This wasn’t somebody covering a battle who happened to be a Drake fan. Drake was sending him records to premiere on stream, communicating with him throughout the battle and Ak was one of the biggest platforms covering this shit in real time. Now two years later he’s telling us that if Drake came out of that battle looking like Ja Rule, he would’ve considered that a failure of HIS media power.
So what exactly were we watching in 2024?
Because if you’re covering a story while privately measuring your own success by whether one of the people involved survives the outcome, you’re no longer just documenting what happened. You have an objective. And once you have an objective, every headline, livestream, talking point, piece of information you amplify or dismiss has to be looked at differently.
Ak can be a Drake fan. He can think Drake won. He can defend Drake every day for the rest of his life if he wants. But you can’t simultaneously present yourself as one of the most important voices covering hip hop and then tell us your definition of success was making sure a specific artist didn’t lose so badly that it damaged his career.
At that point the question isn’t whether you were biased. You just told us you were an active participant in trying to shape the outcome.
🚨 Akademiks says if Drake had become the “Ja Rule” of the Kendrick battle, he would’ve viewed it as a FAILURE of his own media power
Ak says he carried advice Donald Trump Jr. gave him during their interview into the battle:
“No matter if you’re Team Kendrick or Team Drake, just make sure you’re on the winning side.”
Ak says that didn’t mean deciding who won the rap battle, it meant making sure the artist he backed never became irrelevant afterward:
“If Drake ended up being Ja Rule, I looked at that as the end of me.”
He says getting the OVO chain engraved “THE WAR IS OVER” felt like confirmation:
“To me, the job was done.”
Ak says Drake’s Iceman run felt like a championship for him too because it proved his belief that even if the rest of media goes the other way, an artist he fully backs can still survive.
“If I am solidly down with whoever this person is, we’re going to make it.”
He also points to 6ix9ine as another artist he stayed behind after the industry turned on him, saying an artist surviving is proof of his own media influence.
Via No Jumper