Key Takeaways:
- Travis Scott denies hiding Drake’s “MELTDOWN” verse and says it was not finished at the time.
- He claims Pusha T brought a film crew to the Paris session and flipped the narrative.
- Scott frames the diss as a calculated move to stir buzz ahead of Clipse’s comeback.
Travis Scott is finally addressing Pusha T’s alleged shots on Clipse’s “So Be It,” and he believes the Virginia rapper rewrote history to fuel Let God Sort Em Out’s rollout.
The tension traces back to last summer, when Clipse released the scathing single ahead of the Pharrell Williams–produced comeback album. On the song, Pusha raps, “Calabasas took your b**ch and your pride in front of me,” apparently aiming at Scott through references to his past relationship and UTOPIA-era imagery. The diss is connected to Drake’s verse on Scott’s UTOPIA standout “MELTDOWN,” where the Canadian talent took jabs at Pharrell — a close collaborator of Pusha and Malice.
In a Rolling Stone cover story published on Wednesday (Jan. 21), Scott disputed Pusha’s version of a Paris studio moment that was cited as the spark. Pusha suggested Scott showed up to a session with Pharrell and Clipse and played them UTOPIA while intentionally leaving out Drake’s “MELTDOWN” verse. Scott said the narrative doesn’t add up.
“When you go back and look at it … it’s crazy. N**gas said I had a film crew [with me]. I’m like, ‘What?’ I remember when I pulled up, it was them n**gas that had a film crew,” Scott claimed. “I’m talking about the little microphone on the stick and all of that. I was like, ‘Oh, s**t. Am I in a documentary?’”
On the claim that he avoided playing Drake’s verse, Scott says it simply didn’t exist yet. Rolling Stone added that Scott insisted Pharrell invited him. “First of all, I can’t interrupt something that somebody asked me to come pull up on,” he stated. “So, when I hear that type of s**t, it’s just like, I don’t know, man. If you got to drop Trav name for the rollout, so be it.” Whether Scott’s clever mention of the Clipse track in his rebuttal was intentional is unclear.
Scott also laid out his approach as more bridge-building than taking sides. “I’ve always been a person who tried to put the best worlds all together,” he expressed, arguing that rap’s still young enough to keep evolving through unexpected collaborations.