Right now, Drake is locked in an absolutely furious rap feud — the best rap feud in years — against Pusha-T. On Tuesday night, Pusha responded to Drake’s “Duppy Freestyle” by sharing the devastating “The Story Of Adidon,” on which Pusha claimed that Drake was keeping a baby secret, called him a deadbeat father even after his own father had been absent, and even made fun for Noah “40” Shebib’s multiple sclerosis. And the coup de grace might’ve been the cover art: An old photo of Drake posing in blackface.

Naturally, Drake is on the defensive right now, and he had to come up with some kind of explanation for that blackface photo before he could even get around to firing back at Pusha. On Drake’s Instagram story last night, he wrote a long statement about how that photo was intended to be satirical. Drake says that he wanted to call attention to the lack of roles available to black actors. Here’s what he wrote:

I know everyone is enjoying the circus but I want to clarify the image in question. This was not from a clothing brand shoot or my music career. This picture is from 2007, a time in my life where I was an actor and I was working on a project that was about young black actors struggling to get roles, being stereotyped and type cast. The photos represented how African Americans were once wrongfully portrayed in entertainment. Me and my best friend at the time Mazin Elsadig who is also an actor from Sudan were attempting to use our voice to bring awareness to the issues we dealt with all the time as black actors at auditions. This was to highlight and raise our frustrations with not always getting a fair chance in the industry and to make a point that the struggle for black actors had not changed much.

Drake speaks on “blackface” photos circulating. pic.twitter.com/y3SrOl9DcQ

— Word On Road (@WordOnRd) May 31, 2018

Meanwhile, TMZ reports that Drake has been supporting Sophie Brussaux, the woman who Pusha mentioned on “The Story Of Adidon,” since her baby was born. Sources close to Drake tell TMZ that Brussaux “lives comfortably.” The site also claims that Drake plans to take a DNA test and that “he feels there’s a slight chance the kid is his.” Drake also supposedly planned to reveal the kid — not as part of an Adidas ad campaign, as Pusha claimed, but as part of his new album Scorpion.

Also, Pusha has claims that the image of that blackface photo has been removed from Instagram because of a terms-of-service violation.

UPDATE: Pusha-T has responded to Drake’s statement. “That doesn’t change my view at all,” he said during an appearance on Big Boy’s Neighborhood on Los Angeles’ Real 92.3 this morning. “You are silent on all black issues, Drake … You don’t stand for nothing, you don’t say nothing about nothing. You have all the platform in the world. You were so passionate back then? No you weren’t. That’s number one. That’s what I know.”