Many people have claimed that the state of hip-hop in the 2020s has been dry. That is, until 2024 came. Now, hip-hop seems rejuvenated thanks to two giants in the genre competing with each other in a rap battle: Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
These two artists are at the top of the mountain when it comes to rap music. Kendrick Lamar has arguably one of the greatest discographies in music, as he has received critical and audience acclaim for every album he has released in his career.
Drake, on the other hand, is known to be a hit-maker. In his career, he has obtained 13 #1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart [1]. His combination of singing and rapping has allowed him to dominate the hip-hop world.
I’ll try explaining how this rap beef began to sizzle.
In 2023, Drake released his album For All The Dogs, which has a song with another well-known rapper, J. Cole, called “First Person Shooter.” On the track, J. Cole says this line: Love when they argue the hardest MC/ Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? (K-Dot is Kendrick’s nickname and Aubrey is Drake’s real name). While it was a line that recognized all 3 of them as incredible artists, this may have led to the rise of the rap beef between Drake and Kendrick.
In March 2024, Kendrick Lamar was featured on popular producer Metro Boomin’s album We Don’t Trust You on the song “Like That” where he made direct attacks at Drake based on the lines he rapped. These lines ignore J. Cole’s previous “big three” claim and say that Lamar is the biggest of the three. He also referenced For All the Dogs where he essentially said he was going to bury these dogs (referring to Drake) in a cemetery.
Cole attempted to respond to the attack with his own diss track “7 Minute Drill,” to which he deleted later and apologized. This only left Drake remaining to respond back to Kendrick, and he did in mid-April in the form of a song called “Push-Ups,” where he tries to bring down Kendrick by making fun of how short he is and how he tends to be featured on songs made by major pop artists such as Taylor Swift. This is an essential line, since Drake has been criticized for being too much of a pop artist rather than a rapper with a lot of his hits making the charts.
He additionally included another diss track called “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which included an AI-generated voice of rapper Snoop Dogg, and the late rapper Tupac Shakur. These are two icons who are from Kendrick’s hometown of Los Angeles, so many believed Drake attempted to get into Kendrick’s head to pressure him to drop another song to live up to his name in West Coast hip-hop.
By the end of April, Kendrick dropped the song “Euphoria” (the song name is referring to a teen drama which Drake is a producer for). To sum up what he said, Kendrick mentioned how he essentially hates how Drake moves as a person, dissing his attire, swagger, and even makes fun of Toronto slang like “crodie.” He tells Drake to tell no lies about him and he won’t tell the truth about him. He doubles down with this on May 3rd with another track called “6:16 in LA,” where he says he has moles in OVO (which is Drake’s record label) and people in his own camp are wishing on his downfall.
This is where things escalate. Drake immediately combats back with his own nuke of a diss track in “Family Matters” on the same day. He mainly accuses Kendrick of physically abusing his wife and claiming one of his children is actually the child of his producer, Dave Free. Not even an hour later, Kendrick drops another diss track called “Meet The Grahams.” Kendrick goes through each of Drake’s family members including his parents, son, and alleged daughter, saying that Drake groomed minors and has been a terrible father and person overall. It makes it even worse when one finds out the image cover for “Meet The Grahams” is just the “6:16 in LA” thumbnail but zoomed out to show details of Drake potentially using an Ozempic prescription. One day later, Kendrick would then release the spicier diss track, “Not Like Us,” which was a more upbeat song that accused Drake of being a “colonizer,” as he has tried stealing sounds while collaborating with numerous rappers from the city of Atlanta, such as trap artist Future. Drake released a track called “The Heart Part 6″ (referring to Kendrick’s history of writing rap songs called “The Heart”), saying that he fed Lamar fake info about his controversies. However, many listeners believed Drake had no evidence to back up this claim, and the majority of hip-hop fans declared Kendrick Lamar the winner of this beef.
But wait, it doesn’t end there.
In June, Kendrick decided to host a concert in Los Angeles where he would invite numerous West Coast artists to perform such as Dr. Dre, Tyler, the Creator, and Steve Lacy. They also played “Not Like Us” at the event five times and it never got old for the audience.
Finally, to capitalize on the “Colonizer Drake” buzz, Lamar released the “Not Like Us” music video on Independence Day which shows the entire city of Compton, California dancing and chanting together as one. By the morning after Independence Day, it garnered over 13 million views on YouTube [2].
And as of now, the beef is at a halt. This could go down as one of the biggest rap battles of all time within hip-hop. It’ll be intriguing to see what’ll happen next. You never know what may transpire…..
Citations
[1] Zellner, Xander. “Here Are All the Hot 100 Records That Drake Has (and Hasn’t) Broken.” Billboard, 16 Oct. 2023, https://www.billboard.com/lists/drake-hot-100-records/.
[2] “Kendrick Lamar Drops ‘Not Like Us’ Music Video amid Drake Feud.” NBC News, 5 July 2024, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/kendrick-lamar-drake-feud-not-like-us-music-video-rcna160413
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