ANALYSIS | A Breakdown of the Great Rap War
Photo Credit: The Hollywood Reporter
Rap history was made this spring when two of the biggest modern day rappers — Canadian rapper Drake and American rapper Kendrick Lamar — went head to head in a lyrical showdown.
Despite the pair collaborating on multiple tracks in the early 2010s, they began making subtle jabs at each other around 2013; however, no real publicity or controversy was sparked by it.
The present-day feud began when Drake’s “First Person Shooter” featuring J. Cole was released in October 2023, in which J. Cole called Lamar, Drake, and himself the “big three” of the rap league.
Lamar responded to the track with “Like That” on Mar. 22, in which he rapped, “Motherf*** the big three / n****, it's just big me.”
In response, J. Cole released a diss track aimed at Lamar on Apr. 5 titled “7 Minute Drill”. However, on Apr. 8, he apologized to Lamar, effectively withdrawing from the feud.
“I think [J. Cole] made the right choice [by apologizing] because Kendrick buried Drake,” said Taylor Liu (10). “I don’t know how J. Cole would have dealt with it.”
On the contrary, Aarush Randev (10) thinks that J. Cole shouldn’t have had to apologize to Lamar. “All he did was say a couple lines in Drake’s song. That’s it.”
Randev also explained that J. Cole was the one who helped bring Kendrick Lamar into the limelight. “J. Cole was the one who told Dr. Dre — who is basically the godfather of rap — about Kendrick. Dre working with Kendrick really made [his album good kid, m.A.A.d city],” he said. “I love Kendrick, but I was really salty about him going after J. Cole.”
On Apr. 13, Drake's first diss track against Lamar, “Push Ups”, was leaked, in which he mocked Lamar’s short stature and his deal with Top Dog Entertainment.
He doubled down and dropped “Taylor Made Freestyle” on Apr. 19, in which he taunted Lamar for waiting until Taylor Swift dropped her album before dropping his own music.
He most notably used artificial intelligence (AI) in the song to generate the voices of Tupac and Snoop Dogg, after which he received a cease and desist from Tupac’s estate forcing him to remove “Taylor Made Freestyle” from his social media accounts.
Randev was “sickened” by Drake’s use of AI to imitate Tupac. “Let’s say you leave the names Drake and Kendrick out of it,” said Randev. “You have a man using the fake voice of a dead man who is the idol of another guy, and you're using that voice to mess with [the guy’s] head. That’s just messed up.”
Conversely, Mataya Gill (10), a longtime fan of Drake, thought that his use of AI was “kind of funny.”
“It’s not the best thing to do to use AI, but it works. And it was a good song so I’m not mad about it,” she said. “He should have just used his ghost writer.”
On Apr. 30, Lamar released “euphoria”, attacking Drake’s parenting skills, his use of AI, and his rap abilities. Less than 72 hours later, he released “6:16 in LA”, alleging that a mole in Drake’s team is feeding information to him.
Drake’s response track, “Family Matters”, accused Lamar of domestic abuse with the line: “When you put your hands on your girl, is it self-defense ’cause she’s bigger than you?”
Minutes after “Family Matters” dropped, Lamar rebuffed with “Meet The Grahams”, where he proceeded to insult Drake in personal messages to each of his family members.
“When [Kendrick Lamar] dropped “Meet the Grahams” it was the craziest diss I have ever heard in my entire life because he came for his entire family,” said Sienna Lawrence (11). “And the fact that he dropped two disses back to back, and Drake didn’t even have time to respond.”
In “Meet The Grahams”, Lamar alleged that Drake is a groomer, has ghostwriters, and has a hidden daughter.
“To be honest, I don’t think [all the allegations are] true,” Gill said. “Maybe the ghostwriters [are true], but honestly, everyone in the industry has something they’re hiding.”
On the other hand, Randev believes that there is a lot of evidence proving that Drake is a groomer. He cited examples such as a viral video depicting Drake kissing a 17-year-old girl on stage, as well as a photo of him socializing with a 17-year-old girl he later dated. However, he doesn’t believe that there is enough evidence to support the allegations that Drake has a hidden daughter.
Lawrence, while hesitant to believe the hidden-daughter allegations, expressed that at the same time, she would not be surprised if they were true, citing Drake’s history with his first son, Adonis. “He hid Adonis until a different rapper called him out, and then he started showing Adonis more,” she said.
Drake responded to the allegations on his Instagram story, writing: “Nahhhh hold on can someone find my hidden daughter pls and send her to me … these guys are in shambles.”
Twenty-four hours later, Kendrick Lamar continued to double down on Drake by releasing “Not Like Us”, a track that produced viral lines such as “Certified lover boy, certified pedophile,” and “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-minor.”
The last diss track to release was Drake’s “The Heart Part 6” on May 5, in which Drake says that the hidden-daughter rumor was started by his own team to trick Lamar. “You gotta learn to fact check things and be less impatient,” he rapped.
Liu criticized the track’s lack of ingenuity. “Drake is literally just saying ‘No, I didn’t do this. No, I didn't do this.’ to all the allegations Kendrick made.”
Overall, Riley Tam (10) Tam thinks that Kendrick Lamar won the battle; however, he doesn’t think that losing the feud will significantly affect Drake’s reputation. “Drake has so many numbers, so every time he releases something, people are going to listen to it,” he said. “In five years, people are probably going to forget about it.”
Lawrence believes that people will gain more respect for Kendrick Lamar as an aftermath of the beef. “I’ve seen videos where people are blasting [Kendrick’s] songs, ... I‘ve seen hundreds of people singing ‘Not Like Us’, ... I haven’t seen any videos of communities genuinely jumping up and down to ‘Push Ups’,” she said.