Andre 3000 Says Kanye West Collab ‘Life of the Party’ ‘Didn’t Have’ Drake Diss When He Wrote His Verse

André 3000 has responded to the “unfortunate” leak of his Kanye West collaboration, “Life of the Party,” the previously unreleased Donda outtake that seems to take shots at Drake.

Drake played “Life of the Party,” which had originally been previewed at one of Kanye’s Donda events but ultimately didn’t make the final cut of the album, this weekend in a guest DJ mix on SiriusXM.

In a statement obtained by Billboard, André 3000 explained that when he contributed his verse to “Life of the Party,” his intent was to support Donda’s concept in tribute to his own late mother, and that he was not a part of the diss that ended up on the song.

“A few weeks ago Kanye reached out about me being a part of the Donda album,” said the Outkast rapper, who was in Cleveland filming a Noah Baumbach film when they made contact. “I was inspired by his idea to make a musical tribute to his mom. It felt appropriate to me to support the Donda concept by referencing my own mother, who passed away in 2013. We both share that loss. I thought it was a beautiful choice to make a clean album but, unfortunately, I didn’t know that was the plan before I wrote and recorded my verse. It was clear to me that an edited ‘clean’ format of the verse would not work without having the raw, original also available. So, sadly, I had to be omitted from the original album release.”

He continued, “The track I received and wrote to didn’t have the diss verse on it and we were hoping to make a more focused offering for the Donda album but I guess things happen like they are supposed to. It’s unfortunate that it was released in this way and two artists that I love are going back and forth.”

“I wanted to be on Certified Lover Boy too,” he pointed out. “I just want to work with people that inspire me. Hopefully I can work with Kendrick on his album. I’d love to work with Lil’ Baby, Tyler and Jay-Z. I respect them all.”

On “Life of the Party,” Kanye says, “I put Virgil and Drake on the same text and it wasn’t about the matching Arc’teryx or Kid Cudi dress / Just told these grown men stop it with the funny shit,” referencing designer Virgil Abloh and the pre-pandemic fashion moment when Drake and Abloh posed together wearing the same camouflage Arc’teryx jackets. “Thought we was the new Abu Dhabi / Told Drake don’t play with me on GD and he sent that message to everybody / So if I hit you with a WYD, you better hit me with, ‘Yessir, I’m writing everything you need.’”

Certified Lover Boy, Drake’s just-released album, includes a track that seemingly targets Kanye. “7am on Bridle Path” has him rapping, “Get that address to your driver, make it your destination / instead of just a post out of desperation,” presumably referencing the incident when West shared Drake’s Toronto address on social media.

The same day Drake brought “Life of the Party” to SiriusXM, he left a comment about “waste removal” on Instagram.

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Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Breaks Apple Music’s One-Day Streaming Record

Drake’s latest album Certified Lover Boy is Apple Music’s most-streamed album in 24 hours in the services’ history, Apple Music tells Billboard.

The album — which was released at midnight EST on Friday (Sept. 3) and at time of publishing still has a few hours left to accumulate streams for its first day — already broke the record for the most-streamed album in 2021 in under 12 hours on the platform.

Certified Lover Boy is Drake’s sixth studio album, and includes a lengthy list of features from superstar rappers including Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Future, Rick Ross and Lil Baby.

Drake’s 2018 album Scorpion held the record previously on Apple Music, with 170 million streams in its first 24 hours.

The 21-song project has also broken records on Spotify, becoming the most-streamed album in a day on the platform as well, the company confirmed to Billboard earlier Friday.

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It’s Drake’s Day, So What’s With All the Phony ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Albums on Spotify?

Drake’s Certified Lover Boy is one of the most anticipated albums of the year — but if you’re using a smart speaker to listen to the long-awaited album on Spotify, you may have trouble hearing it.

Since Certified Lover Boy’s release just last midnight EST, users of Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant and Apple’s Siri have been reporting problems getting their smart speakers to play the Toronto rapper’s long-awaited album on the streaming giant. When prompted, many note that music by same- or similarly-named albums or artists – including Certified Lover Boy Instrumentals by BenKeys Music and Certified Lover Boy by Calvin Drake – begin playing instead. The issue appears to be limited to smart assistants that have Spotify set as their default music player and cannot be replicated on Apple Music, Amazon Music and Google’s YouTube Music through those same devices.

Notably, the problem extends to text searches on the Spotify app itself. A text search for “Certified Lover Boy Drake” on Spotify turns up an album entitled Drake by the artist Certified Lover Boy as the top result. When searching only for “Certified Lover Boy,” a Spotify-curated playlist of the entire album – but not the album itself – appears.

Spotify did not immediately respond to Billboard’s request for comment. A source says Spotify is working with the music industry to address the issue, which is common among albums from major artists.

Each DSP separately routes which albums, songs and playlists are surfaced when voice requests are made through Amazon’s Alexa. When reached for comment, Apple denied the problem was an issue with their hardware. Google did not respond to Billboard’s request for comment by press time.

A quick text search of albums entitled “Certified Lover Boy” on Spotify turns up dozens of results, many of which appear to have been added to Spotify in the year since the album title was first revealed in August 2020, according to available statistics on the music data service Chartmetric. The BenKeys Music Certified Lover Boy Instrumentals album, to cite one example, appears to have been active on the platform since May of this year.

The gaming of Spotify’s algorithm by unscrupulous users is nothing new. In November 2019, hip-hop label Sosa Entertainment and its founder, Jake Noch, sued Spotify for failing to pay royalties on over 550 million of streams on Sosa Entertainment’s music. Spotify countersued in May 2020, claiming Noch had directed a bot farmer to create millions of fake accounts and to change the names of songs in Sosa Entertainment’s catalog to resemble those of hits like XXXTentacion’s “SAD!” and DJ Snake’s “Taki Taki” in order to generate hundreds of millions of fraudulent streams. According to the lawsuit, one of Noch’s albums jumped from zero to more than 400,000 streams in mere days, 99% of which came from Spotify’s ad-supported free tier and from account registered to male users in the U.S., a pattern that was found for other works as well.

That and this latest incident open questions about the ease with which Spotify users can manipulate the DSP’s system in order to siphon streams and associated royalties away from legitimate artists.

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Drake Beats Drake for Spotify Single Day Streaming Record

Drake just topped his own all-time record for single-day streams on Spotify with his new album, Certified Lover Boy, Spotify has confirmed with Billboard. His previous album, Scorpion, was the previous record-holder with 132 million single-day streams.

Earlier this week, Kanye West’s Donda earned nearly 100 million global streams in its first 24 hours on Spotify, giving the rapper the second-highest single-day streaming total in Spotify’s history and the highest of 2021. Leave it to the Toronto superstar to snag away the latter record in a matter of days. Drake is also breaking records on Apple Music, toppling its 2021 record for the most-streamed artist in a day, and Certified Lover Boy became the most-streamed album in a day this year in less than 12 hours.

As his first official release on his own label, OVO Sound — in partnership with Republic Records — it’s notable that Drake may stand to earn even more per stream from Certified Lover Boy than he did on Scorpion, at least according to the rapper’s boast on CLB’s final track, “The Remorse”: “And you know what I’m on, blowing past ya, owning masters.” His deal with his former label, Young Money/Cash Money, was fulfilled upon Scorpion’s release.

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Annenberg Inclusion Initiative Takes Swipes at Recording Academy’s Diversity Efforts

The Annenberg Inclusive Initiative took a Twitter shot across the bow at The Recording Academy’s diversity efforts following the launch of the academy’s new survey on women’s representation in the music industry on Friday (Sept. 3).

“According to our data, #womeninthemix initiative failed,” the Annenberg Inclusive Initiative’s tweet read. “No hires in popular music. Perhaps @RecordingAcad should use this money to evaluate why their initiative didn’t work & how their org doesn’t serve women & POC.”

The Recording Academy’s Women in the Mix initiative was launched in 2019 whereby 650 music professionals pledged to consider at least two women in the selection process every time a producer or engineer is hired. The goal was to increase abysmal representation by women in studios.

The tweet would seem to reference a survey, open until Sept. 20, which is part of a broader partnership between the academy, Berklee College of Music Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship and Arizona State University, that launched in March with an analysis of gender representation within the 63rd Grammy Awards. The goal of the study is to help guide diversity, equity and inclusion objectives within the Recording Academy and the industry at large.

The Annenberg Inclusive Initiative’s tweet appears to refer back to data in the fourth annual edition of its Inclusion in the Recording studio report issued March 8, conducted by Stacy Smith, USC associate professor and founder of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and the Initiative, with funding from Spotify.

That report, which is based solely on Billboard’s Hot 100 Year-End Charts, analyzed the progress of the Women in the Mix program. “Only four women producers were credited on the 2020 Billboard Hot 100 Year-End Chart — none of whom worked with one of the 38 pledge-takers who had a song on the chart,” the report stated. “Moreover, Ariana Grande was the sole pledge-taker to work with a woman engineer — herself — of those who appeared on the chart. While women producers and engineers may have worked on less popular songs as a result of this initiative, the pledges and support did not influence the percentage of women producers on the year-end chart.”

That same study found that women accounted for only 2.6% of the producers for the Billboard Hot 100 songs. The annual Annenberg Inclusion Initiative reports have provided a benchmark–though limited to the most popular songs– to measure the progress by women in certain sectors of the industry.

When the Recording Academy announced the new partnership, then interim president/CEO Harvey Mason Jr., acknowledged the Women in Mix initiative had not yielded the hoped for results and the survey would hopefully help provide guidance.

“Two years ago, we started our Women in the Mix initiative with the primary goal of raising awareness and had an overwhelming initial response, garnering support from more than 650 of the most influential music people, executives and organizations,” said Mason. “While we are hopeful that we will still see benefit from that effort, we haven’t seen enough progress to date. In order to accelerate our goals, we are excited to partner with the Berklee College of Music and Arizona State University on this study. The results of the research will serve as a guide for much-needed reforms in the industry at-large.”

The Annenberg Inclusive Initiative tagged The Weeknd in the tweet, a not-so-subtle reference to The Weeknd’s ongoing feud with the Recording Academy after, despite the tremendous success of “Blinding Lights,” he received no nominations for the 63rd annual Grammy Awards.

Annenberg then followed with another tweet, stating “They said they would self evaluate. The music industry problems are already documented by multiple groups. This is a way to deflect on the focus on @RecordingAcad diversity problems.”

The Recording Academy has acknowledged its diversity issues and has responded with a number of initiatives, including hiring its first chief diversity and inclusion office last year in Valeisha Butterfield-Jones, who has since been promoted to co-president with Panay Pantos, under Mason, who assumed the official CEO position in June.

The academy has also been on a mission to diversity its membership, including inviting 2,710 new members to join the academy this year. According to the Academy, 55% of the invitees were fro “traditionally underrepresented groups.” This year, for the first time, people of color make up the majority of the Recording Academy’s board of trustees, accounting for 53%.

Neither Smith nor the Recording Academy immediately responded to requests for comment.

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