Why is no one talking about Drake’s long history of predatory behaviour with teens?

By Alma Fabiani

Updated Jul 10, 2024 at 05:10 PM

Reading time: 7 minutes

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Image courtesy of @champagnepapi on Instagram

In 2018, Stranger Things actress Millie Bobby Brown, aged 14 at the time, revealed on the Emmy Awards’ red carpet that she and Canadian rapper Drake were “great friends” who regularly text. “We just texted each other the other day and he was like ‘I miss you so much’, and I was like ‘I miss you more’. He’s great,” she told Access Hollywood. At the time, Drake was 32.

Almost immediately after the news broke, the internet—especially the Twitter community, obviously—began to express concern about the two celebrities’ relationship. Soon after the controversy started, it quickly became clear that Brown wasn’t the only underage girl Drake was texting.

In November 2019, Billie Eilish sat down with Vanity Fair for the third year in the row where she was given identical interview questions. In the video, Eilish is asked the same series of questions about her life and career as her old interviews are played back so that she can react to them, noting how much her life has changed in a few short years. One of the questions that she got asked was “Who is the most famous person in your phone?” In the 2017 interview, the singer named fellow singer, Khalid, who she also referred to as “a homie of mine.”

In 2019 however, Eilish had a lot more famous people in her contacts to cite. She listed Hailey and Justin Bieber, Young Thug, Avril Lavigne, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Ty Dolla $ign, Teyana Taylor, and countless others she chose not to mention before she finally landed on Drake. She then went into a brief monologue about how nice the rapper is, especially given his celebrity status and success.

She continued on to mention that they had spoken via text in the past. “But like Drake, c’mon. Drake. Drake is like the nicest dude I’ve ever spoken to. I mean I’ve only texted him, but he’s so nice. Like, he does not need to be nice. You know what I mean? He’s at a level of his life where he doesn’t need to be nice, but he is. You know?” Eilish rambled during the interview. Although the exchanges between her and Drake may very well be harmless, some fans found it suspicious that the (then 33-year-old) artist was once again found to be texting an underage girl.

Although suspicious enough to raise some eyebrows, the two situations mentioned above were not the only times Drake has exhibited some predatory behaviour. Back in May 2010, while performing in Denver, Colorado, the rapper invited a fan to come up on stage with him. Someone present at the concert filmed what happened next in a video that resurfaced online in 2019, soon after Brown revealed that Drake, who she had initially met in Australia back in November 2017, texted her “advice about boys.”

In the 2010 clip, the Canadian rapper invites the girl on stage during his performance at the Ogden Theater, dances with her, kisses her neck, comments on her shampoo, then pulls her shirt down at the back of the neck to kiss her again. After reaching both hands across her chest while standing behind her, he picks up his microphone and says he is getting “carried away.” When asked about her age, the girl replies: “17,” to which Drake responds: “I can’t go to jail yet, man!”

Even after discovering her age, he continues, “Why do you look like that? You thick. Look at all this. I don’t know if I should feel guilty or not, but I had fun. I like the way your breasts feel against my chest.” He is then seen kissing her on the cheeks and forehead in a way that can only be described as extremely creepy. Drake would have been 23 at the time the video was taken. The age of consent in Colorado is 17. To this day, he has not responded to the video and his US publicist has always declined to comment on the matter.

If you thought that was the end of it when it comes to Drizzy’s questionable ways, think again. In the song ‘Mr. Right Now’ released in 2020 by Atlanta-based rapper 21 Savage and American record producer Metro Boomin on their collaborative album Savage Mode II, Drake sings a verse that garnered particular attention for its mention of SZA.

“Yeah, said she wanna fuck to some SZA, wait ‘cause I used to date SZA back in ‘08,” Drake raps on the track. In 2008, SZA would have been 17 and Drake 22. While the age of consent in the rapper’s hometown of Toronto is 16, it is 18 where he currently resides in California.

Honestly, there seems to be a recurring pattern here. Drake’s interest in impressionable young women is “a systemic issue in a society which has a surplus of men in power, as well as an abundance of women who have ambitions to be seen, to be understood, to attain power themselves within the existing societal structure,” as writer Sandra Song pointed out in a 2018 article for NYLON.

And in most cases, it’s a situation that lends itself to varying degrees of abuse, which is why it simply can’t be overlooked. “What about the other young women this sort of thing happens to who, unlike Brown, aren’t in the public eye?” continued Song. Let’s not forget about Lifetime’s Surviving R Kelly documentary, which featured heart-wrenching interviews with multiple women who claim they were abused by the singer, oftentimes out in the open, and yet no one did anything to stop him.

Celebrity culture may have blurred the lines between mutual consent and predatory behaviour, but it’s the accumulation of small events like the ones Drake has been involved in that need attention before one more YouTube video surfaces and we scramble to erase its impact on impressionable minds.

Another serious driving force behind people’s perception of Drake being habitually inappropriate with young women and girls is the ongoing feud that the rapper has with fellow artist Kendrick Lamar. More specifically, the accusations that Lamar has made against Drake in recent years.

Lamar and Drake’s feud first started back in 2013, after the ‘HUMBLE.’ singer called out Drake and other rappers on Big Sean’s track ‘Control’. Fast forward to 2024, over a decade later, and let’s just say that these two definitely still don’t see eye to eye.

Lamar recently released a song titled ‘Not Like Us’ and in the track the rapper makes a lot of incredibly serious accusations against Drake, particularly in regard to alleged child sex offences. One of the most inflammatory lines reads: “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young … Certified Lover Boy? Certified paedophiles… Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.”

Notably, the cover art for ‘Not Like Us’ also struck a chord with fans. The image is a bird’s eye view of Drake’s Canadian mansion, alongside a series of red markers that appear to resemble those found on maps marking the homes of registered sex offenders. Netizens naturally concluded that Lamar was insinuating that many of Drake’s closest confidants are also predators.

In another track directed at Drake, ‘Meet the Grahams’, Lamar raps: “A child should never be compromised and he keeping his child around them / And we gotta raise our daughters knowing there’s predators like him lurking … I’m looking to shoot through any pervert that lives, keep the family safe.”

In a number of his songs, Lamar also alleged that the ‘God’s Plan’ singer has a secret daughter: “He a narcissist, misogynist, living inside his songs / Try destroy families rather than takin’ care of his own / Should be teaching you time tables or watching Frozen with you / Or at your 11th birthday singing poems with you … it’s not your fault that he’s hiding another child.”

Drake has responded to these numerous accusations. Namely, he has vehemently denied allegations of child sex abuse. Moreover, Drake claimed that both himself and his team fed Lamar false information regarding his ‘secret child’: “We plotted for a week and then we fed you the information / A daughter that’s 11 years old, I bet he takes it / We thought about giving a fake name or a destination / But you so thirsty, you not concerned with investigation.”

Naturally, the entire internet has been going crazy over this feud:

Oh, this is definitely NOT Drake‘s summer. After Kendrick Lamar’s diss track—which, by the way, seems to be the new summer anthem blaring everywhere—Metro Boomin decided to stir the pot even more. The social media onslaught began with a scathing tweet calling Drake a “coloniser,” attaching a clip of Drake dissing Toronto slang as “ignorant” and another unsettling video where Drake uses the N word controversially.

It’s not hard to imagine the reaction—netizens went crazy, with some users stating: “That time Drake called Black Toronto slang ‘ignorant,’ but now speaks with the same slang, using the same accent he tried to shun. This is the cosplaying, code-switching, inauthenticity Kendrick Lamar is talking about.”

Many users pointed out how Drake is now using the same accent he previously despised in the video. Another added: “Anyone from here will tell you Drake started using his “Toronto accent” when he became a rapper, that’s why it sounds forced and inauthentic. He grew up in the suburbs and is on video saying Toronto slang is “ignorant and stupid.”

Another X user tweeted: “Drake doesn’t cosplay blackness. wtf does this even mean? He grew up around black ppl from all over the world and you can tell. Toronto is a multinational city. Better someone like Drake than an idiot from the projects who has never left American shore.”

As the controversy unfolds, it’s clear that Drake might need to watch his back—not just from Kendrick Lamar, but also from Metro Boomin who posted on his social media: “Now go make another song telling more lies cause we both know you can’t tell everyone why I don’t f**k wit u.”

Indeed, artist Macklemore recently called out the pair for their foolishness in his own track dedicated to supporting the pro-Palestine protests across US colleges. The song, titled ‘Hind’s Hall’, has received overwhelmingly positive support on social media—particularly for its messaging regarding the US’ continued financial backing of Israel.

Interestingly, Macklemore also makes a dig at Lamar and Drake in the song. At one point, the rapper notes: “I want a ceasefire, fuck a response from Drake.”

Neither Drake nor Lamar have released a response to ‘Hind’s Hall’.

Things in the saga between Kendrick Lamar and Drake became even twistier when EbonyPrince2k24 entered the chatroom. EbonyPrince2k24 is the handle of a mysterious X (formerly Twitter) user who leaked several items in connection with Drake to the public on his account.

This included pictures and videos of a shirt, jewellery receipts, and three prescription medicines with the name “Aubrey Graham” (Drake’s real name) on them, including one for Ozempic and one for Zolpidem. Interestingly, these are the exact same items that made it onto the cover of one of Kendrick Lamar’s recent diss tracks about the Canadian rapper, ‘meet the grahams’.

The plot thickened further when DJ Akademiks alleged that these items were stolen from a suitcase belonging to Drake’s father, Dennis Graham.

At the moment, it is unclear whether the individual behind EbonyPrince2k24 is in contact with Lamar and supplied him with the pictures of the items.

EbonyPrince2k24 refuted the claims of theft in a tweet and warned that he would seek legal action against both Drake and DJ Akademiks.

Reddit and its army of online sleuths naturally embarked on a journey of uncovering the identity of this mysterious ‘insider’. What they have found so far, paints the image of a vengeful hotel employee who had it out for the rapper for quite some time now.

In a thread titled “Everything we know about EbonyPrince2k24,” users deduced that EbonyPrince2k24 is a man and a former or current employee at The Mark Hotel in New York City responsible for security. All the prescriptions and receipts are dated July 2023 so it is assumed that he got a hold of them at the end of Drake’s stay in July 2023.

His tweets suggest that he witnessed an incident with Drake, Chubb Rock, and disability activist Christopher Alvarez in January 2023 that got two of his hotel colleagues fired. This probably provided the basis for EbonyPrince2k24’s beef with the rappers and explains why he might be propping Lamar up in this conflict.

According to one of Ebony’s tweets, Drake supposedly was rude to service providers during or about the incident. Ebony claims to have CCTV footage of the incident.

EbonyPrince2k24 is currently attempting to auction the items off in November 2024.

He is currently promoting the event on his social media profile.