2014 was a transitional year for Drake–freshly removed from Nothing Was The Same and on the verge of releasing If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. He was the man with the hits, the golden hooks, and the type of commercial prowess that cemented his trajectory in the years that immediately followed. At 28 years old, he still had the starry-eyed view of the music industry as the de facto leader of the new school. His pockets got fatter, landing at No. 4 on Forbes’ Hip-Hop Cash Kings list, though he still earned roughly half of what JAŸ-Z and Diddy made that year. It felt evident at that time, when he criticized Magna Carta Holy Grail, that the gap between Drake and JAŸ-Z’s respective fortunes was reflected in their music.

“It’s like Hov can’t drop bars these days without at least four art references! I would love to collect at some point, but I think the whole rap/art world thing is getting kind of corny,” he told Rolling Stone. The problem is less about the art bars and more about translating wealth to those who aren’t in the same tax bracket. 

Drake’s now at a point where his bag is as big, if not bigger, than Hov’s was in 2014, and he’s found himself becoming just as guilty of making these uber-opulent name-drops. Similarly, nobody knows what the f*ck he’s talking about half the time when he starts rattling off billionaire-tier references.

In the decade since Drake rapped that he “turned into Jay” on “Summer Sixteen,” he’s overtaken JAŸ-Z as the rapper with the most #1 albums on the Billboard 200. It’s an impressive feat, no doubt, but that alone doesn’t mean he’s surpassed Hov in any meaningful way, and JAY made that clear himself. Sure, Drake feels there’s more value in $500,000 than dinner with Jay—and we have to assume that opinion comes from experience rather than theory. Still, The Blueprint became the blueprint for Drake. The key difference is that Jay knew not to overstay his welcome. 

Retirement, however, doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s plans right now. The reality is that the tension brewing between Drake and JAŸ-Z is much different than his beef with people like Kendrick Lamar or even someone like Pusha T–another rapper that he once looked up to. Even if you clump in Meek Mill here, every major beef Drake’s been involved in circles back to integrity. Pusha T pressed Drake’s authenticity. Kendrick and Drake battled over who reigns as the generational leader. But with JAŸ-Z, it won’t be a battle of who has better bars or even greater status. It’ll come down to who built the cleaner empire. No one touches a billion with clean hands, but who will be the first to unearth the dirty deeds swept underneath the piles of money?

That type of mud-slinging is far more detrimental to their respective bottom lines, but it does underscore a subtle reality: Drake’s turned into the exact type of artist he once criticized. And when those criticisms were hurled at JAY, he simply responded by stating that he’s rapping about sh*t he actually bought, each being a notch in his ascent up the wealth ladder. A feud between Drake and JAY likely won’t be the “I’m-a-better-rapper-than-you” type of back-and-forth but one that puts their respective wealth and their accumulation of it into perspective. Drake’s Embassy in Toronto will be countered by JAŸ-Z and Beyoncé’s mansion, one of the most expensive homes ever sold in California. If Drake brings up his mega-sized deal with UMG, JAY simply measures it against the empire he’s built with Roc Nation. And while we might ultimately have a debate between the cultural grip of Roc-A-Wear vs OVO, the bars that will likely carry the most weight will be those carrying the type of cryptic references that only make sense if you’re operating in a completely different tax bracket than your audience. In other words, it’ll be the first rap beef to bring impassioned barbershop talks to Michael Rubin’s White Party.

Across ICEMAN, Drake’s peers became secondary targets to the institutions he challenges, including JAŸ-Z and Roc Nation. In Drake’s eyes, the story of the past two years extends beyond Kendrick Lamar and into the power structures surrounding him. That’s what makes the subtle references to JAY, and even the allusion to the Epstein Files, significant. Drake no longer seems interested in battling rivals. He’s taking aim at the institutions he believes shape the game itself.

Before ICEMAN dropped, JAY denounced the need for rap beefs in the current climate. Not just because of how low things can get, but because of how depraved fan bases can become online and the real-world consequences that follow. If we witnessed the Taylor Swift of rap watch his reputation get dragged through the mud during a rap beef, it’s easy to imagine the same thing happening to an artist whose career predates social media. For JAY, that fall from grace would be even more stark given that he’s spent twice as long as Drake building the empire he currently sits atop.

For the better part of the last decade, Drake’s efforts contributed towards trying to become the type of artist JAŸ-Z represents. The irony is that he may have succeeded. What once sounded like a dismissal of Hov’s art references now reads more like a misunderstanding of the world that produced them. After all, it was only a few years ago that Drake declared, “I’m getting so rich, my music is not even relatable.”

Nowadays, Drake occupies many of the same rooms, moves within similar financial circles, and speaks a language that can feel just as foreign to the average listener. It still feels egregious to compare Drake’s path to JAY’s. One is rooted in the mythology of the American Dream, while the other began with far fewer obstacles. Yet Drake has followed the blueprint so closely that the comparison has become impossible to ignore. At a certain point, succession turns into competition. And when one man built the throne while the other spent a decade positioning himself to inherit it, it was only a matter of time until this conflict surfaced.

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