You didn’t expect Drake to quietly accept a humiliating loss in the biggest rap feud in recent history, did you? The Boy has kept a relatively low profile since “Not Like Us” became the year’s defining rap anthem, but he hasn’t gone silent. There’s been the Sexyy Red collab with the “BBL Drizzy” sample, the Toronto-specific “Hey There Delilah” parody, and the two tracks on the Camila Cabello album. Last month, Drake put a 100GB data-dump online, including a few new songs that have since been given proper release and become minor chart hits. Apparently, there’s a collaborative album with PartyNextDoor on the way. And now, Drake is sending social-media messages, implying that he’s coming back for another round.

Over the weekend, Drake dropped three new songs on his finsta. One of them, the Playboi Carti collab “No Face,” makes reference to the feud without mentioning Kendrick: “N***as got lit off the features I skated on/ I gotta know, I gotta know, how you get lit off the n***a you hatin’ on?/ Numbers untouchable, they got the data wrong/ This is the moment I know they been prayin’ on… It’s no diagnosis, they emptied the clip/ Swap that shit out and I came back reloaded/ I’m just so happy that n***as who envied and held that shit in got to finally show it/ I’m over the moon, yeah, we’ll see you boys soon.”

As TMZ reports, Drake has also been posting easily-decoded messages on his Instagram story. One is a still photo of Chow Yun-Fat blasting two guns in the classic 1987 John Woo film A Better Tomorrow, and the other is 2004 interview footage of of Detroit Pistons star Rasheed Wallace saying, “Y’all put it on the front page, back page, middle of the page, wherever. Headliners, column one or two, we will win game two.”

The first A Better Tomorrow, from 1986, was a major breakout moment for John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat, and Hong Kong action cinema in general. Chow’s character Mark dies in the first film, but he returns in the sequel as Mark’s long-lost, previously-unmentioned twin brother Ken — a cheap and craven storytelling move that nobody minded because Chow is so awesome in those Woo movies.

That Rasheed Wallace quote came after the Pistons lost the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals to the Indiana Pacers, their bitter rivals. The Pistons did, in fact, win the second game. They also took the series and then stomped all over the heavily-favored Los Angeles Lakers to win the championship. Later that year, the Pistons and Pacers got into their famous Malice At The Palace brawl.

new posts by Drake's finsta account alluding to Round 2/Game 2

a picture of 'A Better Tomorrow' 1987 movie

and the iconic 2004 Pistons Rasheed Wallace interview

"yall put it on the front page, back page, middle of the page… we will win Game 2"

they went on to beat the… pic.twitter.com/36CfjQcIDA

— SOUND (@itsavibe) August 26, 2024

Mustard, the veteran LA beatmaker who produced “Not Like Us,” is unsurprisingly sticking with Kendrick in any future iterations of the Drake/Kendrick beef. In a new Los Angeles Times feature, Mustard says that he didn’t know that Kendrick was going to diss Drake over his beat until the song was out; it was merely one track that he sent to Kendrick in hopes of a future collaboration. When asked whether he’d ever produce a song for Drake, Mustard says, “I don’t think I want to make a song with that dude. He’s a strange guy.” Mustard previously produced YG’s 2014 Drake collab “Who Do You Love?,” but I can’t think of any other Drake/Musterd collabs off the top of my head.