A clash reminiscent of Biggie and 2Pac, Jay-Z and Nas, 50 Cent and Ja Rule, the recent beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake has kicked up dust and caught the attention of listeners worldwide, but how did these two titans of rap find themselves in a battle so suddenly?
Truthfully, the back and forth between these two household artists dates back to 2013, when Kendrick took his first jabs at Drake and other Rappers in a feature on Big Sean’s “Control”, saying
“I got love for you all, but I’m trying to murder you n****s.”
Drake was unphased by the jabs at him and chalked it up to Kendrick’s ambition as a rapper still growing, saying “I know good and well that he’s not murdering me on any platform.” Drake would inevitably stand his ground on “The Language”, a track on his 2013 album Nothing Was the Same. He would go on to explain his response in a VIBE magazine interview: he wasn’t going to take Kendrick’s shots lying down, but wasn’t going to be baited into something either,
“Jordan doesn’t have to play pickup to prove that he could play ball.”
JCole starts a fire…
Fast forward a few years, and in October 2023, Drake releases his long-awaited album For All the Dogs. In the song “First Person Shooter” featuring JCole, Cole mentions this idea of the “Big Three”, naming Kendrick, Drake, and Himself together as the three best rappers alive:
“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”
Needless to say, the “Big Three” wasn’t a narrative Kendrick was interested in entertaining.
So, when Future and Metro Boomin released their Studio Album We Don’t Trust You this past March, Kendrick let the world know how he felt about the Big Three in a feature on the track “Like That”, taking shots at both Drake and JCole, but leaving with listeners with a resounding:
“Motherf*** the big three, n****, it’s just big me”
The first to respond to Kendrick was JCole in his “7 Minute Drill”, a diss track that was quickly removed from streaming services only days after its release, when Cole apologized onstage at his Dreamville Festival in Raleigh, NC, claiming the track didn’t sit right with him, that he wasn’t interested in using his platform for that type of music.
The beef begins…
As for Drake, most of Kendrick’s disses in “Like That” were aimed at him and his album For All the Dogs, and so a little less than a month later Drake dropped his diss track “Push Ups” on April 19, mocking Kendrick alongside other artists like Rick Ross, Metro Boomin, Future, and others.
Only five days later, Drake would double down on the beef, releasing a second diss track called “Taylor Made Freestyle”. Unfortunately, the track included A.I. generated voices of Tupac Shakur, and with Tupac’s Estate furious and prepared to sue, Drake obliged and the song was removed from all platforms.
Finally, on April 30, Kendrick released his first response in a six-minute diss track called “Euphoria”, only to release another track three days later, “6:16 in LA”. It was in that where things took a turn, as Kendrick went on a rampage claiming that Drake had a mole in his inner circle, that there was more than one, and that they were all feeding him dirt on Drake.
“Have you ever thought that OVO was working for me?…
…Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it”
“100 n****s that you got on salary
and 20 of them want you as a casualty”
Things were getting heated, when Drake replied only 14 hours after Kendrick’s “6:16 in LA” with his track “Family Matters”, in which the OVO Boss takes shots at K.Dot for his twisted relationship with Whitney Alford, mentioning his history of infidelity, domestic abuse, even claiming that Whitney may have had one of their children with Dave Free, one of Kendrick’s childhood friends.
Kendrick responds 37 minutes later…
However, Drake’s time ahead was short-lived, because mere minutes after releasing the song, Kendrick Lamar responded with “Meet the Grahams”. In the track, Kendrick disses Drake for being a deadbeat father, alleging that Drake was hiding another child besides Adonis, a baby girl.
If it wasn’t bad enough, Kendrick dropped one final track titled “Not Like Us” less than 24 hours later, taking shots at individual members of Drake’s inner circle, calling out Drake and his whole team for being pedophiles and sex offenders.
“Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles…
Why you trollin’ like a b****? Ain’t you tired?
Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.”
In a dramatic finale, Drake would release his final diss track a day later, titled “The Heart Pt. 6” as a play on Kendrick’s previous successful tracks, titled along the same lines. In the track, he boldly claimed he had baited Kendrick into using fake leaks, that he’d intentionally leaked false information about a hidden daughter, and that he figured Kendrick would fall for it without looking into it further.
“You waited for this momеnt, overcome with the desperation
We plotted for a week and then we fed you the information
A daughter that’s 11 years old, I bet he takes it
We thought about giving a fake name or a destination
But you so thirsty, you not concerned with investigation”
Fans were split after Drake’s last track, while many saw it as a worthy response, others believed Kendrick had already sealed himself as the winner. While Kendrick’s “Not Like Us” did reach the #1 spot on Billboard’s Top 100, Drake has since reclaimed his throne as Spotify’s most streamed male artist. So, though the real winner hasn’t been unanimously decided, the real question is: What will these two MCs do next?
