Drake appears to have beef with popular music journalist Anthony Fantano (best known for his YouTube channel The Needle Drop), revealing on his own accord that he’d sent the critic hateful messages on Instagram.

Drake posted a screenshot of the messages he sent to Fantano on his own Instagram Story, poking fun at the critic’s rating system – whereby he’ll give records a score from 1 to 10 with a prefix of “light”, “decent”, “strong” or somewhere in-between (ie. “a light to decent 5”) – by writing: “Your existence is a light 1. And the 1 is ‘cause you are alive. And ‘cause you somehow wifed a Black girl. I’m feeling a light to decent 1 on your existence.”

It comes after Fantano joked about being messaged by Drake on YouTube; in a video posted to his eponymous secondary channel, he talked through screenshots of a fake thread showing Drake enthusiastically sharing a vegan recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Nowhere in the video, which runs for just over eight-and-a-half minutes, does Fantano even allude to the actual content of Drake’s messages. 

After Drake shared the actual messages he sent to Fantano, the latter shared a legitimate response to the situation, calling the messages “very mad, salty … weird and awkward”. Explaining why he shared the initial video with the comical fake messages, Fantano noted that he would have considered it “silly and trashy” to share the messages himself, but saw an opportunity to generate content out of the situation. 

Fantano pointed out that his intent was to “make [the fake messages] so absurd and so silly that anybody who sees me reading them aloud is going to look at this and be like, ‘Drake didn’t send him this! This is ridiculous… This is just a shitpost.’ Which is was – it was, in fact, a shitpost.”

The critic was ultimately unfazed by Drake’s attempt at bullying – pointing out how the rapper had used his own rating system to insult him, Fantano quipped: “You can’t destroy me with my own rating system, dude, it’s my rating system.”

Drake’s seventh album, ‘Honestly, Nevermind’, arrived back in June. The record earned a three-star review from NME’s Kyann-Sian Williams, who described the album as “an unexpected elevation from the bland trap” heard on last year’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’. 

Fantano, on the other hand, gave the album a review so scathing it didn’t warrant a numbered rating. He called it “one-note, badly produced, weakly sung [and] horrendously under-written”.

Earlier this month, Drake picked up 10 nominations for this year’s BET Hip Hop Awards, including Best Live Performer, Lyricist Of The Year, Hip Hop Artist Of The Year and Hustler Of The Year.