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Drake is making headlines for his public dig at DeMar DeRozan. The Canadian rapper took to the stage at his Sydney show and help up the latter's old jersey for a few seconds before flinging it off the stage.
Footage of the same has since gone viral, and the rapper can be seen performing Rich Flex at the time. The incident has sparked renewed interest in the pair's feud, as that they were once friends. The two were friends for almost a decade, almost all throughout DeRozan's 10-year tenure with the Raptors, the team Drake supports.
Drake and DeRozan's beef explored: From longtime friends to their contentious rivalry
DeRozan left the Raptors back in 2018, though at the time, he and Drake were still friends. In 2021, DeRozan reflected on their friendship in an interview with Club Shay Shay, noting that when he quit, Drake was the most supportive:
"Man, we just really sat there, and besides basketball and everything, just the reassurance of like that was my partner, that was a friend of mine that was like 'Get away from everything. I know it's crazy,'" said DeMar. "I couldn't even turn on the TV that day. Phone was going crazy. I just went over there, and we sat and talked for hours. And more than anything just him being there for me as a friend first and foremost."
He continued:
"No matter what, when it come to him, he'll forever have a friend in me and loyalty out of me because he cared. He was there for me when everything was kind of going crazy."
Their longstanding friendship turned sour, however, when in Kendrick Lamar's diss track Not Like Us, he name-dropped the player:
"I'm glad DeRoz' (DeRozan) came home, y'all didn't deserve him neither," he rapped.
Not long after, DeRozan made it to the music video of the same, as well as at Lamar's Pop Out concert, when he took to the stage alongside Westbrook while Not Like Us blared from stadium speakers. However, he explained his cameo away as nothing but showing love to Lamar, whom he says is his friend:
"We love Drake, we always can play him," said DeRozan in an interview with Fox40. "Kendrick been a friend of mine, family. Damn near family, for a long time, for a while. We're from the same city, we grew up damn near in the same neighborhood...It's always been there. It hasn't always been publicized, but, you know, that's basically family."
During another interview with The Sacramento Bee, DeRozan revealed he was still friends with Drake, and that he had no part in the beef between him and Lamar:
"Drake's still my man, still my man, none of it changed," DeRozan told the newspaper. "It's so easy to get overlooked and look at it for what it looks like, but at the end of the day it's music, entertainment. Two of the biggest rappers in the world went at it from a competitive standpoint, and they battled it out."
Drake, however, took the whole thing as disloyalty. While he didn't mention DeRozan's name, fans quickly began speculating that he may have been talking about the sportsman anyway. He said in October 2024, as reported by Complex:
"My real friends are definitely in the building," he said. "But let me tell you that you're going to come to a point in life where people you thought were friends, or people you thought were close to you switch up." He continued, "They might stab you in the back...They might do a lot of things to you...You'll come to that realization wherever you're at in life, you'll probably be there or been there — that's how life is. Sometimes it's you and you alone, by yourself. Sometimes, it's you alone with your thoughts."
Drake doubled down on his stance in November 2024, when, during an NBA game, the cameras caught him dissing his former friend while peering in his direction, even referring to him as a "goof" at one point. Midgame, he expressed his distaste for his former friend when he told Raptors commentators:
"If you ever put up a DeRozan banner, I’ll go up there and pull it down myself."
DeRozan was probed about Drake's behavior in the post-game conference, to which he responded by saying the rapper has "a long way to climb to take it down."
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At the time of writing, DeRozan has yet to respond to Drake's public disavowal of him.
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