Many rap fans are aware of the ongoing Kendrick v. Drake beef, and some may know that it’s been going for more than a decade. It started all the way back in 2013. But the relationship between the two rappers really started in 2011 when Drake had Kendrick Lamar featured on his new album, Take Care on his song, “Buried Alive Interlude.” What took their collaboration to the heated feud it is now?
After the pair’s initial collaboration on Take Care in 2011, later in 2012 Drake went on a club tour with Kendrick Lamar also with Asap Rocky sparking a connection between the three rappers with some calling them the big three newcomers at the time.
Also in 2012, in October , Kendrick Lamar and Drake appeared on Asap’s hit song “F*** Problems.” The song was widely praised and instantly popular. Another song on Kendrick Lamar’s album at the time Good Kid M.A.A.D City, featured Drake and was considered one of the top songs on the album. The beat , sample, and lyrics appealed to a lot of fans and was an instant R&B hit.
But what really started this beef was in 2013 when Kendrick Lamar and Big Sean surprised the rap industry by coming out with the song “Control” where Kendrick Lamar took jabs towards the rap community as a sort of competition. He stated in the song, “ I got love for you all but I’m tryna murder y’all.” Most of the rap game saw it as a friendly competition but Drake didn’t see eye to eye with the diss.
Also in 2013, at the BET awards, Kendrick Lamar on started pressing Drake–taking tiny jabs saying things such as, “Things ain’t been the same since we dropped “control”/ Pin the tail on the donkey, boy you been a fake.”
Drake got upset and later appeared in Vibe Magazine, where in a cover story he addressed the shots Kendrick took in the past months. Drake stood his ground during the interview saying this: “Where it became an issue is that I was rolling out an album while that verse was still bubbling, so my album roll out became about this thing. What am I supposed to say? Nah, we’ll be buddy-buddy? Mind you, I never once said he’s a bad guy [or] I don’t like him. I think he’s a… genius in his own right, but I also stood my ground as I should. And with that came another step, which then I have to realize I’m being baited and I’m not gonna fall. Jordan doesn’t have to play pickup to prove that he could play ball, no offense. But I’m not gonna give you the chance to shake me necessarily, cause I feel great. There’s no real issue.”
Not much was heard in the years to come; Kendrick and Drake kept releasing songs and albums but did not collaborate again with the rocky relationship.
Much much later, in 2023 in October when Drake released For All The Dogs, Drake And Jermaine Cole ( J Cole ) collaborated on their number 1 song, “First Person Shooter” (FPS). This song is a very competitive song and has a line in the song that didn’t quite sit right with Kendrick, Metro, and Future. In the song J Cole says, “Is it K.Dot? Is it Aubrey? or me? We the big three like we started the league.” This is stating that J. Cole believes Drake, him, and Kendrick Lamar are the big three of rap, but months later we see that Kendrick Lamar didn’t support the idea of that.
In 2024 in May, Metro and Future surprised the world with their groundbreaking rap album and even more specificallywith the song, “Like That”–a song with Kendrick Lamar and Metro and Future. The media immediately noted this song as important with Kendrick Lamar’s diss towards Drake and J Cole on the song. The main parts the media paid attention to is, “F the big three, ***** it’s just big me” and, “First person shooter I hope they came with three switches.” Another lyric that drew attention was “For all the dogs getting buried that’s a k with all these nines they gon see pet cemetery.”
The media went wild over this and Kendrick’s verse was played everywhere across various communities.
MMS student Zenon Metyk says, “It shocked me when “Like That” was released. The internet went wild, and I found out about this beef because of this song.”
Soon after, J Cole released “7 minute drill,” a three-minute-long song dissecting Kendrick’s career. After making the song he said he has no hate for anyone including Kendrick and then later deleted the song off of streaming services.
Seemingly in response, Drake released the song “Push Ups,” the first solo diss that Drake released. The rap community enjoyed this diss but they were more interested in how Kendrick would respond. In this song he says, “You ain’t in no big three, Sza got you wiped down Travis got you wiped down Savage got you wiped down. ”
The song also mentioned popular streamer Kai Cenat and how Kendrick was begging Kai Cenat for a collaboration. It then also pulls an audio clip of Kai Cenat essentially saying “what top five are you in?”. And for a couple of weeks the world was scared Kendrick wasn’t going to respond. He also released “TaylorMade Freestyle” when Kendrick Lamar wasn’t responding. In it, he used AI for rappers’ voices like Tupac to beg Kendrick to respond.
On April 24th, Kendrick released a six-and-a-half-minute-long song as a diss towards Drake. To summarize, Kendrick makes it clear that he doesn’t Drake as makes multiple accusations towards him.
The most memorable day of this beef was May 3rd, when Kendrick dropped “6:16 in LA” and made the allegations much worse that those two weeks earlier. He warned Drake that if he keeps going, these disses will start mentioning family. This track serves more as warning than an actual diss.
The same day, Drake dropped “Family Matters” where he accused Kendrick Lamar of acts such as assaulting his wife, hitting his wife and kids, being short, and being a fake. Drake also mentions that him and Kendrick fighting is like Prince vs. Michael Jackson, which was an actual debate between the two as Prince and Michael Jackson are both prevalent pop kings in the music industry.
Not even 30 minutes after Drake dropped “Family Matters” onto streaming platforms, Kendrick Lamar dropped the most intense diss out of all of them, “Meet the Grahams.” This song has very deep and dark accusations toward Drake. Not only does Kendrick mention his dad, his mother, and his son, but he also mentions Drake’s supposed hidden child. The world went crazy because of this and started questioning what else Drake has hidden. Kendrick states that Drake is a bad father, a trafficker, breaks women hearts, he has a ghostwriter, that he’s a manipulator, a gambler, a psychopath, a narcissist, a genuine weirdo, a misogynist and more. Drake online denied half of these accusations. Some were reported false but some are believed to be truthful.
The next day, Kendrick Lamar dropped the biggest song out of all the disses, “Not Like Us,” which is a club hit and a lot of people enjoyed it.
MMS student Finn Serrano said, “Personally I think Kendrick won because Drake’s allegations were much worse, and they played ‘Not Like Us’ at Walmart.” For Serrano and other fans, the popularity of the song was the nail in the coffin because of its sheer hype and how many people listened to it. Within the week of its release it made it to number 1 on Billboard.
According to the Billboard Top 100 , “Lamar’s scalding diss blazed the internet and charts, as ‘Not Like Us’ debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100.” People say when Kendrick released this song he won beef.
The next day on May 5th Drake dropped “the heart part 6,” in which he denied all the claims towards him. He addresses claims that he was with underage women, saying, “Only f**** with Whitney’s, not Millie Bobby Brown, I’d never look twice at no teenager.” But fans have noticed that out of all the Kendrick Lamar disses he doesn’t mention famous actor Millie Bobby Brown, so fans speculate if Drake is lying or not.
Most say Kendrick Lamar won but some say Drake won.
Adult rap fan Charles Caldwell says, “Kendrick won this beef easily with the beat and flow on all of his disses and with how serious his allegations are.”
Lamarcus Cousins says, “ I think Drake won this with ‘Pushups’ and ‘Family Matters’, which were better than Kendrick’s disses.”
Kendrick then at the end of beef had a concert with a lot of Compton popular artists like Dr Dre, Tyler the Creator, Mustard, Roddy Rich, Steve Lacy, and Black Hippy and well as West Coast rappers like Schoolboy Q. The internet went insane when they saw the amount of rappers that sided with Kendrick in this beef.
Overall who do you think won, and would you like another rap beef like this one?
