Shane Boose, who records and performs as Sombr, struck a chord with “Back to Friends,” a song tracking the emotional mess of a fractured situationship.
But before he landed on the song, the native New Yorker was adrift in Los Angeles, “falling in with the wrong crowds” and becoming “a loser” — a term he defines, opaquely, as “the person my mom tells me not to become.”
He found the right collaborator, and now he has his first Grammy nod, for best new artist.
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge tossed out a defamation lawsuit that Drake brought against Universal Music Group on Thursday, ruling that lyrics branding the superstar as a pedophile in Kendrick Lamar’s dis track “Not Like Us” were opinion.
Judge Jeannette A. Vargas rejected the suit in a written opinion that began by citing “the vitriolic war of words” and saying the case arose “from perhaps the most infamous rap battle in the genre’s history.”
Filed in January, the lawsuit alleged that UMG published and promoted “Not Like Us” even though it included false pedophilia allegations against Drake and suggested listeners should resort to vigilante justice.
The lawsuit also alleged that the track tarnished his reputation and decreased the value of his brand.
Universal Music Group, the parent record label for both artists, denied the allegations.
“From the outset, this suit was an affront to all artists and their creative expression and never should have seen the light of day,” UMG said in a statement. “We’re pleased with the court’s dismissal and look forward to continuing our work successfully promoting Drake’s music and investing in his career.”
Lamar was not named in the lawsuit.
There was no immediate response to mails sent to representatives for Drake seeking comment.
It’s late evening on March 21 as I sit wide-eyed, waiting in anticipation to listen to Heavy, the fourth album from Top Dawg Entertainment’s R&B reserve SiR. Now, two decades after being founded, TDE remains one of the few modern rap labels that can still generate excitement surrounding artist releases, regardless of who it is. Think of the pure chaos and aggression that comes with the bass on ScHoolBoy Q’s “Ride Out” (from 2016’s Blank Face LP)as he paints the picture of cutthroat confrontation that comes with life as a Hoover Gangster Crip. Think of the foggy and damn near divine Crooklin and D. Sanders–produced instrumental on Isaiah Rashad’s SZA-featured “Stuck in the Mud,” off the vibe that is The Sun’s Tirade, where Rashad details his struggles with substance abuse. Or think of the dreamy soundscape where SZA softly sings of her failed relationships and insecurities on her 2017 album, Ctrl.
That is to say, when it was time to press play on Heavy, I was ready to hear SiR sashay through his latest romantic entanglements with dulcet vocals over airy instrumentals. But then I found out that verse dropped.
TDE’s former franchise player, co-founder of media company pgLang, and arguably best rapper alive Kendrick Lamar seized any and all attention in music and Twitter town hall conversation when he shook the earth’s tectonic plates with a guest spot on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” where he took aim at the other two members of hip-hop’s “Big Three,” fellow rap megastars Drake and J. Cole. On an album laced with subliminals directed toward the Champagne Papi, Kendrick’s verse opened the floodgates for what may be hip-hop’s last great beef. In one night, SiR’s underwhelming fourth project with TDE felt like it came and went.
Very few rappers today carry the gravitas to shift the paradigm with a single verse. Time and time again, Kendrick has proved capable of this, dating back to his now-iconic verse on Big Sean’s 2013 record “Control,” where he attempted to raise the bar of competition in the rap game. With “Like That” as the kickstarter, Kendrick both incited and won the Great War between him and Drake. For those questioning who’s the top emcee between the two rap heavyweights, Kendrick answered the question over the course of four diss tracks viciously dissecting Drake, from the eerie character study “Meet the Grahams” to the indisputable L.A. bop that is “Not Like Us.” The once “good kid” solidified his legacy as the best rapper of his generation with a decisive victory before Drake could even drop “The Heart Part 6.”
On “Push Ups,” Drake dragged Kendrick’s current relationship with TDE founder Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith into their personal beef, taking shots at Top Dawg when attempting to belittle Kendrick’s pockets with, “Extortion baby, whole career you been shook up / ’Cause Top told you drop and give me 50 like some push-ups.” But where Drake may have been attempting to open a wound, the end result may have actually exposed how tight K.Dot and his former employers still are. Kendrick was quick to establish that there’s still love and respect for Top while refuting those claims on his first official full diss record, “Euphoria,” when he remarked, “Aye, Top Dawg, who the fuck they think they playin’ with? / Extortion my middle name as soon as you jump off of that plane, bitch.” This moment and the overwhelming support by TDE artists on social media was a reminder that Top Dawg Entertainment is a family, at least by outside appearances. Yet, when “Euphoria” was put on streaming, the copyright reading “Kendrick Lamar, under exclusive license to Interscope Records,” also a reminder that the relationship with TDE is strictly familial.
Even if extortion seems like an exaggeration, rumors were circulating of Kendrick leaving TDE well before he announced that 2022’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers would be his final project for the label. While breaking rap streaming records with “Euphoria”—and later, again, with “Not Like Us”—Kendrick made it clear that he no longer needs the same level of support of the label that signed him at 16 years old. The only label he answers to now is Interscope under a new direct licensing agreement, shedding his ties with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath imprint, too. (Kendrick originally signed a joint deal with Interscope and Aftermath ahead of the release of good kid, m.A.A.d city.) Publicly, Punch (President of TDE and manager of SZA) and Top treated Kendrick like their baby bird leaving the nest by giving Kendrick their blessing to leave TDE and focus on pgLang, but Kendrick’s 2022 departure from TDE marked the end of their 18-year transformation from mom-and-pop record label to a rap empire. How does one continue to grow their empire after losing the fulcrum that held everything together for all those years?
With Kendrick on the front lines winning a Pulitzer Prize and 17 Grammys while dropping undeniable rap classics bearing TDE’s name for all those years—alongside strong outings from his label siblings ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, SZA, and Isaiah Rashad—the TDE stamp on an artist’s release carries the same weight as a film with the A24 logo flashing at the start of its trailer. Whether that’s seeing Top Dawg sharing 2019 TDE signee Zacari’s single “Don’t Trip” like a Bat signal marking the young singer’s official arrival after he spent years leaving his vocal trail on a plethora of TDE songs. Or seeing newcomer Ray Vaughn on L.A. Leakers sporting a TDE chain under his yellow puffy as he raps his ass off about the night he met Top and Snoop Dogg. Or when “Top Dawg Entertainment” flashes in the opening credits of Doechii’s “Alter Ego” music video, which featured the Tampa-born artist taking viewers through the swamp waters of Florida in a visual that feels so foreign to the L.A.-centric label. When that TDE logo pops up, listeners expect a certain level of hip-hop excellence to follow, even if today’s TDE vastly differs from its earlier incarnation.
In a 2022 interview with Mic, Punch discusses how things have changed since the early days of TDE. The label used to have more synergy amongst its artists, whether that was ScHoolboy Q’s handwriting being included on Kendrick’s good kid album cover or Kendrick showing out on ScHoolboy’s quadruple-platinum single “Collard Greens” less than a year later. You would often see TDE move as a unit, like during their 2013 BET Hip-Hop Awards cypher. Today, the extent of TDE synergy comes in the form of the occasional labelmate guest spot that feels less like artists intertwining styles and more like filling in an open 16 bars or hook on a song. Even Punch admits he is far less hands-on with the newer TDE artists. “With those first guys, I’m in there with them every single day, engineering. We started together and came up together. But a lot of the new artists now are coming into a situation that was already built. They have their own teams, and I just come in when they need,” he said.
Outside of Kendrick’s departure, there have been other signs of mild turbulence within the label. In the past, TDE’s current franchise cornerstone and undeniable megastar SZA has cried for help via Twitter—using words like “hostile” when describing her delayed album and occasionally contentious working relationship with Punch—although these statements would often get deleted at some point. Carson, California, rapper Reason seems like he’s been doing everything in his power to get kicked off the label ever since joining in 2018, whether that’s getting into an argument on a podcast with co-president of TDE and son of Top himself, Moosa, or rapping over Drake beats days after the Toronto rapper accused one of TDE’s presidents of extortion.
When comparing TDE to some of the most iconic rap labels of the past, it’s easy to imagine that losing their first superstar is officially where the decline starts. Death Row’s best days were behind them after Tupac Shakur died in 1996, and Bad Boy was never the same after the Notorious B.I.G.’s death the following year. But the untimely loss of those two greats doesn’t fully explain why those labels fell. At Death Row, Dr. Dre had already walked out the doors before Tupac’s murder, but ultimately, Suge Knight going to prison is what led to Interscope dropping the label. At Bad Boy, Mase appeared to be the one to fill the void Biggie left, going quadruple-platinum in 1997 with his debut album Harlem World,before stepping away from music in pursuit of a higher calling from religion. While this wasn’t the end of Bad Boy, it likely played a factor in Bad Boy being unable to pay back and fulfill the $50 million advance from Arista Records based on good faith earned by a lucrative 1997. Simply losing their breadwinner didn’t do those iconic labels in; a flawed infrastructure and unforeseen circumstances sank their respective ships.
In the midst of the current rap game, TDE is in rare air. Drake’s OVO Sound is at times more focused on propping up Drake and who Drake loves right now than building the genuine camaraderie (and roster of heatmakers) of a TDE, and while J. Cole’s Dreamville stable has a lot of promise, they haven’t touched the commercial success of TDE’s best. In this era, you may not even think of TDE’s journey or what going from independent to world-renowned means anymore; you’ve come to know TDE as an institution for dope Black music.
Now 20 years old, Top Dawg Entertainment doesn’t show signs of a sharp fall-off just yet. First and foremost, they have SZA, whose latest album, SOS, achieved meteoric commercial, critical, and Grammy success with songs like the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping, five-times-platinum single “Kill Bill.” TDE not only has a compilation album on the way celebrating their anniversary, but Black Hippy member and original TDE rapper Jay Rock also has his fourth album, Eastside Johnny*, on the horizon. ScHoolboy Q’s latest (and most critically acclaimed) album, Blue Lips,is a testament to TDE’s ability to churn out premium bodies of work. And even with Kendrick’s “Like That” verse overshadowing SiR’s Heavy, songs like “Only Human” reflect the singer’s growth as an artist leaning more into his vulnerability. However, the real test for TDE’s prolonged success comes in developing the roster’s future. How much time is needed to turn the Ray Vaughns, Doechiis, and (checks notes to see if he’s still signed) Reasons of the label into stars? And as Isaiah Rashad continues to grow creatively with each new release, one has to imagine he has greater potential working with Warner Records and a sober mind.
Those concerns, for now, feel like minor cracks in a well-oiled machine, with SZA’s superstardom being the engine that keeps it all running—although we hope that talk of her next album, the long-awaited Lana, getting a release sometime in the near future doesn’t have you losing sleep at night. For TDE to keep the empire standing, they must appease their queen. In a 2017 OTHERtone interview, Jimmy Iovine praised the way TDE built a buzz around SZA, leading to TDE’s joint deal for SZA with RCA being a 70-30 split in TDE’s favor. Yet still, SZA has spoken about issues with her situation. How much time is there until SZA’s deal with RCA is up, allowing her to fly out of the nest like Kendrick? And will TDE be prepared if that day comes sooner than expected?
At TDE’s peak—somewhere within that 2016-18 era—every single one of their artists dropped a project, and their franchise player Kendrick Lamar made pit stops on almost every single release, bolstering them up through Damn., culminating with Black Panther: The Album and The Championship Tour. What’s stopping TDE from restoring the feeling with a SZA-centered label renaissance, fueled by guest spots propelling her labelmates’ albums into another stratosphere with divine vocals alone? Top and Punch have proven time and time again that they know when it’s time to strike. And for SiR’s sake, let’s hope Kendrick gives TDE a heads-up next time he plans on starting a rap beef around the time of a TDE release.
Kendrick Lamar Is Not Letting Up On His “Hate” For Drake
One hour in and the YouTube release already has 1.3 million views. The “certified boogeyman” went for the jugular for four minutes and 33 seconds.
K Dot is continuing to let Drizzy know he “hates” his entire existence–and accusing Drake of supporting sex offenders. Even the track’s cover art is also poking at those allegations. It is allegedly supposed to represent a map showing the location of sex offenders inside Drake’s Toronto home.
“And [X] got a weird case, why is he around? Certifed Lover Boy, certified pedophiles,” Lamar said. “Why he trollin’ like a b***h? Ain’t you tired? Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-Minor.”
In ‘Not Like Us,’ Kendrick also triples down on his warnings from the first and second diss, ‘Meet The Grahams.’ Keep ya daughters far from the boy, Kendrick says.
“To any b***h that talk to him and think that you in love, just make sure you hide your lil sister from him,” Lamar rapped.
Chile, What Else Did K Dot Say?
It’s been a slaughterfest from the booth since March. J. Cole briefly entered the beef with ‘7 Minute Drill,’ but pulled back with an apology. In the last two weeks, the same ones who dragged him online are giving him props. Cole has been nonstop trending for the “smart business move” of staying out of the flames!
The latest drop is the shortest song of the two. Kendrick raps explicitly at Drake, flipping lines from his clapback ‘Family Matters.’ Drizzy released that after ‘6:16 In LA.’ Kendrick came back with ‘Meet the Grahams’ within an hour.
First Person Shooter Like That Push Ups Taylor Made Freestyle Euphoria 6:16 in LA Buried Alive Pt. 2 Family Matters Meet The Grahams Not Like Us
On ‘Family Matters,’ Drizzy accused Kendrick of being a fake activist, putting on with a voice that “always sounds kike he tryna free the slaves.” Well, Kenny used that to paint a picture of Drake as a colonizer of Atlanta artists.
We gotta give you the whole bar…’cause wow.
“Once upon a time, all of us was in chains. Homie still double down callin’ us some slaves. Atlanta was the meca, building railroads and trains. Bare with me for a second, let me put y’all on game. The settlers was usin town folk to make ’em richer. Fast forward, 2024 you got the same agenda. You run to Atlanta when you need a check balance. Let me break it down for you, this the real n***a challenge. You called Future when you didn’t see the club. Lil Baby help you get your lingo up. 21 gave you false street cred. Thug made you feel like you a slime in your head. Quavo said you can be from northside. Why 2 Chainz say you good, but he lied. You run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars. No you not a colleague, you a f**kin’ colonizer”
And then he dug up some old dirt on the Canadian rapper—a betrayal of his mentor, Lil Wayne.
Editor’s note: This piece was published about an hour before Kendrick dropped another Drake diss—“Not Like Us”—his fourth in four days and third in 36 hours. We can assume it won’t be his last—in fact, he raps on the latest track: “How many stocks do I really have in stock? / One, two, three, four, five, plus five,” so that means we may be getting 10 … total? Ten more? You have to admire this level of dedication to pettiness, even if it’s running our copy editors and production team ragged.
Rap isn’t the NBA. There’s no Anthony Edwards or Jamal Murray capable of sending our washed stars to Cancun. Bronny’s biggest opps are bored NBA writers and the ESPN ticker tape. Meanwhile, Adonis has witnessed two generational MCs scold his father for his child-raising abilities while taking buzz saws to his family tree before the age of 7. Commercial hip-hop—like most of the modern music industry—has become too fat, old, neutered, and niche to launch a new household name and thus more desperate and existentially bloody. This is what happens when the old guard becomes the only guard.
In 2024, with Kanye solely devoted to harvesting Ty Dolla $ign’s life force, only two rappers are capable of hoarding this much cultural real estate. Over the past month, Beyoncé dropped a country record, Quavo and Chris Brown are beefing over who terrorizes women more, and Taylor Swift tried to drive her DeLorean to the 1830s (apparently without all the slavery). Yet all of these moments pale in comparison to what unfolded Friday night when two members of rap’s “Big Three” finally unleashed their Trinity test.
After weeks of threatening theoretical nukes, Drake finally donned the Oppenheimer hat with “Family Matters.” On the seering, seven-minute diss track Aubrey says that Kendrick assaulted his wife, while Kendrick’s close friend and label cofounder Dave Free sired a child with her. Seeing the mushroom cloud from Lucali’s, Kenny S. Truman said “bet” and immediately dropped a bomb on Drake’s head with the deranged and highly cursed “Meet the Grahams.” The top-level notes are brutal: In Kendrick’s telling, Drake is hiding another child and is the head of a Toronto child sex-trafficking ring. Meanwhile, Drake says that Kendrick hired a crisis-management team to hide the fact he physically abused his partner. If you’re asking why two of the biggest pop stars of their generation are debasing themselves in a bossip beef—all of the details of which, as of press time, have not been verified—while throwing women and kids on the front line, in the words of Kendrick: “I’ma get back to that, for the record.”
In terms of size, scale, and capital, we’re witnessing the last rap beef of this magnitude. And while too much critical ink is wasted on the monoculture—or lack thereof—it bears mentioning there will never be another rapper that occupies the same cultural space as Drake or Kendrick. There probably won’t even be another J. Cole. (Some subscribe to the belief that Jermaine belongs in the same conversation as Drake and Kendrick … I don’t.) As hip-hop becomes more diffuse and hyper-regional, Drake and Kendrick represent the last artists popular enough to suck up this much oxygen, even as the quality of their music has dipped to the point of feeling irrelevant next to their all-consuming celebrity.
The shenanigans started in March, when Future and Metro Boomin dropped their first of two albums this year, We Don’t Trust You. The main headline from it was Kendrick finally emerging from the therapy haze of Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers with a feature on “Like That,” in which Kendrick proceeds to do to Drake what the Canadian has done to his peers and well-endowed exes: turn a barn-burning diss into an inescapable smash hit. “Like That” spent five weeks atop the Hot 100, becoming Kendrick’s longest-running no. 1 in the process. It wasn’t long before an emboldened Metro Hoffa unionized the aging vets of the blog era against Big Drake and OVO industries. A$AP Rocky, the Weekend, Kanye, and Rick Ross happily jumped in.
J. Cole was the first to take the Kendrick bait on the underbaked “7 Minute Drill.” Over two rushed and wonky beats, hip-hop’s resident laundry man got high off the fumes of his overhyped feature run and claimed he wasn’t that jealous of Kendrick before mentioning that 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly is trash. But just days later, Jermaine decided to Summer Jam–screen himself at his annual hometown festival by admitting to a crowd of thousands that he was tossing and turning at night over the entire debacle. After (prolly) letting Nas and the general public down once again, Cole smartly ceded his time and the floor to the Big Two.
Since then, Drake and Kendrick have traded six records back and forth of varying degrees of quality and lucidity. Drake called Kendrick a short, hobbit-sized cuck, so Lamar lobbed back that Toronto’s finest has his braids pulled too tight and isn’t allowed to say the N-word anymore. One man desecrated Tupac’s grave with AI, while the other pissed all over a timestamp record while reportedly getting fed information from Roy Woods and OB O’Brien. “Push-Ups” and “Taylor Made” bled into “Euphoria” and “6:16 in L.A.” But after Friday’s squabble, all of them have been rendered inconsequential. To continue with the nuclear analogy: With “Meet the Grahams” and “Family Matters,” the Doomsday Machine has been activated, so maybe it’s best to hide underground. (J. Cole certainly agrees.)
If this all sounds exhausting, it should. Drake is 37 and Kendrick is about to be. Both these men have kids and families they could be tending to, but instead we’re treated to a beef that started over essentially nothing—if we’re to believe Kendrick, over Drake and Cole linking up in “First Person Shooter” and invoking the idea of a rap “Big Three.” But not a single song released since “Like That” lives up to the expectations each of these men stoked through their years-long Cold War. Nothing measures up to the base-level quality of “Control,” “Back to Back,” or “Stay Schemin.” Instead, we’re treated to two aging rappers squabbling over … who’s cornier? Or maybe it’s about who is or isn’t Kobe? Or even who should be able to buy Tupac’s ring at Sotheby’s for a million dollars?
Even the beef’s most damaging revelations are disingenuous at best—and outright craven at the worst. Drake’s faux-outrage over the account of Kendrick’s treatment of his partner doesn’t mean much when Drake was cosigning Chris Brown’s gang ties a few bars earlier and was caping for Tory Lanez to be freed a few months ago. Similarly, if Kendrick is so concerned with sexual assault and protecting young women from the OVO compound, why did he spend his last album crying about cancel culture and propping up Kodak Black?
Drake and Kendrick don’t have the politics to be doing all this. Is Drake wrong that Kendrick, “always rappin’ like you ’bout to get the slaves freed?” Not really. But also Drake stands for nothing and has never committed an interesting political thought to record in his life. And if Kendrick knows incriminating information about Drake, why has he withheld it until it was this advantageous? As with most hip-hop beefs, we’ve ended up where we were always destined to—men using women, wives, baby mothers, parents, and children in increasingly gross and depraved ways to satisfy their rabid egos.
The microaggressions, subliminals, and shots that got us to this moment date back to a time when GQ still had enough juice to terrorize rappers into dressing like Williamsburg hipsters. What person under 30 even recalls that Drake invited peers like Kendrick, Rocky, Cole, and Meek to open for him on tour in 2012 and then spent the next decade treating the aforementioned like his sons for taking him up on the offer? How many people still remember all the blog mainstays Kendrick shot at on 2013’s “Control”? If Drake is still upset because Compton’s resident good kid threatened to “tuck him into his pajamas clothes” during a BET cypher, there’s no helping my man. The only entities profiting from this scuffle are Universal Music Group, the Joe Budden extended podcast universe, a bunch of teenage streamers I refuse to Google, and the collection of rap publications that haven’t been nuked by private equity firms.
The most straightforward and generous read of this entire beef is that Drake and Kendrick are rappers lost to time. They’re formalists in a genre that’s moved past the tradition. They came up in a time when cosigns were necessary (Lil Wayne, Dr. Dre), radio runs were crucial, and albums still mattered. Drake belongs to a long lineage of rappers turned pop stars (e.g., LL Cool J, Nelly, 50 Cent), while Kendrick is marketed as a conscious alternative (e.g., Nas, pre-MAGA Kanye, Tupac). Even the duo would love you to believe this is Michael Jackson vs. Prince—numbers vs. “real” art.
Perhaps that’s why the beef feels so toothless. Drake and Kendrick aren’t fighting the same war; they’re two grown men arguing past one another because there’s no one left to challenge. One views dominance—via streaming numbers and celebrity—as inextricable from the art, while the other envisions himself as a purist responsible for upholding a grand tradition. And yet, each rapper has ended up in a similar place.
There’s very little compelling about two men who signed to major labels in their 20s debating who got extorted when the most obvious answer is both. Drake mocking Kendrick for his cringeworthy Taylor Swift and Maroon 5 features doesn’t mean much when he was spitting water-carrying lyrics like “Taylor Swift the only nigga that I ever rated” a year ago and starring in Apple commercials with the pop star. Similarly, can Kendrick really talk about Drake running to Yachty (the recovering “King of the Teens”) for swag, when he found his own nepo-version of the Atlanta rapper in Baby Keem?
At the time of publication, Kendrick is in the lead in this battle, even if that distinction feels hollow. Drake has dropped 13 projects in 13 years, compared to Kendrick’s six. Of course when Cornrow Kenneth descends from his Pulitzer perch to wrestle in the mud with the other aging degenerates it’s going to mean more. But Kendrick is also beating his rival in a way that would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago.
When Drake triumphed over Meek Mill in 2015 it was because he understood the internet better than any of his peers. Meme culture was new and novel. The impact of “Hotline Bling” and the dancing Drake GIF apocalypse was still months away. Meek was having an argument about authenticity when his own label boss triumphed over 50 Cent years priors despite being outed as a correctional officer. A ghostwriter reveal and an alleged incident in which a T.I. associate pissed on Drake’s leg should’ve been enough for the Philadelphia rapper to eke out a win, but Meek wasn’t ready to accept that the internet (and by extension the nerds) won.
Almost eight years later, Kendrick has rendered Drake’s biggest advantage obsolete. The meme economy got a reality TV show host elected to the White House and almost toppled American democracy in the process. Our relationship in 2024 to hyper-online celebrities is no longer cute and interesting. It’s not just that Kendrick has been funnier—“is it the braids?” is an all-timer—it’s that he’s less accessible than Drake. Unless you have the comedic timing of Rick Ross, taunting another man over IG stories is never going to be as cool as someone who refuses to use the internet. The quality of the most recent diss tracks became irrelevant the minute Kendrick outmaneuvered Drake by releasing “Meet the Grahams” about an hour after “Family Matters” dropped. (And especially after Drake was left deflecting Kendrick’s “hiding another child” accusations on Instagram instead of taking a victory lap for his own track.)
Barring a RICO case or something even more horrific—and potentially verifiable—coming to light, nothing released in the past two months will help or hinder either man’s legacy. Unless Drake and Kendrick are half as sick, perverted, abusive, and morally repugnant as these records claim, the most likely outcome is that UMG will cut both a massive check for the streaming boom this animosity fueled. But this is a post-truth beef. Kendrick stans will believe that Drake has a kindergarten class of unclaimed sons and daughters because it’s funny and convenient. And unless a more reputable source than The OVO Post finds that Kendrick does have a history of physically assaulting women, the chances of it impacting his sales and critical stature are practically nonexistent.
Cover-art Ozempic receipts aside, most of the scars from this tantrum will be reserved for the family and friends who have now been immortalized in rushed and harried songs that have already begun to lose their luster. And the only rapper who has sustained real damage thus far did it to himself, and his stans are still convinced rap’s Charlie Brown will kick the football next time. But Drake and Kendrick aren’t held to the same standard as other artists. They aren’t just the most popular rappers of their generation—one could argue they’re among the most consequential musicians of the 21st century. A Canadian child actor and Tupac’s shortest stan went from the Zippyshare trenches to the last remaining superstars of a genre that’s going the way of rock. The perch seems lonely—two rappers bold enough to use their government names unable to connect with the only other person in the world who could relate. Call it poetic justice.
You knew deep down it was real. When the rough version of Drake’s “Push Ups” leaked online Saturday afternoon, the big question at first was: Was it actually AI? If it was, it would mean someone random had just penned a pretty competent diss track aimed at Kendrick Lamar, Metro Boomin, and a half dozen other rap luminaries. If it wasn’t, it would mean that Aubrey had finally taken the gloves off and was ready to chip a nail. Sure, there were a few lines anyone steeped in Drake lore could’ve gotten off. But AI could never get that specific in its barbs, and AI certainly could never replicate that patented Drake sigh.
A few hours later, Drake confirmed as much by releasing the full, finished track. He swapped out the beat—the rough cut evoked Tupac’s classic “Hit ’Em Up,” while the final paid homage to Biggie’s “What’s Beef?”—and cut a few lines aimed at Rozay (though the Teflon Don didn’t forget; more on that later). But it was all there: the response the rap world had been waiting on since Kendrick Lamar poked the Canadian bear three weeks ago on “Like That.”
It’s admittedly not the nuclear detonation Joe Budden promised, but “Push Ups (Drop and Give Me 50)” makes it clear that Drake is up for the fight that rap fans have been waiting on for a generation. He landed disses about Kendrick’s height and former label situation, threw some petty shade at Future and Metro, and then chucked a few grenades at the Weeknd and his team. But if you’ve been anywhere near your For You page this weekend, then you know there’s so much more. (J. Cole behind enemy lines? Nose jobs? Dockers? French Montana? Ja Morant?!) Let’s take a look at the fallout and figure out where things sit—and more importantly, where they could go from here. First up …
How did we get here?
Chances are, if you’re reading this, it’s too late for me to explain. But it’s worth recapping how rap’s cold war erupted into a full-blown civil war (and on the weekend Alex Garland released Civil War, naturally). My colleague Justin Charity already ran through a timeline of the Drake-Kendrick feud, which for a decade resulted in little more than subliminal shots and KTT2 fanfic. But the simmering beef was tossed into the fire in March thanks to two unlikely provocateurs: Future and Metro Boomin. The former had seemingly taken offense to a For All the Dogs track that most fans had assumed was a tribute to Drake’s one-time collaborator. (Turns out rapping about how your buddy only sleeps with taken women is not a compliment, though you could forgive us for assuming the man behind “Fuck Russell” would consider it a good thing.) In the case of Metro, the superproducer behind a handful of Drake’s biggest hits started poking Aubrey late last year over award shows, of all things. Back then, Drake responded with some of his typical tough-guy posturing, but then tweets were deleted and everyone put it on the back burner.
But never underestimate the pettiness of two men who name albums stuff like WE DON’T TRUST YOU and WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU. The former came out last month and contains “Like That,” which includes the Archduke Ferdinand moment of this war. On the surface, Kendrick Lamar’s guest verse on “Like That” isn’t a diss on the level of, say, “Takeover” or “The Bridge Is Over.” But it took direct aim at Drake and J. Cole—seemingly for the sin of implying on For All the Dogs’ “First Person Shooter” that the two of them and Kendrick make up rap’s Big Three. (Like all good rap beefs, this one seems to be built on the smallest of slights; shout-out to the mic on LL Cool J’s arm.) “Like That” is light on specifics and heavy on old-school rap-battle bragging. (Fitting for the Rodney-O & Joe Cooley–sampling beat.) But what it lacks in pointedness, it makes up for with audaciousness: Here was Kendrick finally taking shots at an artist who’s been too big to fail for too long.
But beyond giving Rap Twitter enough fodder for a few lifetimes, “Like That” did a few other things:
It hit no. 1 on the Hot 100 and worked its way into club rotation—virtually unheard of for a diss track, though not unlike Drake’s casual Meek Mill evisceration, “Back to Back.”
It gave everyone else clearance to pile on Drake. And boy, did they.
So does everyone hate Drake now?
The list of assumed Aubrey allies who pumped up “Like That” is shocking: Rick Ross!Travis Scott!LeBron James! But this is what years of subliminal disses and bad vibes will get you. Last Friday, Future and Metro released WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU, and while there was no one seismic “Like That” moment, the 25-track album was littered with guests taking shots at Drake. The Weeknd made fun of him for having leaks in his camp and having “shooters making TikToks.” (Over an Isley Brothers sample!) Rihanna’s babies’ father showed up to brag about securing the very thing Drake’s always coveted. And maybe most damningly, J. Cole showed up on the Disc 1 closer, “Red Leather.” Jermaine didn’t diss his tour mate, and it’s unclear when he actually recorded the verse. But given what transpired a week earlier—when Cole released a tepid diss song about Kendrick, then apologized two nights later, saying he was confused and misled—the Dreamville head’s mere presence felt like Future and Metro were holding an enemy combatant hostage. Which, let’s hope not, because we already know Cole is the type to break under questioning.
So, J. Cole actually apologized? That wasn’t just some strange dream I had?
As my buddy Jeff Weiss said: Apologizing is a sign that Cole is a mature, thoughtful human. And it’s also the reason we never want to hear his music again.
Everyone should commend J Cole for being a mature, empathetic, rational, and emotionally attuned human being. This is also why I never wanted to listen to his music.
OK, so what we came here for: Drake finally responded? Is it any good?
For weeks, the most we had heard from Drake was him making trigger fingers at the giant Travis Scott facsimile he brought on tour for “SICKO MODE” performances. (Anytime you’re screaming at a floating animatronic head you paid for, you are officially Down Bad.) But Drake broke his relative silence on Saturday with “Push Ups (Drop and Give Me 50).”
And honestly, it’s fairly impressive, especially when you consider the initial wave of AI rumors—and especially when considering “Like That” has Drake on the defensive for one of the few times in his career. A self-described “20 v. 1,” “Push Ups” takes on almost everyone who had dared come at him in recent weeks. (A$AP Rocky seemingly goes ignored, which says more about Rocky than Drake.) The barbs at Future are mild (“Your first no. 1, I had to put it in your hand” … OK, and?), and Drake swats Metro Boomin away like an annoying gnat with a MIDI controller. (Giving the producer only the tossed-off diss “Shut your ho ass up and make some drums” feels like the modern-day equivalent of Jay-Z giving his lesser rivals only half a bar on “Takeover.”) But the shots at Rick Ross, the Weeknd, and Kendrick are more pointed—and all work to varying degrees. Let’s take those in reverse order.
Did Drake respond to Kendrick like he needed to?
Kendrick is admittedly a tough person to diss. He’s a critically beloved, Pulitzer-winning artist who keeps his business to himself (unless he’s having double-album-long therapy sessions). Sure, he’s prone to theater-kid dramatics—the “alien voice/jazz beat” jokes were flying all weekend—but his track record is mostly unimpeachable. (That’s something J. Cole learned the hard way when he tried to lightly critique Kendrick’s catalog on “7 Minute Drill.”) But on “Push Ups” Drake did about as well as you could reasonably expect, especially assuming this is simply his opening salvo.
The easiest, most obvious jokes come at the expense of the famously short Kendrick’s height. (Most notably, “How the fuck you big steppin’ with a size seven men’s on?”—a pretty great punch line, if I do say so myself.) Those have caused a lot of moralizing, as though Drake should be above schoolyard-bully-style insults. But it ignores the reality that rap beef has always revolved around—and often been at its best when it leans into—childish name-calling. (Let’s never forget that “Ether”—widely considered one of the best diss tracks ever, to the point that the title has been a go-to verb in these kinds of battles—includes a reference to “Gay-Z and Cock-A-Fella Records.”)
But some of the other lines land pretty hard. For Drake—one of the biggest pop stars in history—to mock Kendrick for doing songs with Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift seems like a silly proposition on the surface. But it works because (1) Drake has never stooped to those specific levels of pandering, (2) Drake isn’t a Pulitzer-winning artist who’s staked his reputation on high art, and (3) the bars are, simply put, pretty good. (“You better make it witty!”) The Prince/Michael Jackson lines—a response to Kendrick on “Like That,” which was a response to Drake on “First Person Shooter,” if you’re updating your flow chart at home—are inspired. (“What’s a prince to a king? He a son” is an entendre that would make my colleague and noted Kendrick lover Cole Cuchna at Dissect proud. Lest you forget, Jackson’s son is literally named Prince.) And of course, there’s the Whitney/Bodyguard line, which is a reference to not only the diamond-selling singer and her most famous movie role, but also seemingly an allusion to Kendrick’s partner, Whitney Alford. Assuming it is a double entendre—and there’s little reason to doubt that it is—it’s impossible not to recall that Whitney Houston’s character slept with her bodyguard. We have no evidence that anything happened in Kendrick’s life to evoke that line, and I’m struggling to find a suggestion of something happening outside of “Push Ups,” but Drake’s too savvy not to understand what he was doing.
But wait—hasn’t Drake gotten in trouble for mentioning significant others before?
You’d figure he’d know better by now! In 2018, after years of subliminals fired at him by Pusha T, Drake responded with “Duppy Freestyle.” Amid a bunch of lukewarm shots about Pusha lying about his drug-dealing prowess, Drake made one of the worst mistakes of his career. “I told you keep playin’ with my name / And I’ma let it ring on you like Virginia Williams,” he rapped, invoking Pusha’s then fiancée, now wife, and giving Push carte blanche to respond however he thought appropriate. Within days, we had “The Story of Adidon” and “you are hiding a child,” bullying Drake into being a father publicly. It’s a blemish that no number of no. 1 records can ever fully erase.
Is Drake hiding another child?
You know that somewhere, Pusha T and his private investigator are waiting to get tagged into this mess, but at the moment, we can only assume that Drake’s not playing border control yet again. We can also assume, however, that of everything Drake said about Kendrick, this will be the line that truly lights the fuse on this powder keg.
What about this Top Dawg business on “Push Ups”?
If there’s fault to be found with Drake’s response, it’s that the central premise falls apart under light scrutiny. The “drop and give me 50” hook is a slick reference to infamous shit talker Curtis Jackson. But it’s also a callback to a video on Kendrick’s burner Instagram of him doing push-ups. On yet another level, the implication is that Kendrick is splitting as much as 50 percent of his profits with Top Dawg Entertainment, the label he was signed to for 17 years. It’s a fairly clever conceit—“The way you doin’ splits, bitch, your pants might rip” is a little bit of a groaner, but that’s what you sign up for with Drake—however, it ignores reality. First, Kendrick famously left TDE in 2022 to start a new venture named pgLang (distributed by Columbia Records, which also makes the Interscope lines in “Push Ups” feel dated at best). Second, up through Scorpion, Drake was signed to Young Money, an imprint of Cash Money. The parent label, of course, is run by Birdman, and it was once sued by Lil Wayne for $51 million for violating his contract and withholding vast amounts of money. As Pusha once rapped—directly to Drake—“The M’s count different when Baby divide the pie.”
The lesson here: Let the rapper who is not in an exploitative contract cast the first stone.
OK, but what about the Weeknd? Where does a singer fit into this?
In hindsight, one of the strangest quirks of 21st-century pop music is that two of the three biggest stars in the business come from Toronto. That should make them natural allies, if not friends—aren’t Canadians supposed to be nice?—but Drake and the Weeknd have been anything but. They collaborated in 2011 on Take Care’s “Crew Love,” which began life as a solo Weeknd song before Abel gifted it to Drake. (While possibly gifting him much more.) But from there, a rift began: The Weeknd signed with Republic instead of OVO (a move no one can fault him for when you look at his career next to, say, PartyNextDoor’s); rumors surfaced about Drake dating the Weeknd’s ex Bella Hadid; and despite some one-off collaborations and show appearances, they never seemed to like each other very much. (The Weeknd appears to be as much of a fan of the hiding-a-child line as we are at The Ringer.)
So all things told, it wasn’t a complete shock when the Weeknd popped up on WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU last Friday, gleefully crooning not-so-veiled Drake disses on “All to Myself.” (It’s worth pausing again to highlight “they shooters making TikToks,” an honestly inspired slight that pretty much sums up the Drake experience.) But Aubrey responded in kind on “Push Ups.” He fires a few shots at the Weeknd’s manager, Cash, claiming that he used to be a “blunt runner” for Chubbs, Drake’s head of security. (Update your flow chart—we are deep into Canadian music politics.) And more pointedly, he implies the Weeknd is showering men with gifts in exchange for gifts. It doesn’t matter that Drake may be evolved enough to admit he gets his nails done. You know what they say: It’s not a real rap beef until someone gets homophobic.
OK, but what about Rick Ross? I thought he and Drake were friends?
This may have been the most surprising development of the past three weeks. After a handful of classic collabs between them over a dozen or so years, it turns out that Rick Ross and Drake just don’t like each other. In the wake of “Like That,” Rozay posted an IG story of him bumping Kendrick’s diss. So when it came time for “Push Ups,” Drake made it clear he couldn’t overlook: He made allusions to Ross’s time as a correctional officer, his age, and in the leaked early demo version of “Push Ups,” Ross’s relationship with Diddy, who is currently the subject of a sex trafficking investigation and several sexual misconduct and abuse lawsuits. That line didn’t make the final version of “Push Ups,” but Ross obviously didn’t take it lightly.
Why is the Rick Ross response the first track in this sprawling beef that feels like a true diss song?
Maybe it was the fact that the song was spread through sketchy MP3 sites and Dat Piff’s YouTube channel. Or maybe it was the pure vitriol. But if you wanted real beef, you’ve finally got it. Over the course of three verses, the Boss of All Bosses mocks Drake for leaks in his camp, using ghostwriters (an old reliable), and getting put on only because of Lil Wayne, all while repeatedly calling Aubrey a “white boy.” (It’s complicated.) It’s the type of directness and specificity that “Like That” lacked—but it also, like any great Rick Ross song, sounds luxurious. The most damning bits of “Champagne Moments,” however, come during the spoken word outro, when Ross [deep breath] says Drake is wearing funny clothes at his shows to hide the fact his six-pack is gone, that he also wears Dockers with no underwear (???), and that he had a nose job “to make [his] nose smaller than [his] father nose,” all because he was ashamed of his race. (Like I said, it’s complicated.)
Wait, Drake had a nose job?!?!
Before you go Googling “Drake nose job,” just know that Drake and his mother have been texting about it, and they seem to think it’s silly (and possibly racist).
I’m cackling at the thought of Drake having to explain who Rick Ross is to his mom the same way I would have to with mine. But bringing Sandi into this hasn’t stopped Rozay from doubling down.
So where does French Montana fit into this massive beef?
As is typically the case with French, on the fringes. During that lengthy outro, Ross said he got involved only because Drake had sent a cease-and-desist order to French Montana’s team to have a verse of his removed from February’s Mac & Cheese 5. Well, the C&D worked because it doesn’t appear on French’s mixtape. But we now have a Streisand-effect situation on our hands because the verse is online and people are paying attention. And boy …
the unreleased Drake verse that Rick Ross said Drake sent a cease and desist to French Montana to prevent it from dropping
Uh … so which rapper’s wife is Drake alluding to sleeping with?
The speculation is that Drake is alluding to Kim Kardashian, Kanye’s ex-wife. And while we have no firm evidence that happened, Kim’s voice does appear prominently on last year’s “Search & Rescue.” (It’s complicated, messy, and petty—the only big three Drake really cares about.)
Is Kanye going to get involved now?
Let’s just hope we can get J. Prince on the line before someone (read: Kanye) does something even more foolish. We shudder to think what disses his brain would come up with.
And you said something about Ja Morant?
Of all the (alleged) targets on “Push Ups,” the most unexpected isn’t even a rapper or singer. Ja Morant—the NBA All-Star who has been suspended by the league twice for flashing guns on IG Live—seemingly caught a stray from Drake. Not that it was entirely undeserved, because …
It would seem Ja took time away from shoulder rehab to insert himself in the biggest rap feud of the decade.
Toward the end of “Push Ups,” Drake addresses the “hooper that be bustin’ out the griddy,” seemingly a reference to Ja’s preferred means of celebration. But Drake also references that “little heartbroken Twitter shit,” possibly an acknowledgment of the rumors that he went on a date with Ja’s ex Brooklyn Nikole. (One day, we’ll have a conversation about how women get used as pawns in these kinds of battles. But for now, I’ll just highlight how this puts Drake’s song in the lineage of another Jay-Z diss track, “Super Ugly”—the “me and the boy AI” song. Not exactly a proud lineage with that one.)
Quite possibly! While “Push Ups” wasn’t exactly nuclear, it was still effective—and easily the best song to come out of the battle so far. And yet it feels like Round 1 of this battle is a draw, at best. Despite being light on specifics, Kendrick’s “Like That” verse did more damage than Drake’s four-minute, tea-spilling response. The most memorable lines to come out of Saturday may have been from Ross’s monologue about Dockers and cosmetic surgery. And Future and Metro have dropped two of the three best albums of the year in less than a month. You have to assume Kendrick has something else lined up—Drake alluded to as much in the original leaked version of “Push Ups,” suggesting that K.Dot’s song was recorded four years ago—and at this point, you have to assume someone else will jump into this Royal Rumble. (Cut to Pusha in the corner rubbing his hands together like Birdman.) “Push Ups” showed Drake can play effective defense—and he needed to after the embarrassment of “Adidon” six years ago—but if this was his best shot, Kendrick may not need to even say much in response to walk away the winner. (Though if we’re to believe this ScHoolboy Q tweet, we may find out if that’s the case soon.)
But who do you think is going to win?
Well, the easy answer is DJ Akademiks’s engagement. But none of these tracks are likely to change anyone’s mind. The Drake haters have already deemed the response trash, Aubrey’s Angels have already declared this the next “Hit ’Em Up,” and A$AP Rocky can’t even get a crumb of a response, but is still Rihanna’s partner. Maybe the actual winner is us because rap hasn’t been this fun in years. (For this writer, since the first time I heard the phrase “you are hiding a child,” if I’m being honest.) Just sit back and enjoy, because as Rick Ross promised, we’re only in the first quarter.
OK, one last question: Could they all still make up?
J. Cole’s response to this whole mess is admirable on a personal level, but embarrassing on a competitive level. Yet his apology also highlights a few realities of the situation: (1) Aside from Metro, these are all men hovering around the age of 40, and (2) no one has said anything they can’t take back yet. (Well, maybe aside from Ricky.) “I’m a better rapper than you” or “you’re short” or “your last album wasn’t that great” isn’t exactly a lethal blow. And even when it does get extremely personal, there’s precedent for rappers burying the hatchet—it took a few years, but eventually Nas and Jay-Z became collaborators. For my money, I expect we’ll see Drake, Kendrick, and Cole playing nice on a song (produced by Metro) at some point in the distant future. (Hopefully not with Future, though—Nayvadius is too cool for that shit.)
But you know, even if this alleged Big Three won’t get on a track together, we always have AI to make that collaboration a (virtual) reality. By that time, it’ll probably even be able to get the Drake sigh right. It may even give us an answer to what J. Cole was thinking.
