On Tuesday, Drake referenced the rapper previously known as Mos Def's marquee track "Umi Says" ... a direct response to Mos' recent dig that Drake's music is crafted for the common practices of American society: shopping at Target!!!

The significance of Drake's selection is 'Umi' is a very positive track that encourages people to spread love/light ... kinda the opposite of what Mos did.

Drake also posted a famous clip of an interview Method Man once did where he explained what hip hop was ... and his definition is much less gate-keeper-ish than MD's.

Drizzy captioned it ... "What umi say again? Lemme shine my light king don't change up now" and added a 😂 emoji to highlight the fact he wasn't really sweatin' YB's comments.

The "Black On Both Sides" rapper said what he said ... Drake's tunes are, according to him, akin to the pop realms as opposed to the hip hop ones, and even suggested we might be seeing the last days of the OVO reign.

Drake seems to be suggesting he absolutely is hip hop, and there's room for all.

So, we gotta ask ...