ILoveMakonnen Opens Up About Drake, OVO, Regrets, & Kendrick Lamar

With Drake in his corner and a Grammy nomination under his belt, iLoveMakonnen should have been flying high with his seat at the OVO Sound table. However, for the "Tuesday" hitmaker, it became something else entirely. Makonnen thought he was building a legacy alongside one of Hip Hop's leading voices. Instead, he said he found himself boxed in, navigating industry politics he didn’t even know existed.

Old tweets resurfaced, relationships fractured, and suddenly, the same industry that once lifted him on its shoulders was laughing at his downfall. Even worse, he said he was being branded as Drake’s “new toy,” a pawn in a game he hadn’t signed up to play. The doors that should have opened were quickly closed, and Makonnen was left questioning whether the co-sign that elevated him also confined him.

In our exclusive conversation with the rapper-singer, Makonnen breaks down his time at OVO, the tensions with Drake, an MSNBC interview that put him at odds with his label, and how it feels to be embraced one moment and abandoned the next. Oh, and, of course, iLoveMakonnen weighs in on the epic Rap battle between the 6God and Kendrick Lamar.

HNHH: With "Tuesday," it already had momentum among celebrities before Drake's remix. As your trajectory changed in the industry, what did you notice?

ILoveMakonnen: That's what I'm saying. It's like, now, you get into this tricky situation of, okay, Drake is killing it. Drake is everything. Drake is also an issue for the industry, right? So, now, he's already an issue and then, he's beefing with a lot of people. But it's also, I want to come make songs with everybody in the industry. Do the whole f*cking thing.

But I want to be respectful to my boss. My boss is kind of like, boycotting a lot of sh*t right now. He's beefing with a lot of motherf*ckers right now. So it's like, yo, out of respect for the guy who just changed my sh*t, I'm not trying to meet y'all and f*ck no sh*t up. I don't even know what it is, I don't have no beef with y'all. I would love to work with y'all, but I see that y'all got situations before I got here, you know? And I'm just trying to do me. And as I'm out here trying to network, now I'm seeing the network is getting restricted because I'm with OVO, right?

Then, okay, I can't freely just come over here and over here and over there no more, because it's, "Ain't you with them?" I guess, what's going on with them? Because they ain't really hitting me up right now. I'm just out here type sh*t.

I saw The Weeknd one time, and I didn't know The Weeknd and Drake had problems or wasn't good terms. I'm just like, oh, I don't know, dog. Then it becomes, oh, you think you're the new little "Drake toy" or some sh*t. I'm like, a Drake toy? I didn't know that Drake had toys? *laughs* I didn't know that this was a thing, that me running around the industry, like, I'm Drake's newest toy. I didn't know that n*gga had toys. I was just working, doing my sh*t, brother.

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HNHH: Was there a moment when you saw a significant shift in your relationship with OVO?

ILoveMakonnen: Okay, so I thought, maybe I'm gonna try to get the OVO situation going. Let's get, an OVO compilation tape, some sh*t like that's going, right? So, an MSNBC interviewer asked me, like, can we see a compilation tape? I was like, sure, I don't see why not. We've been working together. Didn't announce nothing, right?

They end up taking what I said and making it like, oh, OVO compilation tape could be coming out. OVO comes back and is like, we shutting that down. Why would you say that? And I'm just like, bro, I thought it'd be good to say that we're unified and we're working together. Is that not what the rest of us is supposed to be doing? And then I'm start finding out, like, no, this is just all Drake, not the rest of y'all.

HNHH: Things unfolding the way they did, it was just strange to observers. Y'all made a Grammy-nominated, Platinum-selling hit. Somehow that momentum slowed. What is really going on?

ILoveMakonnen: We have a hit! That's why I thought it was about the business. But I see it's about personal... If it was about the business that have been like, yo, we can go knock 10 more of these out, I don't ever have to bring you out on stage, I don't right now anyway, but it's like, at least we got more records. Then sh*t is clinking up over here on the label he building and sh*t. But I'm like, bro, I don't know what's going on. I feel like I'm coming in this sh*t on business, and I'm starting to see everybody trying to be personal.

HNHH: One thing you were pretty adamant about was not signing with a label. Yet, within maybe a year of the "Tuesday" remix, you were inked with OVO. Do you regret making that decision, seeing as how it pivoted your career?

ILoveMakonnen: No, it's nothing I regretted. I just think, like my feeling going into all of it was more so like, I'm doing really well, right? And now the producers want me to sign to them, right? The label heads are all calling me and trying to talk to me and stuff, right? But like, everybody's really not believing in it. They seeing it a little bit, right? But then, when the Drake jumps on it, now, everybody's like, we really want to do everything.

So, I'm like, wait a minute, if all y'all really just f*cking with me because of him, I might as well f*ck with him. He the original one f*cking with me. And so I'm just thinking, like, yo, that's great. I could come over here and build my music legacy under his, what he is to Young Money/Cash Money and OVO. Hopefully, I could be something of that to OVO.

I was thinking, yo, if Drake is about to move into being a CEO and a boss and sh*t now, too, as an artist, I might as well f*ck with him. You know what I mean? Because I see a situation that they got over here. From what we all was talking about, that was the whole play. Great. This is what we gonna have going on. Everything works out. This how it should be. I'm like, Okay, let's do that. And then drama from tweets and all this other stuff comes in, and then that f*cks up the business relationships. Then I was like, okay, now the guy who helped me, I'm at odds with, and now the rest of the industry is laughing me like, ha ha ha. You should have signed with us.

HNHH: So...since we're here...who won the battle between Drake and Kendrick?

ILoveMakonnen: You know what? *smiles* The fans won the battle.

HNHH: *Laughs* What!

ILoveMakonnen: That's who won! *laughs* The fans won. It was a draw. But if you want to talk about lyrically, Kendrick Lamar had more of those effects that Drake would usually have. Drake is usually the one with the tea, and usually give us a quotable and it's like, you lost to your own sh*t. Now, I don't know the context of the quotes and all that going on, I can't speak on that, but the quotables were there. It's two roasters and y'all roasting, just doing it musically.

We know Drake is a great roaster. He beat Meek Mill. Just lit. And now, we see Kendrick, and it's like, at the lunch table, Kendrick won. Drake walked from the table and went to the principal's office.

HNHH: I had to ask.

ILoveMakonnen: I mean, we saw the battle. We saw Kendrick spank.

HNHH: It was two greats. A battle of the ages.

ILoveMakonnen: Yeah, but it felt like Drake dropped out, when it was—you could have kept going. But he felt like he didn't want to release no sh*t no more...what the f*ck is that? 'Cause bro's heating up over here, and we're ready to hear your comeback. But yeah, I really don't care who won. I would love to work with both artists in real life type sh*t.

Read through the entirety of our interview with iLoveMakonnen:
What Happened To ILoveMakonnen?
Why ILoveMakonnen Won’t Glorify Drugs After Losing Lil Peep & Juice WRLD
ILoveMakonnen Addresses Lil Nas X Comparisons, Queer Visibility, & Hip Hop Politics