Contrary to the most recent rap beef between queens of rap, the kings of rap are now battling with each other.
March 22: On Metro Boomin and Future’s newest collaboration album WE DON’T TRUST YOU, Kendrick Lamar was a surprise feature on the song “Like That.” He jumps in with a punchy flow, rapping vaguely about other fraudulent rappers in the industry and how they aren’t about what they say they are.
Halfway through this verse, he says, “F*** sneak dissin’, ‘First Person Shooter.’ I hope they came with three switches.” This alludes to Drake and J. Cole’s song “First Person Shooter.”
Then to reiterate on the disrespect Kendrick feels with them, he says, “Mother**** the big three, [redacted], It’s just big me.”
This line is also in reference to Drake and J. Cole’s collaboration, where J. Cole says, “Love when they argue the hardest MC, is it K-Dot (Kendrick Lamar), is it Aubrey (Drake), or me (J. Cole)? / We the big three like we started a league.”
April 5: The internet exploded after this release, wondering what J. Cole and Drake would do in response. J. Cole then released an album called Might Delete Later with several songs taking shots at Kendrick.
“Your first s*** was classic (album), your last s*** was tragic, your second s*** put [redacated]s to sleep, but they gassed it. Your third s*** was massive and that was your prime, I was trailing right behind, and I just now hit mine,” J. Cole said on “7 Minute Drill,” the song on the album that takes the most direct shots at Kendrick Lamar.
Without giving Kendrick Lamar a chance to muster a response, J. Cole apologized for his tracks and said that it was “the lamest s**t.”
“I ain’t gon’ lie to y’all, I moved in a way that I feel bad homie. I tried to like jab my [redacted] back, and I tried to keep in friendly but at the end of the day, that s*** don’t sit right with my spirit,” J. Cole said to the crowd at his set at Raleigh’s Dreamville Festival on Sunday, April 7.
April 13: Just about a week later, Drake released his “Push Ups” diss track taking shots mainly at Kendrick, but also several other artists.
The second line of the song takes aim at Future, where Drake says “Your first number one, I had to put it in your hand,” referring to how Future never had a No. 1 Billboard song before his song featuring Drake “Way 2 Sexy.”
Then Drake shoots his first direct shot at Kendrick with a line making fun of his height and foot size. “How the f*** you big-steppin’ with a size-seven men’s on?” I kind of find it weird that the biggest artists diss each other with foot size. (See: Nicki Minaj – Big Foot)
He then directly addresses one of Kendrick’s lines from his “Like That” verse. Drake says “You ain’t in no big three, SZA got you wiped down. Travis got you wiped down. Savage got you wiped down. Like your label, boy, you in a scope [Interscope Records] right now.
Another big artist he dissed was Metro Boomin, who is a producer and has literally said nothing at all. Drake said “Metro, shut yo ho ass up and make some drums, [Redacted].” Metro has not responded and continues to make beats.
April 24: Then Drake doubled down on his “Push Ups” song, when he released “Taylor Made Freestyle” where he had an AI version of Tupac and Snoop Dogg rap their own verses dissing Kendrick Lamar.
Tupac’s Estate, a player in the late rapper’s career, threatened to sue Drake if the song wasn’t removed from streaming platforms, to which he obliged.
April 19: After this diss track, Kanye West randomly dropped his own “Like That” remix dissing Drake that had some spark for a couple days, but didn’t have much of an impact since Drake didn’t really acknowledge it.
The Kanye West diss track seemed to be the end of this beef, since there wasn’t any noise made for about two weeks.
April 30: Then, during the late morning on April 30, Kendrick Lamar’s “Euphoria” was released on YouTube.
“Euphoria” was a six-minute assault where Kendrick mimics a Toronto accent (where Drake is from), directly addresses Drake’s lines from both songs, and questions Drake’s ability to say [Redacted].
Kendrick takes aim at Drake’s use of AI and ghostwriters in two lines saying that his “Taylor Made Freestyle” made Tupac “turn in his grave.”
In “Push Ups,” Drake says “What the f*** is this, a 20-v-1, [Redacted]?” in response to the amount of people that are against Drake in this feud.
Kendrick responded to that line by saying, “Ain’t 20-v-1, it’s 1-v-20 if I gotta smack people that write with you.”
He also channels in inner hater when he says, “I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress,” a few lines later he says, “I even hate when you say the word [Redacted].”
Kendrick takes a shot at Drake’s sexuality saying “When I see you stand by Sexyy Red, I believe you see two bad b*****s. I believe you don’t like women, it’s real competition, you might pop ass wit’ em.”
“…I got a son to raise, but I can see you ain’t know nun’ ’bout that. Wakin’ them up (know nun’ ’bout that). Tell them to pray (know nun’ ’bout that). Giving ’em tools to walk through life like day by day (know nun’ ’bout that). Teaching them morals, integrity, discipline, listen man, you ain’t know nun’ ’bout that.” This entire verse was referencing Drake’s child Adonis, who Drake hid for several months until rapper Pusha T exposed him in a 2018 diss track “The Story of Adidon.”
Kendrick ended the song with what I find to be a hilarious final line, “We don’t wanna hear you say [Redacted] no more.”
Drake responded via Instagram story with a video from the movie “10 Things I Hate About You.” The video is the scene of Kat is reading her love poem for Patrick that sounds very similar to Kendrick’s “I hate the way that you…” line.
May 3: Kendrick Lamar didn’t give Drake a chance to even respond after his release of “euphoria.” He immediately decided to double down and release another diss track called “6:16 in LA,” which was a name with multiple meanings. 6:16 being the time the song was released, the date of Father’s Day, the birthday of Tupac, the premiere date of the TV show “Euphoria,” which Drake was an executive producer of, and the Bible verse Corinthians 6:16, “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh,'” in reference to the mother of Drake’s son Sophie Brussaux, a French artist and former adult film star.
In this song Kendrick claims to have moles within Drake’s label, telling him information and praying on his downfall. “Have you ever thought that OVO was working for me? / Fake bully, I hate bullies / You must be a terrible person / Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it.”
I personally thought this was the weakest song for Kendrick and one of the songs that gave Drake leverage in terms of who is winning.
May 3: Drake responds to “6:16 in LA” with a lengthy seven-minute long track, “Family Matters,” attacking several artists, mainly Kendrick of course. The artists attacked in this song were The Weeknd, Future, Metro Boomin, A$AP Rocky, and Rick Ross.
He alleges that Kendrick’s son was actually fathered by his manager Dave Free with the line, “If yo GM [General Manager] is yo BM [Baby’s Mother] secret BD [Baby’s Dad].”
Drake then makes claims that Kendrick used to beat his wife Whitney Alford. He says, “When you put your hands on your girl, is it self-defense ’cause she’s bigger than you?” This also pokes at Kendrick’s height once again.
He also attests that Kendrick is making lies up with no proof to back them up, “You diggin’ for dirt, should be digging for proof.”
May 4: Immediately after Drake released Family Matters, Kendrick released “Meet The Grahams.” During this song he addresses Drake’s son, Drake’s mother, Drake’s father, and Drake’s alleged daughter.
He accuses Drake of having a daughter by saying, “Dear baby girl / I’m sorry that your father not active inside your world / He don’t commit to much but his music, yeah, that’s for sure.” The internet went wild about this line, however there is no concrete proof up until this point that Drake has a daughter.
May 4: Kendrick doubles down once again, releasing “Not Like Us,” one of the most popular songs of this battle. The premise of this song is about Drake being a minor groomer/predator. He attacks Drake with many witty lines behind a catchy beat.
“Why you trollin’ like a b****? Ain’t you tired? / Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-minor.” This was the most popular of his lines and arguably the funniest.
May 5: In reference to Kendrick Lamar’s The Heart series in his music, Drake released “The Heart Part 6.” In this track he mainly defends himself from the claims that Kendrick made about his predatory past, and claims that he set bait for Kendrick to take in regards to his “daughter.”
“We plotted for a week, and then we fed you the information / A daughter that’s eleven years old, I bet he takes it / We thought about givin’ a fake name or a destination.”
The internet didn’t cheer Drake on as heavy on this as they did when he released “Family Matters” and mainly pointed out that he did a little freudian slip. He referenced Millie Bobby Brown in this song, when Kendrick said nothing about the past situation between the two.
The internet has mainly taken their side and it seems that Kendrick Lamar won this battle.
Former president Barack Obama predicted this in 2016 during an interview with YouTuber sWooZie.
“I gotta go with Kendrick. I think Drake is an outstanding entertainer, but Kendrick, his lyrics, his last album was outstanding, best album I think of last year.”
