Kendrick Lamar and Drake can continue to slap each other, make slanderous accusations and publish diss, but the bulk of the match has already taken place and the winner’s crown goes towards Compton. In hindsight, the way Drake teased his rival with taunts on Instagram and the Taylor Made Freestyle they were masochistic moments. Over the past week, Kendrick has hit Drake with a relentless barrage of diss tracks that have torn his rival apart. Drake deserves credit for putting himself out there and running the risk of clashing with a very strong lyricist like Kendrick. However, he will have to take the blow.
It was a heavyweight fight or better yet something similar to the middleweight fights of the 80s, when Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran faced each other with volleys of punches driven by competitive instinct and total rejection of the idea of not being considered the best. Even though the beef between Drake and Kendrick became Shane Room stuff, it started out of pure competitive instinct. As Kendrick raps in Euphoria, “Cole and Aubrey know I’m a selfish black man, the crown is heavy.” Hip hop has an inherently competitive nature and they both knew that confrontation was inevitable. Anyone who doesn’t understand the reason for their rivalry hasn’t spent the last 15 or 20 years wanting to be considered the best rapper ever.
Beefs between rappers traditionally take place over a long period of time. Albums, concerts, lives can pass between one diss and another. And yet Drake told Akademiks in April that he delayed his post-tour vacation period to immediately fight with his rival and Kendrick satisfied him by giving us one of the hottest moments in the history of hip hop with the help of Rick Ross, Kanye and Metro Boomin, among others. If beef isn’t your thing, this little show will be annoying you. If it’s to your taste, it’s heart-pounding stuff.
To quote Jay-Z, just a week ago everything was fine with Drake. He had published two diss and the decision to anticipate Kendrick’s response with Push Ups made him the favorite of the match. But then she arrived Euphoria and nothing was like before. With the diss he published, Drake could have gotten the better of most rappers. Push Ups And Family Matters they are songs that can end up in normal playlists even outside the context of diss. He cleverly turned the Michael Jackson-Prince pairing against Kendrick. And he deserves credit for not giving up when many big names in the industry ganged up against him. That said, he didn’t have much to say about Kendrick.
The Heart Pt. 6 they are notes taken on the Notes app and then rhymed, complete with errors. Drake misunderstood the story told in Mother I Sober by Kendrick (to imply that Lamar would hypothetically have a problem with pedophiles because he was harassed) and stated that he had never had any inappropriate behavior with the actress Millie Bobby Brown even if Kendrick did not explicitly mention her. She claimed she gave Kendrick false information about having a daughter, but also said “the ones you get your stories from are clowns.”
The attacks of one canceled out those of the other and the way in which women became pawns on this chessboard was tremendous, but we will focus on this point later. Overall, however, Kendrick hit harder. He talked about Drake’s racial identity issues, his alleged vices, lack of knowledge of the laws of the street, shady movements behind the scenes, dealings in Atlanta, his alliance with Baka, leaks from OVO and , most alarmingly, of alleged inappropriate relationships with teenagers. The impression is that he took most of the information from social media and that some of this still needs to be verified, but he made it known anyway. He did it in four different pieces. Euphoria it’s a good diss to listen to in the gym; 6:16 in LA it’s cruising soul; Meet the Grahamsslyly released a few minutes later Family Matters by Drake, is based on a horror soundtrack produced by Alchemist.
Which brings us to Not Like Us, a knockout blow delivered by DJ Mustard. Drake came out to quickly deny Kendrick’s accusation that he had an 11-year-old daughter in Meet the Grahamsbut it took the virality of Not Like Us to make him respond to the accusation of having had relationships with teenagers. Kendrick’s detractors had complained that none of the beats on his first three diss tracks were danceable, but on the Saturday night after the release of Not Like Us There were a lot of videos circulating of DJs playing the song in clubs. Social media timelines are full of people posting memes superimposing the song onto dance videos. In 2015, Drake used uptempo Back to Back and a barrage of memes to seal his victory against Meek Mill. If we were in wrestling we would say that Kendrick used his opponent’s move against him.
Kendrick’s sense of humor is underrated and is most evident in Euphoria And Not Like Us. If he had only used a serious tone, he would have seemed too angry. If he had exaggerated in the opposite direction, he would have seemed buffoonish. He found the right balance, changing cadence and vocal tone every eight bars or so, finding for Not Like Us an inflection worthy of a stand-up comedian. Drake has spent a lifetime trying to shed the stigma of being Degrassi’s Jimmy and now the rap world is laughing at him again.
While Drake seemed intent on winning the social media war, Kendrick was contemplating his most striking shots. The 6:16 contained in 6:16 in LA can recall both Tupac’s birthday (June 16) and the premiere date in 2019 of Euphoria, the series that Drake executive produces and which has been criticized for sexualizing high schoolers. Lamar asked Jack Antonoff, who is known to be Taylor Swift’s producer, to help write 6:16. And she did it after Drake had made fun of his rival because according to him he didn’t respond for fear of overlapping with the release of Swift’s album. His writing style is so sharp that it rhymes.”Back to BackI like that record / I’ma get back to that, for the record” (“Back to BackI like that record / I’ll come back to this one, for the record”) on Euphoriaand then inserts a sample of Al Green on 6:16a reference to the little-known anthology Back to Back Hits of Al Green and Teddy Pendergrass (the latter also championship on Euphoria).
What Kendrick did is not unprecedented; Joe Budden released four diss tracks against Drake in the span of four weeks in the summer of 2016. But at the time, Drake hadn’t built up that much hatred for his actions, and Budden didn’t have enough popularity to turn the masses on. Many former Drake fans are tired of hearing about his (alleged) strange relationships with teenagers, or of seeing him unnecessarily criticize artists like Megan Thee Stallion and Rihanna. Kendrick vented his disdain at the Toronto rapper for what amounts to a diss EP. It’s worth wondering whether he’ll try to string together songs on streaming services to get another chart hit.
The last few weeks have sparked broader conversations about racial identity. The idea that Drake has convenient relationships with the black music scene is not new. But Kendrick explained it even better than Pusha T did a few years ago, listing Drake’s Atlanta connections one by one and speculating that they allowed Drake to assimilate into African-American culture. His slash “You’re not a fellow, you’re a colonizer” is a line that could stick with Drake for years to come.
Much of this beef wades into waters of racial politics that non-black rap fans haven’t experienced to gauge its credibility, no matter how hard they try. As I’ve written before, the cultural disconnect of rap fandom is evident in the reactions to this beef. The media figures and fans who still believe that Drake emerged victorious from this situation say so as a matter of rhyme, or because to say that Drake lost is to admit that, in the end, they are not “Like Us” either. (Not Like Used.)?
Most diss tracks don’t end up leading to broader social commentary, but Kendrick isn’t like most artists. After Nas’s Ether, where his resentment toward Jay-Z boiled over in a scathing diss track, most artists realized they should never make him that angry again. And the same will happen with Kendrick. Kendrick is known for taking years off between albums, but this time in just a week he’s cemented his position as one of the most respected lyricists of all time; he might actually be rap’s boogeyman after all.
Last year, Jah Talks Music account X posted: “J. Cole retires after The Fall Off, Drake said he’s considering ‘a dignified exit,’ and Kendrick chose himself over music. We are coming to the end of these legends” The post prompted thoughtful comments about what the three men had accomplished. But then First Person Shooter took the so-called Big Three from a throwback conversation to one of the biggest things happening in pop culture. It seems like they are writing an epilogue to their story rather than a new chapter. And in those last lines, Kendrick is the winner.
From Rolling Stone US.
