Landing a sweet Apple deal is now the ultimate rapper boast

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Drake talks Apple Music at WWDC.
For Drake, talking up Apple Music at WWDC was just the beginning.
Photo: Apple

Drake showed himself to be smarter than many musicians (or at least to have better advisers) when he ducked out on the opportunity to be part of Jay Z’s Tidal debacle and instead went full-bore with representing Apple Music.

From posing with his Apple Watch Edition and rocking a sweet vintage Apple jacket at the Worldwide Developers Conference, to having his own show on Beats 1, Drake’s about as Cupertino as it gets these days. And according to the new track he dropped over the weekend, he’s more than happy about it — even if he’s still “got love” for the folks at Tidal.

“I still got love for my idols / I got me a deal with Apple and I still feel entitled,” Drake raps on “Charged Up.” According to the rap analyzing folks over at Genius.com, the lines mean the following:

“Even if Drake is competing with his idols, who are owners of the streaming service Tidal, he still shows love for them. He recently did a cover and brought Kanye to the stage, did a tour with Lil Wayne, brought the legendary group Outkast to his annual OVO fest, also he has a track called “Wu Tang Forever” a tribute for the legendary group.

“Feel entitled” sounds like “feelin’ Tidal”; while Drake is still hungrier than ever, he was supposed to sign a contract with Tidal, however he turned it down to go with Apple for a [rumored] $19,000,000 contract. Despite his choice of Apple’s streaming service, he still has love for his idols.”

There was a time when hip-hop bragging and disses were more likely to be about what happened on the street than, well, inside tech boardrooms, but we’re living in a different world in 2015. Jay Z already accused Apple of behaving like racists in a freestyle diss, so perhaps it’s right that another top-tier artist would (positively) name-check Apple on a record.

It’s not the first time, though. Given Apple’s ubiquity in pop culture, the brand has been referenced plenty over the years — from Chris Brown (“Gold MacBook, cost $100,000 Gs / I don’t give a f*ck with rats, I throw away the cheese”) to Wiz Khalifa (“I don’t know him, but whoever stole your Mac / When I see him, I’mma pat him on the back… Like a nerd with no MacBook, look how pretty that lil’ cat look”).

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