After a week of bitter diss tracks, a conversation about how the rap battle played out for the chart-topping rappers and how their personas and careers might be affected.
It’s gotten ugly between Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
Over the weekend, the two generation-defining rappers turned a decade of competitive tension into increasingly personal attacks delivered on a barrage of diss tracks filled
with taunts, insults, accusations of abuse, alleged inside information and threats.
With Lamar’s songs, including “Euphoria” and “Not Like Us,” dominating the online conversation and streaming charts, the battle seemed to cool on Sunday evening,
after a resigned-sounding second response this weekend from Drake, who denied some of the most serious claims against him, including pedophilia,
even as he doubled down on his allegations against Lamar. Then, on Tuesday, a security guard was shot and hospitalized in serious condition outside Drake’s Toronto home; the authorities said they did not yet have a motive and the investigation was ongoing.
As the musical volleys paused, at least for now, the New York Times pop music critic Jon Caramanica and the Times music reporter Joe Coscarelli surveyed the songs, the strategy, the reputational wreckage and where each rapper stands now for an episode of the video podcast Popcast (Deluxe). These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
JOE COSCARELLI I don’t think we need to jump in right away to definitively say who we think won this beef, because the fight seems to have been decided by popular vote. Nobody’s really calling this for Drake, right?
JON CARAMANICA I think even Drake is not calling this for Drake, because of the tone of what he put out last, “The Heart Part 6.” In the big picture, though, everyone won and nobody won. Thinking about fandom in the stan era, you’re either on one side or the other. But what I’ve realized in the wake of these songs is that Drake fandom comes with different levels of fickleness. His fans are willing to entertain, “Maybe he’s not the person that I thought he was.” Whereas most Kendrick fans are not willing to entertain that idea, despite Drake’s allegations in “Family Matters” that Kendrick at some point hired a crisis management team to cover up that he abused his fiancée, which are quite serious.
COSCARELLI You frame this in terms of fandom, but I actually think of it more in terms of hate. After 10-plus years of uber-popularity, I think Drake gets more hate than any artist at his level, maybe ever, with the exception of Michael Jackson, whose legacy has interestingly been a great lyrical through line in this beef and the subject of some of the best rapping from both guys.
The distaste for Drake is extremely personal to people. It’s not enough for him to be a run-of-the-mill misogynist, he has to be a serial predator. It’s not enough for him to be corny or appropriative, he has to be an active ruiner of other people’s sounds and careers.
I think what Kendrick did most effectively in all of these songs was to take these existing emotional narratives — pressure points — about Drake and express them in a way that only Kendrick Lamar could: with very intricate rhymes, very intense storytelling. Kendrick was able to hit the notes that people wanted to hear, and played to the crowd perfectly.
And there’s this sense, true or not, that Kendrick saw the whole field and moved accordingly.
CARAMANICA It’s not simply that he did that, it’s that no one expected him, the only rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize, to do that. People didn’t think Kendrick was a gamer in this way. He might be like, “I’m the best rapper,” but “I’ve been collecting dirt on you for weeks and weeks and weeks, potentially months, potentially years, in order to absolutely ether you in your own house”? That’s different. No one expected that of Kendrick. So he gets a tremendous amount of credit for the chasm between what people thought he would do and what he actually did.
COSCARELLI Whereas Drake basically lived up to exactly what you expected.
CARAMANICA Drake did Drake. And if anything, Kendrick also did Drake.
COSCARELLI He went back-to-back after “Euphoria,” releasing “6:16 in LA” before Drake could respond. He also made hits, which we’ll get to.
CARAMANICA I will say, this beef was fun until it wasn’t fun. One of two things is true about Drake’s “Family Matters”: Either what he’s saying is accurate, and he’s just done irreparable damage to a man’s reputation and his family, or Drake is lying and talking about abuse in such a casual way so as to minimize the actual conversation around abuse.
This beef started with “I’m the best rapper.” It’s Kendrick saying, “It’s not the Big Three, it’s just big me.” And with his responses, Kendrick is saying, essentially: “I’m the best rapper, and I’m using those skills not to say that you’re the worst rapper, but that you’re the worst person. Not only can I beat you with bars, but I can use those bars to beat you with condescension, disgust and distaste.”
COSCARELLI Despite my complaints about Kendrick’s “Meet the Grahams” as a song — the theatricality of the creative writing exercise, the condescension and the faux-enlightenment — that’s totally trumped by it as a strategic move. This song, released less than 30 minutes after Drake’s “Family Matters” on Friday, is why Kendrick Lamar won. This is the knockout.
CARAMANICA You have to understand what could come if the pachinko ball goes into the least likely corner. And I think in Drake’s mind, the least likely corner is that Kendrick makes an actual hit — a truly popping record — that’s also narratively painful. And that’s what Kendrick did with “Not Like Us,” which followed on Saturday. It’s a danceable, quote-unquote pop record that I don’t think Drake anticipated. Maybe it’s not the most vicious kill shot in this back and forth, or the most specifically damaging. But it exists because of all those other kill shots.
COSCARELLI And I would even argue that, in fact, it might be the most damaging to Drake because it takes an anti-Drake meme and serious accusation from the last five years — that Drake likes underage girls, a claim he’s already been bothered enough by to mention on an album — and it makes it funny, it makes it a playground insult. You can sing along to it.
CARAMANICA Again, that’s Kendrick using a Drake tactic and skill against Drake. And you can sense it took a toll. Drake’s response, his final song (at least for now), “The Heart Part 6,” is not as artful as most Drake records. Drake is a king of structure. And when you listen to this, it isn’t as tight as it should be. It feels rushed, rambling, poorly edited.
COSCARELLI I actually thought Drake might go in a different direction. I thought “Not Like Us” put the fight back on Drake’s turf by making it fun again after “Meet the Grahams.” I thought Drake would come back with punchlines, just jokes, over a fun beat. It might have been closer if he had. But he once again went grave to claim, “I’m not a predator.”
CARAMANICA Where does this competition leave Kendrick and Drake? Drake is 37. Kendrick is 36. These are ultimately mid-to-late career rappers relitigating stuff that they’ve been litigating in some form or another, on record or off, for more than a decade.
COSCARELLI My main takeaway is that both of these guys are going to put out absolutely massive next albums, maybe as soon as this summer. These diss tracks are going to be streamed a combined 250 million times in their first week, according to estimates, more than any album by any artist besides Taylor Swift. No matter what they do next, it’s going to be huge. It has extended their careers.
For the Drake detractors, maybe their jokes are louder. But one of the many things people complain about Drake at this point in his career is that his subject matter is stale. I think this gives him a new round of material.
CARAMANICA When you are in a 20 vs. 1 and you are the one, even if you take an “L,” you’re still the one. I don’t think anything’s happened that makes Drake not the one.
Kendrick’s always been more ambivalent about the spotlight than Drake. His last album, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” deliberately undermined the preexisting Kendrick narrative on a musical level, and also on a word-for-word level. It was like, “I’m not perfect. Please don’t put me on a pedestal anymore. If anything, it’s alienating and it makes it hard for me to be my actual self.” He’s been saying that and people have been ignoring him.
That said, it’s worth noting that Drake made a point of rebutting Kendrick’s specific accusations, but Kendrick didn’t do the same. It’s hard not to wonder why.
COSCARELLI And yet despite that, and despite the unverified accusations made against him in these songs, which he has not addressed, Kendrick’s approval rating after this beef feels near 100 percent.
CARAMANICA The spotlight is now Kendrick’s, whether he wants it or not. If this battle never happened, would the biggest years of Drake’s and Kendrick’s careers be in front of them?
COSCARELLI Definitely not.
CARAMANICA But now it’s possible.
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Source: New York Post
