Drake addresses blackface controversy
“This was to highlight and raise our frustrations with not always getting a fair chance in the industry.”
Last night, Pusha-T took his beef with Drake to the next level with his scalding "The Story of Adidon." For the single's cover, King Push unearthed a photo of Drake wearing blackface. The image in question was originally photographed by David Leyes, and was captioned "Drake Us And Them" on Leyes' website.
Now, Drake has spoken for the first time since "Adidon" dropped. In a Notes app screenshot posted to his Instagram story, Champagne Papi acknowledged how "everyone is enjoying the circus," and gave a bit of background on the photograph. "This picture is from 2007, a time in my life where I was an actor and I was working on a project that was about young black actors struggling to get roles, being stereotyped and type cast."
"The photos represented how African Americans were once wrongfully portrayed in entertainment. Me and my best friend at the time Mazin Elsadig who is an actor from Sudan were attempting to use our voice to bring awareness to the issues we dealt with all the time as black actors at auditions. This was to highlight and raise our frustrations with not always getting a fair chance in the industry and to make a point that the struggle for black actors had not changed much."