Unless you don’t care about popular music at all, you have certainly heard about the feud going on between rap stars Drake and Kendrick Lamar. When the new Taylor Swift album dropped last week, I didn’t think anything would be strong enough to knock the spotlight off of The Tortured Poets Department, but I was wrong and wrong in a big way. For the time being, there is no Tortured Poets, there are two poets out there trying to aggressively torture each other.
But, exactly what is going on?
I’ll be the first to admit that, until very recently, I was unaware of what was happening between these two titans. I knew something was going on, but I really wouldn’t have been able to discuss the issue with any great detail. And, as someone who not only loves hip hop but also petty squabbles, that could not stand. I rolled up my sleeves, put in my air pods, and dived in.
Perhaps, dear reader, you are like how I was. Well, no more! I’ve compiled all you should need to know in a mostly brief timeline. Let’s get confrontational!
October 2023: First Person Shooter
Ok, out of all the crazy shit that has been going on here, perhaps the craziest is that all of this started with someone being nice to Kendrick Lamar.
Reaching the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 charts, the song “First Person Shooter” was a big deal for collaborators Drake and J. Cole. For Cole, it was the first time he ever reached the top of the Billboard mountain. For Drake (real name: Aubrey Graham), it marked his thirteenth time and tied him with Michael Jackson for the most songs to reach the top of this chart from a solo artist. It feels like J. Cole knew this was song was going to be a big deal for him, and he let his appreciation known by sharing praise to both Drake and Kendrick Lamar: “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.”
Now, for over a decade, Drake and Lamar have taken shots at each other in the press and on tracks, but it honestly seemed all relatively superficial. Kendrick teased Drake for allegedly having a ghost writer. Drake responded by saying he would have Lamar’s fan base if he hadn’t sold out to more commercial pop music. However, this was clearly more than playful jabs. And Cole’s compliment was actually a starter’s pistol.
March 22, 2024: Like That
It may have taken five months for Kendrick Lamar to respond. But when he did, he was not fucking around.
Teaming up with Future and Metro Boomin’ on their album We Don’t Trust You, Kendrick wastes no time stating his case when given a guest verse on “Like That”. He immediately dismisses J. Cole’s claim of a top rap triumvirate: “Motherfuck the big three, n***a, it’s just big me”. He swings at Drake being tied with Michael Jackson for the most solo #1 Billboard songs: “Prince outlive Mike Jack”. And, referencing Drake’s For All The Dogs album: “For all your dogs gettin’ buried/ That’s a K with all these nines, he gon’ see Pet Sematary.” The song caught fire and would also see number one on the Hot 100.
For his part, Drake seemed to take the whole thing in stride at the time, telling an audience at a concert, “I got my head up high… and I know no matter what there’s not another n***a on this Earth that could ever fuck with me.” And that makes a lot of sense to me. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you want to address to an arena full of people who love you. And no one knows if Drake had already begun working on his response, but we all know now that one was coming.
I cannot help but say, once again, that all this started with what felt, to me, like a compliment.
April 5, 2024: 7 Minute Drill
It would J. Cole who would respond first, and the track “7 Minute Drill” is kind of everything you would expect, taking shots at Lamar while saying Cole is at his prime. It’s fitting, however, that this track showed up on an album called Might Delete Later, because that is exactly what Cole did two days later, removing the song from all streaming services while offering a very public apology to Kendrick. So, that left just as quickly as it arrived.
April 19, 2024: Push-Ups & Taylor Made Freestyle
Where J. Cole walked back his track, Drake never had any intention of doing that. And with “Push Ups”, Drake was doing his best to try and throw everything at the wall. Shots at Kendrick’s height (“How the fuck you big-steppin’ with a size seven men’s on?”), his willingness to make verses for pop artists (“Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty /Then we need a verse for the Swifties”) to claims that Kendrick is a bad businessman with the labels he works with, plus about a hundred other things. But it wasn’t just Lamar who was set in the crosshairs- Drake would also use the track to take shots at people whom he felt sided with the west coast rapper, like Rick Ross, The Weeknd and Future.
And that wasn’t all.
The same day, Drake also released “Taylor Made Freestyle”, with a title that was meant to infer that Lamar would not respond while he was afraid he would be upstaged by Taylor Swift’s new album. It’s also, as diss tracks go, really fucking weird. Using AI vocals, Drake makes the track sound that it has appearances from Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg, each one encouraging Lamar to go on the attack and chastising him for not doing so. Here was Drake using Lamar’s heroes against him, but something happened he did not expect. The Shakur estate sent a cease-and-desist letter and demanded the video immediately be taken down for copyright and likeness violations. Drake complied on April 26, and four days later, all hell broke loose for the next week.
April 30-May 3, 2024: Euphoria & 6:16 in LA
If Drake had gotten in his 1-2 punch, now it would be Kendrick Lamar’s turn. Punch #1 came on the last day of April with the 6-minute “Euphoria”, a track that finds Lamar going just as hard on just as many topics as Drake had with “Push Ups”. Taking a swipe at what Drake had done in “Taylor Made Freestyle” (“I’d rather do that than let a Canadian n***a make Pac spin in his grave”), the line takes a particular laugh when Lamar confuses The Sixth Sense actor Haley Joel Osment for megachurch doofus Joel Osteen. But if that was a slip-up, it might be the only one that Lamar gives. Continuous attacks on Drake’s masculinity, friendship circle and talent rain down and Kendrick clearly sees where diss tracks from people like Pusha T had wounded Drake (specifically lines referencing Drake’s son), because he is going at him with full force.
Four days later, the second punch dropped. “6:16 in LA” (a reference to the fact many Drake titles have a time and location), and for the first time, Lamar takes aim at OVO Sound, Drake’s record label. Again, Kendrick pulls no punches here: the claim is made directly that many of the people working at OVO Sound are leaking tracks, spilling tea, and actively rooting for their boss to fail in the most spectacular way possible. Add to that a few shots about Drake’s viral nature (“Your lil’ memes is losing steam”) and there is no way to imagine the Canadian isn’t a little bruised.
But that is nothing to what was going to come next.
May 3-4, 2024: Family Matters, Meet The Grahams, and Not Like Us
May 3rd was a busy day if you are a fan of hip-hop feuds. When people heard “6:16 in LA”, they had to wonder what was going to come next. Drake did not take long to respond and released “Family Matters” a few hours later. The sentiment from the former Degrassi star is clear: you make any reference to my family, and I’m coming after yours. It’s a lengthy song, featuring lots of attacks. But what is going to be most remembered are two very specific claims. First, that Lamar has physically assaulted his long-time partner. Second, that Kendrick is not the father of his son, but rather his long time production partner Dave Free is.
How long did it take for Lamar to respond? Twenty minutes… literally.
“Meet The Grahams” is four different verses, each one sung to a different person in the Graham family (Drake, his mother, his son, and a daughter Lamar alleges the rapper is hiding and neglecting). Much like “Family Matters”, Kendrick is not so much worried about going after Drake’s career or music- this is almost a full-barreled blast to the chest of personal allegations. Comparing Drake to Harvey Weinstein, Lamar accuses Graham of using his record label not just to hire pedophiles but creating a sex trafficking ring out of his mansion. And we learned Lamar was just getting started.
“Not Like Us”, Kendrick Lamar’s third track in two days, continues where “Meet The Grahams” left off. If possible, Lamar is even pulling his punches less than he was the day before, just coming out and calling Drake a “certified pedophile” and a child abuser (“trying to strike a chord and it’s probably A-minor”). To throw in some more shots, Lamar also accuses Drake of cultural appropriation and basically says if Drake tours in Oakland, the fans there would probably murder him.
I cannot stress enough that this started with a J. Cole compliment.
Drake is no stranger to having people lob tracks attacking him. He’s, perhaps, the most commercially successful hip hop artists ever and wearing that crown means fighting off all comers. But there hasn’t been an assault like what Kendrick Lamar has done over the last few weeks, and no one with Lamar’s clout of resume has done anything like this towards Drake before. It’s been a bloody and complicated mess.
And hip hop fans can’t get enough of it.
Fancy Boys Club 
This is excellent, but I also wish that there was an entry that collected all of the other one-offs (ASAP, The Weeknd, Rick Ross, Kanye)!
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