam; however, Nas firing back with “Ether” and Stillmatic rained on Jigga’s parade.

Drake wants to have it both ways, it’s hard to toe that pop/rap line, though. Someone like Push doesn’t care about sales, he just be out here rapping, bro, and he clearly had shit in the chamber for the day Drake would finally decide that enough was enough. Now do I think Drake can come back from this when it comes to this rap shit? No. He’ll keep getting massive streaming numbers but whenever he talks slick on records from here on out, we won’t believe him. Also, how do you let 48-year-old JAY-Z have the best verse on your album? The GOATs in history wouldn’t allow that to happen even if they had to re-record their verses. Drake should consider sticking to making pop hits instead of stepping into the ring again.