Rap’s crown now sits in the West.
For more than a decade, Drake sat on the throne, as multiple rappers tried and failed to unseat him. Damage was done by Pusha T, but the Canadian MC was able to withstand the character assassination by his longtime nemesis. However, his recent beef with Kendrick Lamar feels different. “Not Like Us,” the current No. 1 song in the country, is a scathing diss record disguised as a party anthem. People dancing and screaming in unison that you might be a pedophile must be a surreal experience, especially for a beloved hitmaker like Drake. He clearly underestimated his opponent.
Kendrick Lamar was calculated and deliberate. He seemed to plot everything out in advance — from teasing a bit of the eventual Dennis Graham Dossier with the “6:16 in LA” cover art to revealing the full picture with “Meet the Grahams.” The Compton rapper refrained from posting on social media unless it was to drop a song, and didn’t leak records or information to popular streamers.
Drake took a different approach. Throughout this back and forth, he trolled and joked on his Instagram Stories, used popular streamer DJ Akademiks as an unofficial spokesman, and “leaked” songs unofficially. Unlike Kendrick, Drake also had to deal with a number of other beefs at the same time. His trolling may have went bit too far, though, as he had to take down “Taylor Made Freestyle,” in which he used AI to rap in the voices of 2Pac and Snoop Dogg, after the Shakur estate threatened legal action if it wasn’t wiped from Drake’s YouTube channel and social media accounts.
Kendrick used this all to his advantage, as he crafted some of the most personal diss records to date. Each song took aim at his opponent’s character and cultural standing, meticulously letting him know that he is not what the culture’s feeling. We broke down five ways Kendrick was able to win this battle.
