Kanye West Responds to Drake's Apparent Slam, Stoking Feud

Kanye West posted a screenshot of a text message he had apparently sent to Drake on Saturday, indicating that their feud is not slowing down any time soon. The two rappers have been taking shots at each other in songs, on social media and in the press for years now, and Drake recently revived the beef in a song. West's response was a Joker meme, of all things.

West posted a screenshot of an iMessage group chat with 9 participants, including himself and rapper Pusha T. Fans seemed to be in agreement that the latest message was sent from West to Drake, with the other users there as witnesses. It was a photo of Joaquin Phoenix in costume as the Joker, along with a message reading: "I live for this. I've been f—ed with by nerd ass jock n—s like you my whole life. You will never recover. I promise you."

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The post picked up over 800,000 likes in just a couple of hours, and plenty of comments as well. Although West posted it without a caption, fans left their own thoughts on what it meant and who else might be included in the group chat. Many weighed in on the feud between West and Drake.

"Dudes going through his Joker arc," one person wrote. Another wondered: "What does this mean Kanye?" While a third added: "Can someone tell me who tf everyone in there is?"

West was likely responding to Drake's recent featured verse on the song "Betrayal" by Trippie Redd. Fans were pretty confident that Drake was referring to West when he rapped: "All these fools I'm beefin' that I barely know / Fourty-five, forty-four, (burned out), let it go / Ye ain't changin' s— for me, it's set in stone."
The name drop seemed to refer to West's constantly shifting release date for his upcoming album Donda. There have been rumors that West was waiting for Drake's album to drop so that he could release Donda on the same day, stealing some of the press coverage and limelight from his rival.

Of course, the bad blood between West and Drake goes back much further than that, arguably starting in earnest with the rumors that Drake had an affair with West's ex-wife Kim Kardashian. Those rumors have been thoroughly denied, and there have been other tense moments between the two rappers regardless. So far, Drake has not commented on West's cryptic Instagram post.