Drake fumes over Philip Seymour Hoffman's Rolling Stone cover

Drake took a drubbing on Twitter Thursday after users slammed his complaints about being dropped from the cover of Rolling Stone following the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

It all started when Drake let loose with a few angry tweets, lashed out at the famed rock magazine for changing the cover that he says was supposed to feature him.

According to Drake’s tweets, the magazine "took my cover from me last minute and ran the issue."

"I’m disgusted with that. RIP to Phillip Seymour Hoffman. All respect due. But the press is evil," he continued, in an accompanying tweet that misspelled the actor's first name.

Those tweets later disappeared from the @Drake account, though a third tweet, which followed them, was left online.

"I’m done doing interviews for magazines. I just want to give my music to the people. That’s the only way my message gets across accurately."

Melissa Bruno, a spokesperson for Rolling Stone, told CBC News in a telephone interview that the magazine generally does not comment on its cover decisions.

Hoffman, 46, was found dead in his New York apartment earlier this month. He had a needle in his arm and dozens of packets of heroin were found nearby.

The Oscar winner had faced struggles with addiction during his life.

The tragic nature of his death, juxtaposed with the perceived insensitivity of Drake’s complaints, led to a torrent of tweets being directed at the rapper on Thursday.

Twitter users accused Drizzy, as Drake is sometimes known, of being childish, whiny, egotistical and even pathetic.

And while he had a few online defenders at times, it was not a good day to be the guy with the @Drake account on Twitter — the one with more than 14 million followers and many vocal critics on Thursday.

In one of the harsher examples, a Twitter user invited Drake to "drop dead at your earliest convenience. You get to be in a lot of covers that way."

Another Twitter user suggested that somebody call the so-called "WAHHHMBULANCE," hinting at the performer’s wounded pride over losing the cover spot.

His apparent move to delete the offending tweets didn’t please everybody either:

There were some defenders, including one woman who said that his hometown wouldn’t turn its back on him:

A user named Angela posted a message suggesting that any conversation with the press is "always twisted" and should simply be disregarded.

Someone else on Twitter suggested the entire incident could be fodder for a future album:

The critical tweets continued to roll in throughout the day.

On Thursday evening, a Twitter user named Robert Garcia suggested that Drake needed some perspective, tweeting that "being on the cover of magazines isn’t everything."

Drake 'never commented on Yeezus'

In his tweets on Thursday, Drake also complained that he "never commented on Yeezus for my interview portion with Rolling Stone."

Yeezus is the name of Kanye West’s last album.

In the interview, Drake tells Rolling Stone that he considers Kanye a friend and that they are "plotting on getting some work done together."

But a paragraph down in the published interview, Drake also refers to some "questionable bars" on Yeezus.

Nonetheless, he seems deferential to West: "Kanye's the reason I'm here. I love everything about that guy," Drake told the magazine.

Bruno, the Rolling Stone spokesperson, said the magazine stands by its reporting.

In the same interview, Drake tells Rolling Stone that he wants to one day have "the biggest residential pool on the planet," with the magazine also reporting that the singer plans to add an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool to a Toronto-area property.

Branching out

The 27-year-old Drake has won a Grammy award for best rap album and has seen platinum sales in the United States.

But he has explored opportunities outside of music as well.

Last fall, the Toronto Raptors named him as the team’s "global ambassador," a role in which he told reporters he was eager to take on.

"I want excitement for this team. I want them to be one of the biggest teams in this league," Drake said last September. "Everywhere I go, I preach the gospel that is the City of Toronto, I love this city with all my heart."

Before he was a rapper, Drake was an actor and he played a character on Degrassi: The Next Generation while he was a teenager.

More recently, he had a cameo in the much-hyped movie sequel to Anchorman. Last month, Drake hosted Saturday Night Live.