Drake found himself in the middle of a potential beef this weekend, and it wasn’t an addition to the now month-long feud with Meek Mill; over the weekend, the rapper was fought over between the two biggest (and newest) music streamers on the block – Apple Music and TIDAL.
Consequence of Sound reported that Lil Wayne brought Drake onstage in New Orleans at his Lil Weezyana Festival – an annual show that benefits Hurricane Katrina victims – which was streamed on TIDAL. Right as Drake went out, the live stream was cut.
There’s some discrepancy as to why the stream ended early; The New York Post initially reported that Apple threatened to sue TIDAL for $20 million if they showed any part of Drake’s performance, because he has an exclusive contract with Apple. However, the rapper’s manager Future the Brown, disputed the claim:
The decision to not have Drake participate in the Tidal stream has nothing to do with Apple or Drake’s deal. … Point blank, 100%. I made a business decision. Apple doesn’t have the power to stop us from being part of a live stream. The only people that have the power to do that are Cash Money and Universal, and they’re our partners. … We wanted to make sure the stream represented us in the right way, and we didn’t have much insight into what they were doing. Aesthetics and quality are important to us and we didn’t have any control over that or time to investigate it. We were just there to participate in the benefit.
TIDAL didn’t back down. They blamed Apple (or “Big Brother”) for the ordeal, tweeting:
TIDAL hasn’t been a stranger to headlines and pseudo-controversies since its launch in March; so far, two CEO’s have left, they’ve been accused of being elitist and not as beneficial to artists as them claim, and were recently sued over an allegedly unauthorized free mixtape. Apple Music most notably made news when they changed their entire artist contract because of letter from Taylor Swift, which followed a leak of a sketchy artist contract and refusal of endorsements.
No word from Drizzy himself on the situation, but he did have a busy weekend: after the New Orleans performance with Lil Wayne, he surprised J. Cole fans in Fayetteville, NC by joining him and Jay Z onstage for the last show of the Forest Hills Drive Tour.
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