Common recently stopped by LA’s Real 92.3 radio station. The rapper, actor, and writer was a guest on Big Boy’s Neighborhood, promoting his new memoir Let Love Have The Last Word. In addition to discussing his new book, the Academy Award winner revisited an old feud that he once had with Drake.
The discontent between the two hip-hop stars first began to bubble in late 2011 when Common released his ninth studio album The Dreamer/The Believer. Some listeners interpreted a line in the project’s fourth track “Sweet” as a dig at Drake. In it, Common raps “Singing all around me man, la la la/You ain’t muthaf*cking Frank Sinatra.” At a concert in Vegas that month, Drake announced to the crowd “I might sing, but I ain’t no b*tch. If Common got something to say, say it to my face.” Over the course of the next few months, the two rappers would go on to trade diss tracks, before meeting in person at the Grammys in 2012.
“When we had that beef, that beef was for real for me and it was real for him,” the 47-year-old Told Big Boy. “We saw each other at the Grammys and it was kinda like a little tension and then and then it was like a real honest talk that we had about his respect for me. And I was letting him know that I thought he was a really dope artist and talented artist and we kind of just squashed it there.”
Common went on to liken the experience to when hip-hop legend Ice Cube dissed him in the 90s. Common tipped his hat to Drake for handling their disagreement “like a grown man should.”
