Meek Mill and Drake Created ‘Going Bad’ in 3 Days and Made Over $20M

Drake and Meek Mill went from having a beef with each other to working together on music. In 2018, the two rappers released “Going Bad,” a collaboration on Mill’s 2018 album Championships. According to Mill, the song came about in a quick and unexpected way.

Meek Mill and Drake had an infamous beef in 2015

Meek Mill and Drake first came together on Meek’s 2012 song “Amen.” In 2015, they collaborated again on Mill’s song “R.I.C.O.” But after the song’s release, Mill alleged that Drake used a ghostwriter for his part in the song.

Drake, in response, released not one, but two diss tracks aimed at Mill: “Charged Up” and “Back to Back.” Meek responded with the track “Wanna Know.” Not long after, Drake performed a song called “3Peat” at OVO Fest, implying that he was ready to drop a third diss track, but it was never officially released.

Their beef would continue over the next few years, as they traded shots with each other on songs like Drake’s “Summer Sixteen” and Mill’s “War Pain.” At the same time, Nicki Minaj — Drake’s Young Money labelmate who burst onto the scene with him at the turn of the 2010s — was in a relationship with Mill.

Finally, the two reconciled in September 2018 when Drake brought Mill on stage in Boston to perform his hit song “Dreams and Nightmares (Intro).” They went on to collaborate on the song “Going Bad” on Mill’s album Championships, released in November 2018.

Meek Mill and Drake collaborated on ‘Going Bad’ in 2018

Mill took to Twitter in November 2022 to reflect on his career, including his “Going Bad” collab with Drake.

“Don’t give me a plaque, give me the financial paper of how much the song I recorded for 20K made 20 million … Not a award … I’m from the trenches I don’t want that s***, I want a estate,” he wrote during a Twitter Q&A. “I want my whole family tree to beat the ghetto!”

He went on to recount how quickly “Going Bad” came together.

“I asked Drake to do that song 3 days before my album came out,” Mill revealed. “I think he did for free for me. We cooked it up …. How [the f***] do I not know how much I made off a song that made that much … they gave me a plaque. Big mental trickery!”

Meek Mill and Drake have released new music in 2022

Both Meek Mill and Drake have continued to release music and enjoy success as rappers. Drake has released two full-length albums in 2022. He released his seventh studio album Honestly, Nevermind in June, and in November, he teamed up with 21 Savage for the collaborative album Her Loss.

Mill, meanwhile, released his fifth studio album Expensive Pain in October 2021. In November 2022, he released Flamers 5, his latest release in his Flamers mixtape series.