Drake Defends Those Blackface Photos Of Himself
This week, a very pissed-off Pusha-T got a little revenge on Drake by diggging up old pictures of him in blackface. The internet had some theories about them, the main being that it was all for a photoshoot for a clothing company. Drake has crawled out of whatever embarrassment hole he’s been hiding in to offer up some much-needed context.
Pusha-T used the image of Blackface Drake as the artwork for his latest diss track, “The Story of Adidon. ”
God Damn Drake really did this pic.twitter.com/KyxCdT23Wb
— DarkSkintDostoyevsky (@daniecal) May 30, 2018
Drake is half black, but that clearly didn’t earn much forgiveness from the internet, where people had a pretty big problem with his makeup choice. Drake released a statement via his Instagram Stories about the pictures, reportedly taken by photographer David Leyes. Drake says the pictures were taken in 2007 when he was a 20-year-old actor working on a project with a fellow actor about young black actors struggling to get roles. Specifically, the stereotyping they faced (no pun intended) in the industry.
Adrian Aitcheson, the founder of Too Black Guys, the clothing brand Drake was seen wearing in said pictures, has reached out to Complex with his thoughts. Adrian confirmed Drake’s explanation that his Too Black Guys shirt had nothing to do with a photoshoot for the brand, although he did say Drake was wearing items from a 2008 line, which contradicts Drake’s story about it happening in 2007. However, Adrian stressed that the pictures are in line with the message of the brand, and that Drake was “brilliantly illustrating the hypocrisy of the Jim Crow Era.” So Drake’s not in trouble with them.
I’d like to say that Drake’s explanation of those pictures has calmed the internet down, but it’s still a dude in blackface, which isn’t something that goes over well in 2018. Drake probably knows this. Really, I’m willing to bet Drake wishes he could go back in time to before this all happened, when the cringiest image of Drake on the internet was that scene from Degrassi: The Next Generation where Jimmy Brooks finally gets a boner and goes around high-fiving everyone.
Pic: Wenn.com