Common has confirmed Drake’s father Dennis Graham was the real reason why his rap beef with Drizzy fizzled out so quickly while also admitting Serena Williams was at the center of their disagreement.
During a recent interview in promotion of his upcoming album, Common spoke about both his beef with Drake and the Toronto rapper’s recent rap beef with West Coast MC Kendrick Lamar.
While speaking on the subject, Common explained that much like the beef between Drake and Kendrick, his beef with Drizzy began after he was on the receiving end of what he perceived as sneak disses.
“I felt like Drake was sending me a couple of shots, subliminals,” Common said in part.
Common then revealed he wasn’t sure at first would the issue between them could be, outside of the fact they were both romantically involved with Williams.
“I don’t know what motivated him to send me some shots, but I think what for sure had me, if I’m just being real, like you know, we mess with one of the same girls….You know wars happen over women,” he said. “That’s just what it is.
“But I ain’t going to get at you if you with somebody I was with. But if you start throwing me a couple little, you know, you trying to throw some jabs, you know, and I’m like, ‘Come on man, OK.'”
Common delved into the process of making his diss records “Sweet” along with “Canada Dry” and his remix of French Montana’s “Stay Schemin” track featuring Drake and Rick Ross. Even though the record shows Common did his thing on the diss, he reportedly was advised to tame the verbal assault by none other than producer No ID.
“Shoutout to No ID ‘cause I had all of these bars, and he was like, ‘Bro, you can’t go that hard. Just wait, ‘cause it might be another round,” he said. “The younger generation don’t go that hard.’ When he told me that, I was like, ‘OK,’ so I took out a few lines.”
In the end, Common describes how a face-to-face encounter with Drake and his father, Dennis Graham, was the end-all-be-all to the beef due to messages he says Drizzy’s father conveyed to him during the interaction.
“I eventually saw Drake face-to-face, and I was at a point where I was like, ‘What’s up?’” he said. “And we had little words and then his father was there, and he was like, ‘Y’all need to squash this.’ And I was like, ‘Man, this is an elder talking to me, this is this man’s father, let me chill out’. And then Drake was just like, ‘I ain’t on this’ and we just squashed it.”
In the end, Common holds no bad blood about the rap beef with Drake and even holds a certain level of respect for their dust-up because of how it honors the longstanding tradition of competition in Hip-Hop.
“It’s over, but it was all in the art of Hip-Hop,” he said before concluding, “He said some things to me, so I had to say some things back. I wouldn’t say [he started it], but I know I heard something that I felt was directed to me, so I addressed it. That’s all. But you know, thank God we were able to move forward from it, and all is good.”
Check out the full interview above.