for anyone not following hiphop, there is some entertaining and intense back and forth going down between drake and kendrick lamar. brief history:
- drake features j cole on a verse in last yearās First Person Shooter with the following line:
Love when they argue the hardest MC
Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me?
We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali
- in March, kendrick responds with a verse in future and metro boominās Like That:
Motherfuck the big three, n****, it's just big me
- j cole drops a transphobic response track, apologizes for it, and deletes it from streaming, cementing his status as a goofy and a loser
- drake replies with Push Ups, mainly trashing kendrickās comparatively weak sales numbers, and saying he caters to too many white pop artists:
Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty
Then we need a verse for the Swifties
- drake drops a second diss track called Taylor Made Freestyle which features "AI" voice clones of tupac and snoop dogg; tupacās family compelled drake to take this song down, allegedly at kendrickās behest
- kendrick replies with euphoria, absolutely tearing into drake from a multitude of angles. vulture has a breakdown of some of the sharpest bars:
That's ho shit, I got a son to raise, but I can see you don't know nothin' 'bout that
- kendrick drops another diss track back to back, putting out 6:16 in LA on instagram. kendrick enlists taylor swift collaborator jack antonoff for production and drops bars implying that drake entourage is filled with backstabbers:
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
- drake gives a solid return shot with Family Matters, making some serious claims about kendrickās personal life and beliefs, claiming he is violent with his wife, and going so far as to claim one of kendrickās children is the illegitimate offspring of his business partner:
I heard that one of 'em little kids might be Dave Free
- within an hour of Family Matters, kendrick has already dropped Meet the Grahams. kendrick has taken the glove off, so to speak, and takes shots at every aspect of drakeās image, including a reference to an ozempic prescription pictured on the album art, allegedly really belonging to drake (here addressing drakeās son):
Don't cut them corners like your daddy did, fuck what Ozempic did
Don't pay to play with them Brazilians, get a gym membership
- not resting on his laurels, kendrick goes back to back AGAIN by releasing Not Like Us before drake has a chance to respond. dropping any pretense or vagary, kendrick spends a significant amount of time directly accusing drake of pedophilia:
Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young
You better not ever go to cell block one
this doesnāt really cover all of the barbs thrown or people who have been potentially roped in by stray lyrics, so i recommend hitting the links and listening through if you havenāt yet.