Drake said, unequivocally, he isn’t dissing Tupac Shakur on “Fear.” He’s just pointing out that he was too young to fully feel the impact of the music icon at the time of his passing.

“I never cried when ‘Pac died,” Drake raps on the song from his So Far Gone EP. “But I probably will when Hov does/ And if my tears hold value, then I would drop one for every single thing he showed us/ And I’ll be standing in a puddle.”

Recently calling in from Toronto, Drake explained his lines.

“A lot of people also sort of don’t understand the meaning of that line,” Drake said. “It’s not necessarily that I don’t love West Coast hip-hop or that I don’t love ‘Pac now that I’m 22, but that line was just said to show how new I am to hip-hop. And like I said, I was 9 when that happened, so it didn’t really affect me. But that song in general was just one of those things that took awhile to finish because it was an opportunity to say a lot of the things on my mind. That always feels good as a rapper, when you can get your thoughts out.”