Songfacts®:

• In this scathing diss track, Drake takes aim at his longtime rival, Kendrick Lamar.
  
  The hook, "drop and give me 50," is a reference to the trope of a drill sergeant or '70s gym teacher demanding 50 pushups for acts of laziness or insubordination . Drake uses the phrase to imply that Kendrick gives up half his earnings to his record label, Top Dawg Entertainment, run by Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith, who, in Drake's telling, has made Kendrick his puppet, pushing him to drop verses on songs for pop stars like Taylor Swift ("Bad Blood") and Maroon 5 ("Don't Wanna Know"), making himself rich off Kendrick's work.
• "Push Ups," at the time known as "Push Ups (Drop & Give Me Fifty)," leaked online on April 13, 2024 without any official release. It looked like it could be an AI creation unsanctioned by Drake, but as days went by and Drake didn't deny it, we had to assume it was real.
  
  On April 19, Drake finally released the song along with the credits. We learned that the beat came from producers Boi-1da, Coleman, Fierce, and Noel Cadastre.
• The trigger for Drake's diss is the song "Like That," a collaboration between Future, Metro Boomin and Kendrick Lamar where Kendrick takes shots at Drake. That song dropped on March 26, 2024 and went to #1, so a Drizzy response was inevitable.
  
  In "Push Ups," Drake goes after Future and Metro as well. Drake and Future used to be tight; they paired up in 2015 on a mixtape called What A Time to Be Alive, and in 2021 on Drake's hit "Way 2 Sexy," which accounts for this barb:
  
  Your first number one, I had to put it in your hand
  
  As for Metro, Drake calls him out in this line:
  
  Metro, shut your ho-ass up and make some drums
• Caught in the middle of this feud is J. Cole, who appears on Drake's 2023 track "First Person Shooter" and declares himself, Drake and Kendrick the "Big 3" of rap.
  
  In "Like That," Lamar asserts that there's no Big 3 - it's just him at the top. This prompted J. Cole to respond with "7 Minute Drill," where he says Kendrick is washed-up:
  
  He still on stage, but faded like The Simpsons
  
  Cole later rescinded the track, removing it from streaming services and claiming he felt pressured to diss Lamar but came to regret it. In "Push Ups," Drake checks in:
  
  I don't care what Cole think, that Dot s--t was weak as f--k
• The day he officially released "Push Ups," Drake also dropped a "Taylor Made Freestyle" on Instagram with guest verses from AI-generated Tupac and Snoop Dogg. On that one, the three rappers taunt Kendrick Lamar for not yet responding. Like Lamar, Tupac and Snoop are from the Los Angeles area, and they're letting him know they need him to represent the West Coast with a solid retort.
  
  In Drake's verse, he speculates that Kendrick is waiting for Taylor Swift's approval and is probably struggling to come up with something.
  
  It's not surprising that Drake wanted to escalate this feud - it's great for business. When these two hip-hop heavyweights started going at it, their streaming numbers spiked and they got even more media coverage.
  
  Drake took down the "Taylor Made Freestyle" on April 26, 2024 after legal threats from Tupac's estate - apparently Drake didn't get the OK to simulate Tupac's voice.