Drake and Kendrick Lamar have taken their shots at each other in the last decade, but it has PEAKED.
If you haven’t been able to keep it up - here’s a chronological brief summary and timeline of the beef as things escalate in the hip-hop world.
A BIT OF BACKGROUND:
When J. Cole collabs with Drake in October 2023, he refers to himself, Drake and Kendrick Lamar as the ‘Big Three’, and calls himself Muhammad Ali (as in, the GOAT) in the track ‘First Person Shooter’.
Fast forward to March 26 this year and Kendrick calls Drake and J. Cole out on ‘Like That', saying that there’s no big three, it’s just 'big him'. J. Cole then comes back at Kendrick on April 4 with '7 Minute Drill'. But two days later bows out, apologising to Kendrick and saying he did not feel right engaging in beef with him.
A month after ‘Like That’, Drake blasts back at Kendrick Lamar with ‘Push Ups’ followed by ‘Taylor Made Freestyle'.
WHAT'S HAPPENING BETWEEN DRAKE AND KENDRICK NOW?
Kendrick Lamar released his diss track ‘Euphoria’ last Wednesday, May 1 as a response to Drake’s latest tracks.
In 'Euphoria', Kendrick goes hard on his track expressing his hate towards Drake, whilst clearing the allegations against him.
Of course, 'Euphoria' is the same name of the hit HBO TV show starring Zendaya, which Drake happens to be a producer on.
Three days after ‘Euphoria’, Kendrick released ‘6:16 in LA’ on May 4th which dropped exclusively on his Instagram.
Fans had a theory that Kendrick's choice of title, '6:16 in LA', referred to the 16th of June (Father's Day in the States), and was a dig at the ongoing controversy about Drake's family situation. June 16 is also the day his idol 2pac was born, and Drake created the diss track ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’ using 2Pac and Snoop Dogg’s voices via AI.
Making a reference to one of Drake's songs, Kendrick rapped: "'Back to Back/I like that record/ I'ma get back to that, for the record", and he wasn't joking - he really got Drake 'back' with ‘6:16 in LA’.
On Saturday 4 May, Drake dropped ‘Family Matters’ as a response to ‘Euphoria’ and ‘6:16 in LA’ and things got darker.
He starts ‘Family Matters’ by stating some of Kendrick’s claims were wrong.
Drake claims that Kendrick’s wife Whitney is seeking help as she gets domestically abused by him. He also talks about how one of the kids is not his, and that his wife had a baby with Kendrick's business partner Dave Free.
“Your baby mama captions always screamin', "Save me"/ You did her dirty all your life, you tryna make peace/ I heard that one of 'em little kids might be Dave Free”
The second last line reads:
“There's nowhere to hide, there's nowhere to hide, you know what I mean / They hired a crisis management team to clean up the fact that you beat on your queen”.
When Drake announced the release of ‘Family Matters’ on Instagram, he wrote: “Stop trying to piece together what I know and go pick up the pieces of your broken home.”
But wait, there's more.
K.Dot responded to 'Family Matters' in just 37 minutes, with 'meet the grahams' - a reference to Drake's real last name
In ‘meet the Grahams,’ Kendrick claims Drake has ‘gamblin’, drinkin', pill-poppin' and spendin' problems’ and is basically a letter to Drake’s family.
It starts off with K.Dot apologising to Drake’s son Adonis.
“Dear Adonis /I'm sorry that that man is your father, let me be honest / It takes a man to be a man, your dad is not responsive/ I look at him and wish your grandpa woulda wore a condom”
He even offers to mentor him instead.
“Sometimes our parents make mistakes that affect us until we grown / And you're a good kid that need good leadership / Let me be your mentor since your daddy don't teach you shit.”
At the end of verse one, Kendrick tells 6-year-old Adonis: “Can't understand me right now? Just play this when you eighteen”.
Then he addresses Drake’s mum Sandra and dad Dennis, telling them they gave birth to a ‘master manipulator’, how they raised a horrible person and even saying Drake should unalive himself.
“You raised a horrible f***** person, the nerve of you, Dennis / Sandra, sit down, what I'm about to say is heavy, now listen/ Mm-mm, your son's a sick man with sick thoughts, I think n**** like him should die”
It gets crazier when he claims that Drake’s got sex offenders on OVO - which is the record label that Drake founded.
“He got sex offenders on ho-VO that he keep on a monthly allowance / A child should never be compromised and he keepin' his child around them/ And we gotta raise our daughters knowin' there's predators like him lurkin'”
Kendrick also speaks directly to Drake's alleged secret daughter - faaaar out.
"He a narcissist, misogynist, livin' inside his songs / Try destroy families rather than takin' care of his own / Should be teachin' you time tables or watchin' Frozen with you / Or at your eleventh birthday singin' poems with you / Instead, he be in Turks payin' for sex and poppin' Percs, examples that you don't deserve".
The final verse gets dedicated to Drake himself.
“I know you probably thinkin' I wanted to crash your party / But truthfully, I don't have a hatin' bone in my body / This supposed to be a good exhibition within the game/ But you f***** up the moment you called out my family's name”.
Just when you think you've finally processed all this, Kendrick said 'I'm not done yet'.
He dropped ‘Not Like Us’ just few hours after releasing ‘meet the grahams’, and the opening line is pretty hard out: “Psst, I see dead people.”
He goes as far as calling Drake a pedophile and also tells him he did J. Cole dirty by bringing him up on his song again.
However, Kendrick suggests that J.Cole did the right thing by knowing his place, apologising and getting out of the beef. He asks Drake why he still thinks he’s capable of taking on Kendrick and to stop pretending like he can.
“I think that Oakland show gon' be your last stop, n**** /Did Cole fouI, I don't know why you still pretendin'”
Drake in "Family Matters" suggests Kendrick that he should leave the hood to American rapper YG. As a reply, Kendrick uses DJ Mustard who's not only from California but has also made many hits with YG. And it doubles down since he raps on the track like YG - literally taking Drake's narrative and running with it.
Kendrick mentions about “Family Matters” on this track showing that this is newly recorded, after ‘meet the grahams’.
“The family matter, and the truth of the matter/ It was God's plan to show y'all the liar”.
The cover art of this track is reportedly Drake’s Toronto mansion on the predator app with sex offender app markers.
So yup, that was three tracks in less than 48 hours!
People have been commenting “This dude just shot a second round in a dead corpse”.
Just when we thought checkmate, Drake dropped his response 'The Heart Part 6' on May 6th.
First of all - the title of the track. Drake names his track 'The Heart Part 6'.
Kendrick Lamar has a series (The Heart series) with standalone singles that get dropped before the release of his new albums. The series kicked off with 'The Heart Part 1' in 2010 and of, course the most recent one was 'The Heart Part 5' which was released in 2022.
The cover art for this track is a screenshot of Dave Free's comment of hearts under one of Kendrick Lamar's wife Whitney's post where it's a photo with her kids.
Drake hits the verse addressing all the allegations against him in 'meet the grahams' and 'not like us', stating that his secret daughter and him being a pedophile are all fake news. And then he questions Kendrick why his wife hasn't denied the domestic abuse allegations if it isn't true and why she's following Dave Free on Instagram and not her husband (Kendrick).
"And why isn't Whitney denyin' all of the allegations? / Why is she following Dave Free and not Mr. Morale? / You haven't seen the kids in six months, the distance is wild / Dave leaving heart emojis underneath pics of the child"
Drake wrote the announcement of his diss on Instagram:
"And we know you’re dropping 6 mins after so instead of posting my address you have a lot to address".
Kendrick hasn't dropped anything yet.
