The long history of the rap beef—a tradition that has seen scores of hip-hop artists trading shots both lyrical and literal—got a new chapter over the weekend, as Drake escalated his ongoing feud with Jay Z by intimating that the latter eats fondue. Drake—the guy who turns up with a suspiciously new Starter cap for whatever team just made the playoffs—was on hand at Saturday’s game between the Toronto Raptors and the Brooklyn Nets, a very tiny part of which used to be owned by Jay Z. Because Drake is famous, people are interested in his thoughts on sports.
And so Drake was invited to provide guest color commentary for TSN, where he lauded the Raptors as “the people’s team,” contrasting them against the Nets by accusing Jay Z of being “somewhere eating a fondue plate.” Fondue, of course, is eaten with long-stemmed forks, as opposed to just shoving bricks of it in your face, like they do on the streets. (Hence the common rapper reference to having “bricks.”) It was the most cutting hip-hop diss since Tupac accused Notorious B.I.G. of preferring macaroons, then both of them ended up dead.
Drake’s dig against Jay Z’s preference for hot bourgeois cheese came on the back of a recent interview he gave to Rolling Stone, where he said, “It’s like Hov can’t drop bars these days without at least four art references!” before delivering the finishing blow of admitting he would also “love to collect at some point.” Jay Z subsequently fired back with a verse in which he mock-apologized for collecting so much art, but that he raps about the things he actually does.
The world now waits for Jay Z to similarly weigh in on whether he really likes fondue, in an era in which rappers no longer beef—they cheese.