Aubrey Drake Graham, otherwise known as Drake, has been a behemoth in the rap game for years and is considered one of the best of all time, dropping countless classics like “Gods Plan,” “One Dance,” and “Hotline Bling.”
Another monster that’s been in the scene for years is Kendrick Lamar, also believed to be one of the best of all time and best of today, Lamar is most famous for his albums “DAMN” and “To Pimp a Butterfly,” also releasing “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” in 2022.
In October of 2023, another popular artist, J. Cole was featured on Drake’s song, “First Person Shooter”, in which they claimed that Drake, J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar were the “Big 3” of the rap game.
A few months later, Lamar responded on a song called “Like That” with rappers Future and Metro Boomin in which he responds to J. Cole and Drake’s claim about being the biggest three artists by saying “[explicit] the big three, [explicit], it’s just big me.” This line was used to get the point across that Lamar alone is at the top, and at a level above Drake and J. Cole.
In response to the verse on “Like That”, J. Cole released “7 Minute Drill” calling Lamar an attention seeker and throwing out generic insults. This track was later deleted by J. Cole because he “didn’t want the smoke.” He was also heavily criticized for his feeble lyricism on it.
On April 13, Drake stepped back into the beef in place of J. Cole by mocking Lamar’s height, and collaborations with other artists, and also threw shade at Metro Boomin and said: “Metro shut your [explicit] [explicit] up and make some drums [explicit].” Referring to the fact that Metro is mainly known for his beats.
A few days later on April 19, Drake also released “Taylor Made”, this is where the beef started to pick up, Drake using AI-generated voices of rappers Tupac and Snoop Dogg. This track was also promptly deleted following Tupac’s estate sent Drake a legal notice to take it down.
On April 30, Lamar released “Euphoria”, breaking records and commenting that Tupac would “turn in his grave ” if he heard Drake’s previous song. Also in this song, Lamar threatened to expose the truth about Drake, and he did just that in the next few developments of this feud.
He followed up Euphoria with “6:16 in LA ” was mostly bait for a reaction, just claiming he had a mole on Drake’s team and calling him a liar. This track was probably the most forgettable part of the beef.
Picking back up on May 4, Drake drops “Family Matters.” In this track, Drake calls out Lamar for the accusations of him putting his hands on his Fiance, saying, “They hired a crisis management team to clean up the fact that you beat on your queen.” as well as poking at his height again with, “When you put your hands on your girl, is it self-defense ’cause she’s bigger than you?”
Following family matters, Kendrick Lamar dropped “Meet the Grahams’ ‘ in which he completely exposed Drake for not being active enough in his son’s life, as well as the album cover being a suspicious collection of items found in Drake’s father’s luggage, including Ozempic and a pair of gloves. Lamar also exposed Drake for having a secret 11-year-old daughter that he hid from the media and doesn’t support.
He also claimed that Drake has a preference for younger women, especially ones under the legal age of 18, but that has been known for quite a while. The daughter topic was promptly debunked by Drake revealing that he had someone on his team purposefully give Lamar the fake information about the daughter.
Immediately after, Lamar dropped yet another diss without waiting for a response, in which he further harped on Drake for his questionable acts around teenagers.
The final response Drake has made is called “The Heart Part 6”, in which he simply says that he is just too famous to partake in any of the activities that Lamar was accusing him of, clearly upset at the accusations, and saying he understands why Lamar is stuck on the topic of his past accusations.
This is very easily the most popular controversy so far in 2024, Freshman Xander Turner said: “Kendrick is winning, his songs have actual points about Drake’s character and how bad of a person he is when Drake just calls him short.”
It seems Drake truly has no supporters in this, when asked, Senior Tyler Parks said: “Kendrick is winning 100%. Drake is playing defense while Kendrick is killing him with words he lost a while ago.”