The Shady Side Of Drake

Drake — the artist formerly known as Aubrey Graham — has been able to keep a relatively clean reputation in the public eye, especially for someone with so many scandals attached to his name.

The Toronto-raised rapper has had an image unthreatening enough to host the ESPYs and to be considered one of hip-hop's "nice guys," a far cry from romantic rival Chris Brown and other rappers like his Young Money colleague Lil' Wayne, who makes no secret of his love for guns and his Blood gang affiliation.

Still, if you scratch past the surface of Drizzy's demeanor, you'll find quite a bit of dirt, ranging from a past donning blackface to rap beefs, to cheating allegations, to alleged baby mama drama. While Drake has kept much of his private life private, the dark underbelly of his celebrity has come into the light more than ever, courtesy of stars, like his ex-girlfriend Rihanna, exposing his shady side.

Drake and Rihanna were first linked in May 2009, when Page Six reported that the pair were spotted locking lips at a Lucky Strike bowling alley in the Big Apple. However, they both denied any romance rumors and insisted they were merely platonic pals.

However, in Drake's song "Fireworks," he dropped major hints that there was more to the story, with lyrics including, "I could tell it wasn't love, I just thought you'd f**k with me / Who could've predicted Lucky Strikes would have you stuck with me? ... Now all of a sudden these gossip sites wanna cover me ... You could've been the one, but it wasn't that serious."

He would later tell The New York Times that Rihanna essentially played him and broke his heart, whining, "You know what she was doing to me? She was doing exactly what I've done to so many women throughout my life, which is show them quality time, then disappear. I was like, 'Wow, this feels terrible.'"

For all his "woe is me" talk about Rihanna, rumor has it he actually cheated on the "Umbrella" singer during their on-again, off-again relationship. Sources told Life & Style (via Hollywood Life) that Rihanna caught Drake sending some rather sketchy texts with other women while they were dating in 2016. The magazine (via Hollywood Life) reported that one of those women was Dakota Gonzalez, an Instagram model, while Bossip claimed that he was also seeing another Instagram model, India Love, while he was supposedly dating Rihanna.

His alleged romance with Gonzalez was reportedly the affair that drove RiRi over the edge, with Life & Style claiming that she had a full-fledged "breakdown" over Drizzy's cheating. To be fair, if he was as flagrant about it as was reported — he allegedly "paraded" Gonzalez around his concert on Sept. 11, 2016, after bringing Rihanna out and professing his love for her onstage the very night before — she had every right to be shocked and upset by his behavior.

Pusha T didn't limit his Drake disses to audio. He also made an old photo of Drake sporting blackface go viral when he used it as art for his song "The House of Adidon."

The image led to widespread speculation about the origins and context of the photo. Days later, Drake explained himself.

"This was not from a clothing brand shoot or my music career," Drake wrote in an Instagram story (via Page Six). "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 typecast. The photos represented how African Americans were once wrongfully portrayed in entertainment ... 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 is accused of being a poor sport with a potty mouth to boot. In May 2018, Drizzy was on hand to watch his beloved Toronto Raptors take on the Cleveland Cavaliers, and he was quite a mess in his courtside seat. Drake reportedly got in the face of Cleveland Cavaliers center Kendrick Perkins and screamed obscenities at the NBA star during halftime, TMZ reported. The exchange got so heated that other Cleveland Cavaliers players reportedly had to hold Drake back in order to keep the verbal altercation from escalating to a physical one.

The beef continued after the game, with Drake screaming for Perkins to come out of the tunnel.

Perkins — who's 6'10" and 270 pounds — later told ESPN (via TMZ), "What happened was I was talking to my old teammate Serge [Ibaka] walking into halftime telling him 'We about to win this game,' and Drake butted in talking s**t to me. So I said something back to him."

The Toronto Sun reported that Drake is a regular distraction behind the Raptors' bench, and Raptors' president Masai Ujiri (pictured above showing his disdain) told the newspaper that he's going to have to talk to Drake about his conduct. ESPN reported that Drizzy received an official warning from the NBA about his use of foul language after the Perkins incident, so hopefully he takes his basketball beefing down a notch.

In October 2014, TMZ reported that a stripper going by the moniker Jhonni Blaze filed a police report after allegedly receiving threats from Drake and his entourage after she slept with the rapper. She claimed that Drake believed she was going to speak publicly about her hook-up with him and sent her angry text messages and that several of his associates began banging on her door at home and threatening her life.

Drake's camp denied the allegations, and, days later, Blaze somewhat backpedaled on her claims, telling the Madd Hatta Morning Show on Houston, Texas' 97.9 The Box that she never actually called the police on Drake specifically, noting, "I actually called the police because my friend came home and she said that two guys said that they were looking for me. So, I documented that for my protection and for some odd reason people were calling me looney ... We were just supposed to be friends and we had some disagreements, some things were said, some threats were being made as far as argument and that was it." She added that she leaked text messages between them to prove that they were, in fact, in contact, because people were accusing her of lying about knowing him personally, and she denied that she'd ever bash him. She said that she believed the threat she received after her encounter with Drake may have been a coincidence.

In January 2019, a video surfaced of Drake kissing a 17-year-old girl onstage during a concert in Colorado, knowing that she was 17. The legal age of consent in that state is 17, but it's still pretty creepy for a grown man to pursue a teenage girl. TMZ reported that the clip was from May 2010, which would make Drake 23 at the time it was filmed.

After the fan revealed her age to the rapper, he told her, "I can't go to jail yet, man! 17? How do you look like that? You thick. Look at all this." He then tells her some rather gross stuff we don't want to reprint here about her chest and kisses her several times.

Drizzy hasn't commented on the video — perhaps because he's too busy giving young Millie Bobby Brown dating advice. Here's hoping he's warned the Stranger Things starlet to avoid men like him.