Reason 'Purposefully' Praised Drake Online During Kendrick Lamar Beef to Get Out of TDE Deal

Reason used an unexpected tactic to get out of his label deal with TDE.

During Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s feud, Reason praised Drizzy, causing his relationship with TDE to unravel.

The Porches rapper sat down with the Bootleg Kev podcast, where he was asked how TDE fans felt about him showing support for Drake—and why Reason took this route in the first place.

“The only fans I really lost were fans that I shot myself in the foot [with] but I had to do that to get out of the label deal,” Reason explained. “When the Dot and the Drake beef started, I felt like Top and them were kinda dragging their feet a little bit. I don’t think purposely, I think they just had a lot of shit going on. And I knew that if I sparked a fire a little bit, that they’d be like, ‘We gotta separate from this.’ So I started tweeting shit on the side of Drake purposely. … So there’s fans that hate me for that.”

When asked what he tweeted in specific, Reason said that after Drake dropped the Lamar diss, “Push Ups,” Reason tweeted: “‘Y’all hating, this beat switch up is fire.’”

He added, “I let it sit for 10 minutes and deleted it. It went crazy, and I still had the Reason TDE [in my handle], so it looked insane.”

Reason doubled down on his praise of the 6 God with an On the Radar freestyle over a Drake beat, which he said he recorded “before the beef even started.”

He continued, “So they hit me, they were like, ‘Yo, we was about to drop it but we don’t wanna damage your situation. Should we hold it?’ Run that shit. … So that had like five million views on Twitter. … I just knew it was sensitive times and I knew business-wise, it would make the most sense for [TDE] to separate from me at that point. That shit worked. A month later, I was gone. It was fast. … Paperwork was in my email.”

Reason and TDE parted ways last June. He announced the news online, writing, “It comes with great appreciation and excitement that I want to announce my split with TDE.” He then thanked Top for “hearing me and understanding my decision to travel a different path after the years” and he thanked his fans.

Prior to that, in August 2023, there was friction between him and his former label. At that time, the Carson, California native sat down with the Back on Figg podcast where he vented his frustration over TDE not advocating for him as much as other artists, pointedly saying that the label dropped the ball on securing features he wanted—like Latto and EST Gee—for his 2023 album, Porches.

TDE co-president Moosa called into the podcast to respond to Reason, where he wondered how those features would have boosted his popularity.

"You could have got an EST Gee feature but what's that going to do for Reason?" Moosa said. "You done had features from everyone, including [Schoolboy] Q and I'm just trying to understand it, man."