Drake Pays Ultimate Tribute to Chart Queen Taylor Swift on ‘Scary Hours 3’ Track ‘Red Button’

In the ultimate example of game recognizing game, Drake makes a humble acknowledgement on the lyrics to “Red Button,” the opening track from the 6 God’s surprise Scary Hours 3 EP. The six-song collection that dropped on Friday (Nov. 17) as part of an expanded editino of his recent For All the Dogs album, kicks off with the headlong lyrical tumble track that finds Drizzy paying homage to the chart prowess of none other than Taylor Swift.

“Taylor Swift the only ni–a that I ever rated/ Only one could make me drop the album just a little later/ Rest of y’all I treat you like you never made it/ Leave your label devastated/ Even when your pad the stats, period, I never hated,” he raps on the song co-produced by Lil Yachty that surrounds his bars with an angelic chorus and a scorched-earth series of scenarios in which the Toronto native promises winter is coming for his detractors.

Drake — who is in a perpetual Billboard chart horse race with Swift over the most Hot 100 hits crown — released his most recent album, For All the Dogs, on Oct. 6, three weeks before Swift released her 1989 (Taylor’s Version), the latest in her series of catalog re-records. Last year, Swift released her Midnights album on Oct. 21, with the Drake/21 Savage joint album, Her Loss, originally scheduled for Oct. 28, then pushed to Nov. 4, seemingly giving Swift a few weeks to run the boards.

Her Loss then bumped Midnights out of the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 album charts upon its release.

Drake also finds time to take a mild swipe at Kanye West in a couplet suggesting that the long-running feud between them is not quite settled. “Every time that Yeezy call the truce/ He had my head inflated/ Thinking we finally peace it up and get to levitating/ Realized that everything premeditated,” Drake raps about the disgraced MC whose career melted down last year after West (who now goes by Ye) went on a series of hateful antisemitic rants.

The Drake/Ye feud dates back years and though it seemed to tamp down when the two got together for the “Free Larry Hoover” benefit concert in Los Angeles in 2021, it was reignited last year with Drizzy taking shots at West on the Her Loss track “Circo Loco” and this year’s “Search & Rescue,” which featured a sample of Ye’s ex, Kim Kardashian, talking about the couple’s split.

Drake announced the third in his Scary Hours series on Wednesday in an elaborate video featuring the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in which he revealed that he’d cooked the lyrics up just days before the collection’s release.