Did anyone really win the Drake-Kendrick Lamar beef?
A rap war more than a decade in the making turns sour.
artwork by Sally North.
We just lived through hip hop history.
The careers of Drake and Kendrick Lamar became intertwined ever since Lamar featured on “Buried Alive Interlude” in 2011. Drake even petitioned to have Lamar as one of the opening acts on his Club Paradise Tour in 2012. As the two biggest rappers of their generation, Drake and Lamar are endlessly compared—comparisons that are often fruitless given the cavernous gap between their artistic directions. Drake, for better or worse, is never gone for too long, an ever-present chameleon in the industry who borrows flows, cadences, and lingo from all over the US and the world. Lamar, in stark contrast, is often lauded for his authenticity and commitment to quality over quantity. They are two very different artists who serve two very different audiences.
So where did their current beef come from? Well, after Lamar’s feature on Big Sean’s “Control” in 2013, on which he called out basically every rapper under the sun, the two have exchanged thinly veiled sneak-disses for the last ten years. That is, until Lamar’s incendiary "Like That" verse dropped in March 2024 and set the game ablaze. Since then, the two titans have each dropped four records aimed at one another, and—Dot’s “certified boogeyman” moniker aside—I’m not sure either party walks out of the ring any better off than they walked in. Here’s a recap of the beef and everything left in its wake.
March 22nd: Future, Kendrick Lamar, Metro Boomin, “Like That”
Future and Metro Boomin dropped their highly anticipated WE DON’T TRUST YOU back in March with its features initially uncredited, rewarding fans with surprise appearances from The Weeknd, Travis Scott, Playboi Carti and, of course, Lamar. Hearing the Compton MCs voice drop in on “Like That” immediately shook everyone out of their seats: I had to play it back three times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. He wastes no time, immediately taking issue with “These niggas talkin’ out of they necks.” If you have any doubt of who he’s talking about, he makes sure to clarify: “Motherfuck the big three, nigga, it's just big me,” the big three referring to the biggest stars of 2010s hip hop: Lamar, Drake, and J. Cole. (And no, the rappers in the big three are still not up for debate. Sorry.) A few more direct jabs at Aubrey lets everyone know that Lamar’s real beef is with the Canadian. Specifically, the “Prince outlived Mike Jack” line sees Kendrick align himself with the artsy authenticity of Prince instead of the mainstream palatability that connects Michael Jackson and Drake. It’s a comparison that would prove central to this feud.
Honestly, the shock value of Lamar being on this song in the first place was more impressive than any disses levied on it. He just puffed his chest out to say he’s better than his contemporaries and threw some jabs at Drizzy. Hip hop is competitive!
April 13th: Drake, “Push Ups”
“Push Ups,” originally serviced through DJ Akademiks six days before its streaming release on the 19th, served as Drake’s reply to not only Lamar, but also everyone else in the industry who felt emboldened to diss him. The track has bars for Rick Ross, The Weeknd, and Future as well. “Push Ups” is mostly light humor, mocking Kendrick for his height, shoe size, and the performance of Mr. Morale. Even the cover art is a shoe label with size US 7, built off the admittedly hilarious line “How the fuck you big steppin’ with a size seven men’s on?” He cuts a bit deeper with claims that Lamar has been at the beck and call of the industry, which would dent the latter’s assertion of superior artistic integrity. This angle is great, and Drake’s not wrong to point out Lamar’s history of awful pop crossovers: “Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty/Then we need a verse for the Swifties/[Your label] say drop, you better drop and give ‘em fifty,” referring to Lamar’s appearances on “Don’t Wanna Know” and “Bad Blood” respectively. The other standout line on “Push Ups” is Drake’s flip of the Prince/MJ scheme: “What’s a prince to a king? He a son.” MJ was known as the “king of pop”; the son of a king is literally called a prince; and Michael had a son named Prince. Sheesh.
Drake does escalate the tension towards the end of “Push Ups” by name-dropping Lamar’s fiancé Whitney with slick wordplay that doubly references Whitney Houston’s movie The Bodyguard. He ends with a warning: “This ain’t even everything I know, don’t wake the demon up,” and introduces a second beat, not-so-subtly suggesting that he’s got more in the clip. We’ll see how both of those decisions work out for him.
April 19th: Drake, “Taylor Made Freestyle”
Drake dropped “Push Ups” and expected a swift reply from Dot. After we didn’t get one within a week, he decided to get back in the booth and drop an IG-only track that received a (successful) cease-and-desist from the 2Pac estate because he used AI voice filters to imitate Pac’s likeness. I hated this when it dropped, both for the inevitability with which its lyrics would age (did he genuinely think Kendrick wasn’t going to reply??) and for his platforming of AI on hip hop’s biggest stage. He also tried to get in front of some very serious allegations, rapping this eyebrow-raising bar in Pac’s voice: “Talk about him liking young girls, that’s a gift from me.” You can’t self-snitch your way out of things like that, Drake.
There were 17 days between the leak of “Push Ups” and Kendrick’s first reply. They were 17 long days—I was confused why Dot took so long—but the release of “Taylor Made” in the meantime was a shortsighted mistake that quickly backfired on Drake.
April 30th: Kendrick Lamar, “Euphoria”
“Euphoria” is special. K.Dot shows Drake the future of this beef before it even happens: “I calculate you’re not as calculated, I can even predict your angle/Fabricatin’ stories on the family front ‘cause you heard Mr. Morale/A pathetic master manipulator, I can smell the tales on you now.” Sure sounds like Lamar knew what Drake would say about his family and when he’d say it.
Kendrick himself says a lot in this six-and-a-half minute banger. An instant favorite of mine: “The very first time I shot me a [Drake/Draco], the homie had told me to aim it this way/I didn’t point down enough, today, I’ll show you I learned from those mistakes.” No, that bar doesn’t spill any tea, it’s just hard. He again references the big three, saying that he loves its other two members to death, even if that makes him YNW Melly, a rapper who sang about homicidal ideations and allegedly killed two of his friends. K.Dot dubs himself Drake’s “biggest hater” and asks: “How many more fairytale stories ‘bout your life till we had enough?/How many more Black features till you finally feel that you’re Black enough?/I like Drake with the melodies, I don’t like Drake when he act tough.” The highlight of this diss is Lamar’s critique of Drake’s place in the culture, even questioning whether he should be able to say nigga, ending the track with a brutal sung vocal: “We don’t wanna hear you say nigga no more.” If you’re keeping score, Kendrick has now escalated this battle further with these lines attacking Drake’s character, not to mention jabs at Drake’s capacity to mentor his son Adonis. But nothing too crazy. Yet.
To Lamar’s credit, he does give Drizzy numerous warnings to quit the fight while he’s still standing: “Don’t tell no lie about me, and I won’t tell truth ‘bout you”; “We ain’t gotta get personal, this a friendly fade, you should keep it that way/I know some shit about niggas that make Gunna Wunna look like a saint”; and “If you take it there, I’m taking it further/That’s something you don’t wanna do” are all given throughout these verses. Drake did not heed these warnings.
May 3rd: Kendrick Lamar, “6:16 in LA”
Lamar doubled down on “Euphoria” in the exact same fashion that Drake did “Push Ups”: an Instagram exclusive with much less bite than its predecessor. The beat is fantastic and he flows fine enough over it, but “6:16 in LA” fails to push this conversation forward. Lamar says he’s got a mole in Drake’s camp and that even they want to see his empire fall. If the goal was to make Drake paranoid, I’m not sure why: the OVO frontman has been rapping about being paranoid of his hangers-on for maybe half of his discography. It applied pressure to Drake after “Euphoria” just like Drake tried to do with “Taylor Made,” so I get the chess move from a strategy standpoint, but I wasn’t particularly impressed by the execution.
At this point, both artists have heavily implied they’ve got dirt on the other person, who better tread lightly to avoid said dirt being brought to light. Posturing is standard operating procedure in hip hop: the only issue is that neither was posturing.
May 3rd: Drake, “Family Matters”
Using Kendrick’s allusions to Adonis as justification, Drake begins: “I’ve emptied the clip over friendlier jabs/You mentioned my seed, now deal with his dad.” The instrumental from the end of “Push Ups” roars in as Drake swears he “Was really, really tryna keep it PG,” but “Family Matters” quickly turns anything but. Drake thinks it’s weird that Dot raps so much about his Blackness but has cheated on his biracial fiancé with white women. Then there’s this whole idea that one of their kids isn’t even his, but actually Dave Free’s, one of Lamar’s longtime business partners. He makes light of Kendrick’s rocky romance all the way into the third verse—the second verse is weirdly wasted on other people in this beef like Weeknd and Rocky—when he brings up their apparent separation: “Why did you move to New York? Is it ‘cause you livin’ that bachelor life?/Proposed in 2015, but don’t wanna make her your actual wife.” It gets darker: the bars “When you put your hands on your girl, is it self-defense ‘cause she bigger than you?” and “They hired a crisis management team to clean up the fact that you beat on your queen/The picture you painted ain’t what it seem” are both jaw-dropping accusations of domestic violence.
I didn’t know how to feel once the verse ended, as so much of its impact is contingent on truths that none of us civilians can know for sure. But I do know this: the last bit on “Family Matters” is some of the slickest, effortlessly effective raps we’ve gotten from Drake in a long time. I just wish he wasn’t alleging the things he was alleging in the process. Regardless, with his red button pressed, Drake thought he could take a victory lap, ending the track with “This shit gotta be over by now for anyone out here that’s calling it right?” with swirling declarations of “Ya dead! Ya dead!”
Lamar was, in fact, not dead.
May 3rd: Kendrick Lamar, “Meet the Grahams”
Less than an hour after “Family Matters” dropped, Lamar stepped on it with “Meet the Grahams,” a serious reckoning with Drake as a human, a son, and a father. From a strategic perspective, dropping so quickly was the decision point that “won” the beef. No one cared about “Family Matters” as soon as we all realized there was more Kendrick out. To be clear, though, “Meet the Grahams” is not a response to anything. It’s Kendrick’s red button, so once he saw that Drake dropped his, he knew he could put the fire out immediately. And that he did.
This song was unsettling on first listen and repeated attention only haunts you more. If an eerie piano loop from The Alchemist wasn’t enough to set you off, Lamar’s very first words are “Dear Adonis, I’m sorry that that man is your father…I look at him and wish your grandpa woulda wore a condom.” Indeed, “Meet the Grahams” is written to address each member of Aubrey’s family: he tells Drake’s father Dennis that he “Raised a horrible fuckin person, the nerve of you” and Drake’s mother Sandra that her son is a “Sick man with sick thoughts, I think niggas like him should die/Him and Weinstein should get fucked up in a cell for the rest of they life.” He goes so far to claim Drake is neglecting an 11-year-old daughter, penning a verse to her too. If “Euphoria” was a dissection of Drake’s character, “Meet the Grahams” is a complete assassination. Putting one of your contemporaries in the same sentence as Harvey Weinstein is an alarmingly bold statement, one that we are at zero liberty to judge ourselves. Much of this track explains all the ways in which Drake is allegedly a womanizer and sex offender, even saying at one point that the man “Should die so all these women can live with a purpose.” If you’re keeping track, that’s two times that Lamar wishes death on Drake—not in a traditional hip hop gun talk sense either. He genuinely wants him off the streets. On the last verse of the song, addressed to Drake, Lamar lists every single thing the man has lied about in his life, ending with a harrowing “Fuck a rap battle, this a life-long battle with yourself.”
So much of this song is uncomfortable to listen to, almost as if we’re not supposed to be hearing all of this dirty laundry aired out. It was at this point I officially wanted to rewind this beef to about a week ago when the discourse was still about Drake getting surgery and Kendrick doing pop features. But now, the former is allegedly a Weinstein-level sex offender and the other is allegedly a woman beater. “Meet the Grahams” left me speechless during its entire six minute runtime and for many minutes afterward. But Kendrick wasn’t speechless for very long.
May 4th: Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us”
The only critique anyone had about “Meet the Grahams” was that it lacked replay value. Naturally, Lamar followed it the very next day with “Not Like Us,” a DJ Mustard-produced West Coast banger that puts everything previously said intricately right on front street. Gone are the obscure references to Haley Joel Osment and Pet Sematary.
Lamar says exactly what he means on this record and it’s undeniably awesome. Almost every line of this song is a quotable, which is great, until you realize so many of the quotables are doubling down on Drake’s alleged pedophilia. How about: “To any bitch that talk to him and they in love/Just make sure you hide your lil sister from him,” or “Baka got a weird case, why is he around?/Certified lover boy? Certified pedophiles,” or “Why you trollin’ like a bitch, ain't you tired?/Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-Minor.” In ten years, we’ll probably look at that “A-Minor” bar as the defining moment of this beef. You can’t get these lines out of your head, and it almost makes you forget that you’re calling someone a sex offender every time you sing along. Almost.
Lamar also keeps slamming Drake for his culturally draining behavior, specifically in Atlanta, with a very clever flip of a bad bar from “Family Matters,” drawing the conclusion that his opponent isn’t a colleague, but a colonizer. The crazy part is that “Not Like Us” is a smash, beef or not. The track has broken the genre record for single day Spotify streams, ironically dethroning Drake who had owned that since 2018. It’s increased in daily streams every day since its release at the time of this writing.
A diss track against you becoming a hit is a worst-case scenario. How would Drizzy respond? Not well.
May 5th: Drake, “The Heart Part 6”
This was wack.
Responding to allegations of pedophilia is not exactly the easiest thing to do, but Drake chose two of the worst dialogue options possible. He first asserts that Kendrick is accusing him of sex crimes because Kendrick himself was molested as a child and is thus projecting his own trauma onto Drake. (It should be noted that the song he references, “Mother I Sober,” very clearly states that Kendrick’s mother was the victim, but who cares about media literacy, right?) I recognize the whole “no rules in rap beef” tradition, but this angle prompted one of the most distasteful bars I’ve ever heard: “When ‘Touch My Body’ by Mariah Carey play, you probably start reflecting.” Making fun of victims of sexual abuse is insane, and I can’t believe this is where we ended up. Drake knew that wouldn’t cut it, so he had to add something else to his defense. He came up with this foolishness: “I’m too respected/If I was fucking young girls, I promise I’d have been arrested/I’m way too famous for the shit you just suggested,” as if every high profile celebrity who’s been busted for this stuff hasn’t said the same thing. He walked up to bat twice, and struck out both times.
I also don’t care about this whole “I planted information” angle because, again, we have no reason to believe one of them over the other unless you’re a delusional fan with a rooting interest. All of the finger pointing is honestly a wash to me. Once he really goes back on offense, he gets some credit back. He circles back to Lamar’s relationship with Whitney, getting more specific in asking “Why isn’t Whitney denying all of the allegations?” while adding “Deep cuts that never healed and now they got infected/Like if Dave really fucked your girl and got her pregnant, talk about breeding resentment” and “I don’t wanna fight with a woman beater, it feeds your nature.” His last line might be the best on the whole song: “Whitney you can hit me if you need a favor/And when I say I’ll hit you back, it’s a lot safer.” Brutal bars, but again we know nothing of their accuracy.
Above all else, the 6 God sounds tired, defeated, and annoyed on this song, especially on its outro. There’s no way you can deny that Drake was not prepared for the nukes that were “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us.”
So where does this leave us, the hip hop listener? We watched a saga that started as competitive sparring between rap heavyweights morph into competitive tea spilling not too far removed from comment sections on TheShadeRoom. Both of these guys should be better than this: rap beef is not just about who can ‘expose’ the other on some investigative journalism tip. There’s a part of me that wishes it never got to this point, but it was virtually inevitable once both parties kept promising that they “had more dirt” than the other person. And this is undoubtedly a byproduct of Pusha T’s “The Story of Adidon,” a diss track that won against Drake largely because Pusha exposed him as a man hiding a child. That juicy gossip wasn’t nearly the most impressive set of bars on that song, but everyone’s been so thirsty for “new” information in rap beef since then.
Seriously, one of the reasons people thought Drake could stand up to Dot was because it’d be hard for the latter to find “new” things to say about the former, whereas Dot lives such a private life that Drake could potentially have so much to expose. The main critique of “Euphoria” was that Kendrick didn’t say anything new, and they’re right: he didn’t. But the reason that song connected for me was the way he presented everything. His rhyme schemes. His triple entendres. His dynamic flows and the weird cadences unique to Kendrick Lamar’s style. I’m never gonna forget the first time I heard him brightly pronounce “Pusha-TEE” or growl “I’m YNW Melly.” That song is six minutes of fire coming out of that man’s mouth, but some people call it mid because he didn’t reveal anything shocking enough.
J. Cole, in his now-infamous apology, clearly wanted to keep the competition to who can rap better. He got clowned for deleting his diss (even as a longtime Cole fan, I participated in the clowning). So he’s a coward, fine. How do the other two members of this big three look after their pissing contest? One is an alleged woman beater and the other is an alleged pedophile. I hate the fact I even had to write that sentence. Those accusations will stay on their respective jackets until proven otherwise. The thirst for (figurative) blood in beef is how we end up with “Family Matters” and “Meet the Grahams” within an hour of each other. Those tracks, again, were not responses to one another. Both artists had those mostly pre-recorded and ready to go once the moment called for it. Almost as if they knew they’d have to resort to spilling tea about each other. And not just tea of the embarrassing variety, but of the criminal variety. It makes me uncomfortable that domestic violence and pedophilia were used as the “gotchas,” because it suggests that neither artist actually cares about the other’s victims, but just about smearing the other rapper’s character by way of their victims. The revelation of sex crimes being committed by your opponent shouldn’t be teased like a plot point in the next episode of Dragon Ball Z. I hate that.
I wasn’t rooting for anyone in this beef. I just wanted to see two pantheon greats rap their asses off and finally settle the score. I was excited when Lamar declared “it’s just big me” on “Like That,” because it prompted conversations about who’s the best and set the table for a rap battle that was long overdue. I was excited when Drake responded with digs at Kendrick’s scant release schedule and record label splits on “Push Ups,” because it prompted parallel conversations about consistency of presence in the game and ownership of your material. The peak of this beef was “Euphoria,” when Kendrick established himself as Drake’s biggest hater, raising real questions about Drake’s artistic legacy and cultural identity while keeping it mostly above board (“Tell your core audience to stomach that, then tell ‘em where you get your abs from” is hilarious). In those “Round 1” disses, both of them brandished their nukes, warning that the other guy should back down before it’s too late. Those warnings weren’t enough for us, and once I heard the content from “Family Matters” and on, my excitement became anxiety. Now I have to sit and wonder if the two biggest rappers of my generation aren’t who I thought they were. Two of my favorite artists. Two of the artists who introduced me to a genre that I love with every fiber of my being.
Kendrick dropped better songs and had a better strategy. “Not Like Us” is currently tearing the charts up. He won the battle regardless of what Drake does from this point forward. But as the smoke clears from the chaos of rapid release schedules and broken Spotify records, there are insane allegations to be patched up on both sides, allegations that could change the way we look at these men going forward. I pray none of it is true, but the alternative is scary.
The type of outcome that makes you wish they didn’t call each other’s bluff and just kept it rap.
edited by Alex Oder.
artwork by Sally North.
