Childish Gambino’s Under-The-Radar Drake Diss Track

Drake is getting shots fired at him from every direction this summer, and that doesn’t seem to be ending just yet. Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, dedicated a lot of lines aimed at Drake on his new album.

Childish Gambino’s fifth and final studio album, Bando Stone & the New World dropped on July 19th to praise for how unique it was for a hip-hop album. He was trying out a lof of different styles, and amongst those was “Yoshinoya,” his Drake diss.

While the song isn’t entirely a Drake diss and doesn’t mention his name, it’s clear that there are a lot of lines meant for the Canadian rapper. While most rap fans have caught on to it being a diss, most outlets haven’t really so for the most part it’s gone relatively unnoticed.

The Background

It’s hard to see why Childish Gambino dissed Drizzy, but it’s not the first time he’s thought of dissing Drake. Arguably the biggest song of his career, “This is America” was originally meant to be a diss track. Donald Glover in a 2023 interview. 

“I had that idea three years before. The idea for the song started as a joke, to be completely honest. This is America that was all we had, that line. And it started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like, this shit sounds kind of hard, though.”

Drake didn’t seem to be a fan of that as a message appeared while he was on stage during his tour in 2023 that said “The overrated and over-awarded hit song ‘This Is America’ was originally a Drake diss”.

This seemed to have ignited a real beef between the two, or at least in the eyes of Donald Glover. The history of these two for the most part before this seems to be pretty minimal. There are pictures of them meeting one time in 2018 and one Atlanta episode where Drake is featured as a storyline but doesn’t appear in the episode. 

Atlanta’s second season episode “Champagne Papi” (Drake’s IG name) where Earn (Donald Glover) and his friends go to a massive house party at Drake’s mansion. It seems like they were cool at the time especially since the episode and them posing for a picture was in the same year.

It’s unclear if something happened between then and now or if Gambino’s quote was what kicked it off.

Yoshinoya

Yoshinoya is a Japanese fast-food chain that was founded all the way back in 1899. The chorus of the song has the bar “I stuck around like Yoshinoya,” referencing his longevity in the rap game. He’s been releasing music under the name Childish Gambino since 2005. His longevity has been akin to some of his peers involved in the beef like Drake, J. Cole, and Kendrick Lamar who are all essentially from the same era of music makers. He sees those guys as peers in some regard. 

Donald Glover went on to IG live to comment on the Drake and Kendrick beef earlier and talked about his position as a spectator 

“Even this year, the most fun we’ve had was from a fight. Was from a song from a fight, from a rap beef. Which I enjoyed every minute of…It’s very fun, but still, kinda negative.”

It’s unclear what changed, but it looks like Childish Gambino wanted to have some fun in the beef instead of watching from the same place we were. 

Yoshinoya Verse 1

When you view this as a Drake diss track, the lines become more clear. “I put your boy in the seat” refers to Drake’s nickname “The Boy” which he calls himself regularly in his music. He’s saying Drake’s entire life/business is in the streets because of Kendrick.

He references “I found your house on an app”, which was the cover for Kendrick Lamar’s hit diss “Not Like Us” and Gambino pushes into that by insinuating Drake is a pedophile since it’d be on a pedo house app. He continues with those claims when he says “Fuck with my kids, you fuck with your lifе”. 

He uses Kendrick’s same ideas of how he went at Drake including saying that the people at OVO are plotting against him and that Drake can’t trust them. “AK not silent like knife, think he won’t do it, I might” is a double entendre.

AK like an AK47 which isn’t a silent weapon but AK, the hip hop journalist Akademiks who’s been covering the beef who most view as biased to Drake. AK isn’t being silent with his opinions.

Also, the second part of the line seems to be referring to killing Drake—” think he won’t do it” referring to Kendrick who claims he wants Drake dead. Gambino is saying he’ll do it silently with a knife instead of with a loud weapon (like the one Drake’s house got shot at with). 

Yoshinoya Verse 2

The lines get more blurry in the second verse however, it’s unclear which lines apply but there are some blatant ones.

I was busy buildin’ up the life that n***** don’t have
Told me that the money make you lonely, it ain’t so bad

Drake likes to rap a lot about how the top is lonely, and the many extravagancies that come with his lifestyle. Gambino brags about the life he’s built with his family, also dissing Drake who hasn’t built that life. Gambino claims he’s not lonely because he was building his life while making that money.

Rather have my foot on they neck than they hand on a mic
Rather die a good man with a bad wife

Gambino claims he doesn’t want Drake to continue to rap and that’s the reason he’s dissing him. He wants to put pressure on Drake because he doesn’t deserve the career he has.

These niggas almost fifty, and they dressin’ like a hype beast
White boy throwin’ dirt on my name for the think piece
Checks off, death, murder, and pain leave you empty

This seems to be about Drake and how he dressed. Drake is nearly 40—Gambino attacks him for his style trying to emulate the younger generation of hype beasts instead of dressing his age. “White boy” seems to refer to Drake since Rick Ross called him that on his own diss track, and Donald’s thinkpiece seems to be “This is America”.

“Checks off, death, murder, and pain leave you empty” seems to be jabbing at Drake for profiting off rapping about or at least being involved in some of these things. This is a similar critique Kendrick had for Drake in “Not Like Us” of how he exploits these things for further money, fame and Gambino pushes it further that it makes Drake an empty person. 

Made a song, but spent more time writin’ the caption
My homegirl said you a stalker, so we ain’t dappin’

Drake is known for his one-liners used as Instagram captions, so this is aimed at him spending more time on his captions than his music trying to say he isn’t spending time on his music shown off by the quality of it. He claims Drake is a stalker of sorts, and that they basically aren’t cool if they do meet in real life unlike in 2018. 

It’s been a week and there’s been no response from Drake so far so it’s unclear if he’ll respond and if he does, it’s likely it won’t be a full-on diss track. It sounds like he’ll keep a low profile in terms of disses for a little after his loss to Kendrick Lamar. It’s clear to say Drake’s reputation has taken a massive dip so it’ll be interesting to see how he bounces back, and if he’ll ever truly get over it. 

For Donald, it’s his last ride as Childish Gambino and it’s unclear if he plans to make music under a different name or his own name but Childish Gambino is officially retired for now after the release of Bando Stone & the New World. 

You can find “Yoshinoya” streaming now on all music streaming services.

Thank you for reading! If you want to follow the past history of the Kendrick and Drake beef, click this tag for everything about the beef.