Drake Signs Deal with Streaming Company 'Caffeine'; To Produce Battle Rap & Other Live Content

Drake has made yet another move towards entrepreneurship with a new deal with streaming service, Caffeine.

Kendrick Lamar Shakes Up The Super Bowl With Bold Drake Diss And Surprise Guests

Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl 59 halftime performance was nothing short of legendary, leaving fans buzzing with surprise cameos and bold moments that took his long-running feud with Drake to new heights. Kicking off with an unreleased song snippet and followed by “Squabble Up” from his latest album GNX, Kendrick immediately set the tone for a game-changing performance. Fans eagerly waited to see if Kendrick would play his diss track Not Like Us, especially with Drake's ongoing lawsuit against him and his label for defamation and harassment. Lamar's performance included an unexpected appearance by SZA and a quirky cameo from Serena Williams, along with Samuel L. Jackson’s comedic interruptions, all building the suspense around the Drake drama. In the middle of his performance, Kendrick turned up the heat, looking straight into the camera and directly addressing Drake with his famous lyrics, “I heard you like them young," as fans held their breath. Despite the tension, Kendrick censored himself when it came time to call Drake a "certified lover boy" and avoided saying “pedophile,” which had been widely speculated. Social media lit up with mixed reactions, with some fans mocking the performance as a "mid mashup" and others noting the intense hostility toward Drake. With the hashtag #KendrickBowl trending, it’s clear that Kendrick’s performance was a cultural moment that pushed boundaries—but has he gone too far, or is this just another chapter in hip-hop history? Only time will tell, and Drake has yet to respond.

0 seconds of 2 minutes, 37 secondsVolume 0%

00:00

02:37

The Toronto superstar has signed a multiyear contract with the company which is run by former Apple designer Ben Keighran and other Apple alumni. Drake will be producing rap battles on the platform in collaboration with New York-based rap league called Ultimate Rap League. Caffeine allows entertainers, athletes, esports stars, amateurs, fans etc to broadcast live, who can chat with each other and the person who is broadcasting.

Caffeine will take on its main rival Twitch (by Amazon) and already has millions of dollars worth backing from Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners as well as celebrity backers Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Durant. “Drake, if you look at his career in the last ten years, is defined as the biggest artist in the world,” Keighran said. “This is a guy that can catch the attention of not just the entertainment world, but the gaming world as well.”

“This is a name that everybody knows,” says Keighran to Forbes. Drake means “live broadcasting in a way that hasn’t been shown at this level before.”

Drake is set to produce other content at a later time on the platform too which has also enlisted stars like Doja Cat, Offset, Smith-Schuster and Los Angeles Laker Kyle Kuzma.

“He wants to always be creating content,” adds Keighran to Variety. “He wants to innovate, and he’s really interested in live streaming, but thinks that, we’re seeing live streaming in gaming, but what’s next? So one of the things we wanted to do was form a multiyear exclusive partnership with him so that we could explore lots of different things together.” The company has not announced how much the rapper was paid for the deal.

In July last year, Drake signed a partnership deal with SiriusXM/Pandora but we have not heard much about it since then.