TW: Sexual Assault, Gambling, and Alcohol Abuse
Rapping is an art form that gained significant traction in the 1990s and remains influential today. There are hundreds of rappers, and three very popular rappers are Drake, J. Cole, and Kendrick Lamar. However, recently, these three rappers have been dissing each other, producing more and more beef. The dispute can be confusing, so the feud will be described while implementing my own opinion into it.
On Oct. 6, 2023, Drake dropped his album, For All The Dogs. In this album, on the hit song First Person Shooter, Drake collaborated with J. Cole. In his own verse, Drake said that he was the best at what he did, and even compared his greatness to Muhammad Ali, a famous boxer, saying, “I feel like Muhammad Ali.” In the song, J. Cole stated that there was a “Big 3,” where the Big 3 was J. Cole, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar.
On Mar. 22, Future, Nayvadius Demun Cash, another rapper, released an album called We Don’t Trust You. On the album, Future collaborated with Kendrick Lamar to produce another hit song Like That. In this song, Kendrick fires back at Drake and J. Cole, stating that there isn’t any “Big 3, it’s just big me.” This is a turning point of the beef, as every rapper started to produce their own diss tracks.
This also added fuel to the flame, as I would say that the lyrics in First Person Shooter had no bad intention behind it, and Kendrick was only responding to keep his reputation and stand his ground.
J. Cole was the first to respond to Like That, as J. Cole responded to Lamar fairly soon, as J. Cole released a song called 7 Minute Drill on Apr. 9. However, soon after this, J. Cole backed out of the feud and apologized to Lamar, saying that it was bad of him to try to taunt him. Not only did he apologize, but he also deleted 7 Minute Drill, making him officially out of the rapping argument.
Drake finally responded to Lamar on Apr. 19, releasing a song called Push Ups. This is the first of many diss tracks, as Drake comes out to diss Lamar of being physically small, comparing him to a “pipsqueak.”
Lamar released a track named Euphoria on Apr. 30, saying that Drake’s melody in his songs are boring and “pacify ‘em.”. Lamar reaffirmed himself saying that he makes “music that electrifies ‘em.”
Three days later, Lamar came back against Drake with another track, this one called 6:16 In LA. First of all, the song title, 6PM in New York, picks fun at Drake’s common theme with song titles of time and location. In this song, Lamar singles out OVO, a music label independently owned by Drake himself. He asked Drake inside of his song, saying, “Have you ever thought that OVO is working for me?”
After two diss tracks, Drake finally responded on May.4 with Family Matters. In this song, Drake accuses Lamar of abusing his wife, Whitney Alford. Drake also insulted Lamar again with the accusations of being small and short. In Family Matters, Drake also calls out other rappers and artists such as A$AP Rocky, Rick Ross, Future, Metro Boomin, and The Weeknd.
On the same exact day and minutes later after Family Matters was released, Lamar dropped a song called meet the grahams. In this song, Lamar makes very accusations about Drake. These accusations consist of hiding a daughter, alcohol abuse, gambling, ozempic usage, and sexual assault on minors.
In my opinion, meet the grahams would’ve hurt Drake very badly. Multiple allegations were made of him, each dehumanizing him and making him seem like a monster. However, something weird is that Lamar didn’t respond to the allegations of him beating his wife.
Hours after meet the grahams was released, Lamar released another song called Not Like Us, where Lamar points out how Drake’s reputation is damaged because of how Drake continues on with the sexual assault allegations, stating that Drake goes after minors, despite Drake being 37 years old. On the song cover, Lamar also leaked Drake’s address while putting multiple sexual predator icons over his house, indicating that everyone in the Drake house is a sexual predator.
It seemed as if everything had stopped, and that Lamar had won. However, the following day, May 5, Drake dropped again, this time the name being The Heart Part 6. In this song, Drake responded to the pedophilia allegations, denying that they were ever true. He also stated that the hidden daughter was fake and that all Lamar was doing was lying.
On May 6, Metro Boomin, one of the artists that Drake had dissed as well, came out with his own diss track. Metro Boomin was known to be a producer, not an artist, so it was weird when his audience heard that he made a diss track. However, Metro Boomin made a beat called BBL Drizzy, directing this towards Drake. He also told his fans to try to rap over it.
Way before the first event of this timeline, which is the song First Person Shooter, Drake, J. Cole, and Kendrick Lamar were on good terms. Each of them had collaborated on songs with each other, meaning that they should’ve not been on bad terms. They all had friendships way back before some disagreements started, meaning that something had gone wrong behind the scenes.
The feud has been going on for months, dating back to Oct. 6, 2023. It has been increasing even more, with Metro joining in and J. Cole leaving the feud. It comes down now to which rapper gives up, as it is anyone’s game.
Photo Courtesy of WIKIMEDIACOMMONS.ORG
