T-Pain is calling out Drake for not sticking to his own game plan when it comes to leaving the music industry on a high note.
During a recent episode of the Crash Dummies podcast, the “Buy U a Drank” hitmaker shared that he once admired Drake’s mindset about knowing when to bow out gracefully.
“One thing I learned from Drake—but he hasn’t followed his own words. Drake said, ‘I wanna be one of them people that gracefully bow out and not get kicked out,’” T-Pain said around the 30-minute mark of the episode.
He joked about how he’s taken that advice to heart: “I’ve been like, ‘Thank y’all, I appreciate y’all. I’ll see y’all when I drop—don’t worry about it, I’ll just drop something. Let me know if you heard it.’”
Meanwhile, he says Drake is still out here pushing hard. “Drake is like, ‘No, listen, OK, I got another one. Hold on, check this out. Y’all ain’t like that one? OK, real quick, just one more. Let me try one more.’”
According to T-Pain, at some point, Drake became exactly the kind of artist he once said he didn’t want to be.
“Like, when he said that ‘I wanna gracefully bow out and not get kicked out,’ I was like, ‘You know what? I’m out this bitch. I’m done,’” T-Pain said. “I’m not here to impress y’all. Y’all don’t care if I live or die—so why should I keep trying to win y’all over? I did what I set out to do. I changed the game. I made a sound. What more do you want?”
T-Pain was referring to Drake’s 2023 interview with Lil Yachty, where the rapper spoke about eventually making “a graceful exit” from music. At the time, Drake said, “I’ll still be around to, like, work with people or do a show here and there, but I’m not going to force myself to compete… That’s the one thing I want for myself really badly.”
He added that the music scene can be addictive and competitive, and some artists struggle to let go of being “the guy.” “So I guess what’s left for me is just to find a way to gracefully… continue making projects that are extremely interesting and hopefully cherished,” Drake said. “Then find the right time to say, ‘I can’t wait to see what the next generation does.’”
Earlier in the Crash Dummies episode, T-Pain was asked if he had any plans to drop a new album.
“I don’t want to,” he replied, explaining that putting out a new project means hitting cities for promo and trying to convince people it’s worth their time.
“To spend months working on something only to have it judged in a single day is wild,” he said. “You can work for a year, and one meme could cancel all of it. And I’m not risking my mental health for that.”
Back in February, T-Pain also gave his thoughts on Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR’s joint album $ome $exy $ongs, saying it sounded like a bunch of old, unused material. “I feel like [Drake] recorded a bunch of shit,” he said. “And to keep [PARTYNEXTDOOR] around, it was like, ‘Yo, put a verse on these 10–15 tracks, and that’s our album, bro.’”
