by Sven Stumbauer
Dr. Dre, Tyler The Creator, Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, Rick Ross, The Weeknd, Demar DeRozan, James Harden, LeBron James and Russel Westbrook. You might wonder why there were five rappers, one singer, and four NBA players listed with no context.
Well, those are just some of the notable figures that attended Kendrick Lamar’s Pop Out: Ken and Friends Concert on Juneteenth, and to say this concert wasn’t loaded would probably be the biggest understatement in all of hip-hop history. We saw Kendrick performing his biggest hits like "Alright," "ELEMENT" and "Swimming Pools." He performed with Jay Rock and Schoolboy Q on "Money Trees" and "Collard Greens," respectively. Tyler performed "EARFQUAKE" to a deafening crowd, and Demar and Russ went crazy on stage with K.dot (Kendrick).
But the true fun didn't even start yet. As Kendrick introduced Dr. Dre onto the stage, the camera panned to his face as he uttered the now iconic phrase, “Psst. I see dead people” from Kendrick’s diss track “Not Like Us.” What followed was that very song playing five times in a row, the crowd more emphatic with every repeat performance.
This concert’s true motive was made clear. It didn’t just serve as a celebration of West Coast rap or even hip-hop as a genre, nor was it solely an event where Blues and Pirus settled their historic conflict in appreciation of a Compton legend in the making. No. This concert had one goal that outshone them all. That goal: to serve as the final, and the most painful nail in Drake’s long-awaited coffin.
But, how did we get here? How did K.dot ruin most of Drake’s mainstream appeal in an effort that put his hatred for the 6ix God on full display? How did Kendrick make his opponent look dazed and confused with each subsequent diss track? And, most importantly, how did Drake make his already sticky situation even worse for him? There’s nothing left to do but find out.
Chapter 1: One-off Tracks Versus a Comprehensive Narrative
Coming off of his beef with the likes of Meek Mill and Pusha T, Drake was accustomed to making diss tracks that followed a very shallow and predictable formula: a catchy club banger that has the attributes above overshadow the shallow shots fired at his opposition. But, what also made them notable was that they were standalone tracks: none of them contributed to a wider accusation or story against his opponent in any of these battles.
On the flipside of this recent beef with K.dot though, Drake learned that this repetitive style of diss track composition wouldn’t work against an MC who’s able to rhyme with fiery language while also weaving ornate tales on tracks like “DUCKWORTH” or “How Much a Dollar Cost.” And, with diss tracks serving as pieces to the defamation of one’s character in the industry, Kendrick’s storytelling mastery, and Drake’s ineptitude in that field, are just one of the reasons that Drake’s fate was sealed by Compton’s finest.
To make this point clearer, have a look at the content of Drake’s disses: Push Ups is very aggressive and has Drake firing superficial shots at both Kendrick and the rest of the industry dissing him like Metro Boomin, Future and Rick Ross. On “Taylor Made Freestyle” Drake is pressuring Kendrick to respond to his previous diss track whilst attempting to wage psychological warfare on him by using AI renditions of two of Kendrick’s idols: 2Pac and Snoop Dogg. In “Family Matters,” he finally throws accusations of substance into the ring, by calling Kendrick a cheater and abuser to his fiancé, Whitney Alford. And, after Kendrick dropped his victory lap in the form of “Not Like Us,” Drake’s “The Heart Part 6” had him playing defense the entire track. These disses aren’t only just weak on Drake’s part, but they never connect from track to track. His accusations on “Family Matters” are largely independent of those on “Push Ups” and vice versa (aside from the poorly placed short jokes), and in the end, it contributes to a very messy picture of Kendrick–a picture nonetheless– but one that feels haphazard and rushed to develop.
On the other hand, Kendrick’s disses all throw much better shots at Drake while also building up on each preceding track. For instance, in his first full-length diss at Drake, "Euphoria," Kendrick mentions “I got a son to raise, but I can see you don't know nothin' 'bout that” in reference to Drake’s unorthodox parenting of his son Adonis, exposing him to the bad parts of the rap industry and also for keeping his child hidden until Pusha T ironically revealed him to the world in “The Story of Adidon.”
But, unlike Drake’s lines about Kendrick beating his wife or telling Metro Boomin to make some drums. Kendrick builds upon the fact that Drake’s a deadbeat father through his tracks “6:16 in LA” and “Meet the Grahams,” citing in 6:16 that he “put my children to sleep with a prayer then close my eyes. Definition of peace” once again implying that, unlike Drake, Kendrick cares for his children and is an active father figure. And, in “Meet the Grahams," Kendrick nails this accusation down even further, by saying that Drake’s a deadbeat and should never say ‘More Life’ when addressing his mother Sandra, and dedicating an entire section of that song to Drake’s alleged eleven-year-old daughter, making these accusations even worse on Drake’s part and proving that they have substance to them with K.dot mentioning Drake’s potentially hidden child.
The accusations that Kendrick throws out outside of Drake being a deadbeat also follow this pattern, with Kendrick undermining his character by calling him a “master manipulator” being followed up on again when he calls him “a horrible ***** person” in “6:16 In LA” and even taking matters up the bloodline by blaming Drake’s father, Dennis for raising him that way on “Meet the Grahams."
Furthermore, when you zoom out of the individual insults and look at the tracks holistically, Kendrick’s disses show that he had a plan to make a narrative against Drake through his songs, “Euphoria” was the seed that would start his accusations against him by casting a wide net of disses, “6:16 in LA” was to highlight how he had a mole in Drake’s record label, OVO, and that his labelmates and lackeys secretly hate him while also elaborating on disses made about his character. “Meet the Grahams” is specifically targeted to Drake’s family and how he doesn’t care for his children, furthering those aforementioned disses, and “Not Like Us” delves into these accusations tenfold by accusing Drake of being a pedophile, disrespecting 2Pac and doing all of it without any sense of respect. While Drake’s downfall is a collage of mistakes past and present, the cohesiveness of Kendrick’s tracks and how they all built off each other versus Drake’s one-off listens and attempts at making another “Back to Back” certainly serves as a noteworthy piece in that very mosaic.
Chapter 2: An Artificial 20 v 1
In this beef, it’s clear that Kendrick and the rap industry were largely going up against Drake as a collective. However, Drake took the “20v1” narrative way too far, and that detracted from all of his diss tracks that actually had some bite to them (sorry “The Heart Part 6”). When you compare both artists’ diss tracks after each listen, Kendrick’s are all aimed at Drake’s head, consistently throwing a verbal barrage against the 6ix God. On the other hand, Drake’s disses feel like he’s casting a wide net of targets to jab at while refusing to pay full attention to Kendrick who’s the one holding him at grammatical gunpoint.
Instead of going bar for bar with Kendrick himself, a feat, if done, would make everybody else back off, Drake chose to go for everybody else as much as he went for Kendrick. On “Family Matters” this point is made abundantly clear when in his final verse, which in Drake’s eyes served as the final blow to Kendrick, he says “We already know it’s a 20v1” right after dissing Kendrick, taking the wind out of his sails and wasting a bar when this was the red button track he had been teasing the entire time via Instagram.
This is also shown in “Push Ups” where Drake says that he gets more love in Kendrick’s hometown of Compton and then immediately says the bar telling Metro Boomin to shut up and make some drums. The same is seen in the very beginning of the track where Drake’s first diss isn’t aimed at Kendrick, it’s aimed at Future when he says, “Your first number one I had to put it in your hand.”
Not to mention the shots against the Weeknd and the stray fired at J. Cole on “Family Matters” further this notion even more. It’s understandable for Drake to take this angle, but in a rap beef where no holds are barred and Kendrick is the main guy throwing disses, you need to be able to go for a killing blow just as he is, and that’s by diverting your attention away from the rest of the crowd and towards your biggest threat. Drake didn’t get that memo, and he tried to get the 19 birds hiding in the bushes while largely ignoring the biggest and meanest one pecking at his hand, his character, and now, his reputation as an esteemed rapper.
Chapter 3: Manuever
This rap battle changed everything. But, it’s not just because of the perpetual dancing Kendrick and the hip-hop community are doing atop Drake’s grave, but it also created a new way to navigate a beef: by being tactical instead of dropping diss after diss. And, that’s what Kendrick did in this feud against Drake, which ushered forth Drake’s doom as a result.
To make this point clearer, take a look at the composition of Kendrick's disses on the last and the first two disses he released (including his verse on “Like That”). Notice how his disses in “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us” are infinitely more scathing versus those on “Like That” and “Euphoria”?
To substantiate this, in “Like That” for instance, Kendrick calls himself a “K” while Drake and J.Cole are a duo of “9s”, a double entendre referencing their collaboration on Drake’s album “For All The Dogs."
While this diss is layered and serves as a good jab, it’s in stark contrast to his verse on “Not Like Us” where he accuses Drake of being a “Culture Vulture” by frequently collaborating with Atlanta-based rappers like Future, Quavo, 21 Savage, Young Thug and Lil Baby in an attempt to hop on the trend of Atlanta-style trap music in the early 2010s and to profit off of the hype for artists like Lil Baby specifically, hitting Drake with an accusation people have been mounting against him for years now.
While the content of disses being saved for tracks later on in this beef may be a claim backed by little evidence, it can still be inferred that Kendrick did this intentionally in order to deal a definitive ending blow with as much ammo as possible while Drake had already used all of his. Furthermore, Kendrick stated that he had a mole in OVO from his lyrics on “6:16 in LA” and the implied use of said mole to get information on Drake’s daughter in “Meet the Grahams,” meaning that he likely did do this in order to get the upper hand on his opposition.
But, even if one doesn’t agree with that, they can concur that Kendrick still outplayed Drake in this beef, regardless. Firstly, as previously explained in Chapter 1, the way he layered his disses and made sure that they were connected throughout all four of his tracks served to never give Drake any breathing room by letting every diss said before resurface in a later track, causing him to have to play defense on both the established disses and the new ones that surface up in the subsequent song, putting more pressure on Drake with every response and allowing Kendrick to divert attention away from dealing with any of Drake’s disses and focus fully on his various haymakers since he would be focusing on defending Kendrick’s allegations first before delving into accusations of his own.
On another note, the rollout for Kendrick’s third full-length diss track, “Meet the Grahams” and the neutralization of everything Drake threw at him on “Family Matters” was nothing short of perfect. “Family Matters” was supposed to be Drake’s red-button track. It was hyped up to be something that would put Kendrick in a verbal bodybag. But, even though the shots fired were grim, the release of “Meet The Grahams” just about 20 minutes later rocked the world. It not only served as Kendrick’s most scathing track in this beef, but it completely took all the momentum that Drake had in less than an hour. One couldn’t even listen to Family Matters over two times before getting the news that Kendrick responded, making any of Drake’s shots irrelevant as Kendrick delivered disses that were more hurtful to Drake’s reputation and character. This sequence of track releases was when most people believed the beef to be over since it gave Drake no ability to counter any of Kendrick’s statements, and when he did respond with “The Heart Part 6” it was a lackluster attempt to play defense.
On the other hand, Kendrick not only out-maneuvered Drake during this beef but also, Drake made clumsy and terrible decisions that could have been avoided and made the debate over who won much less one-sided. Firstly, when it comes to his diss tracks, Drake effectively put all of his cards on the table for Kendrick to see on “Taylor Made Freestyle” and “Family Matters” alone, giving him no ammunition for future tracks like “The Heart Part 6." Furthermore, Drake went down the route Meek Mill did in his beef against him, with Mill frequently using Instagram stories and social media to hurl shots at Drake. It lost him that beef handily and nine years later, it made Drake lose his against Kendrick. It doesn’t matter who you are, but you don’t respond to claims that you hid a daughter for longer than you did your son who has already been confirmed to have been hidden by you by posting on Instagram with a confused face saying “Where’s my hidden daughter?” It’s a look that makes anybody look bad and in a beef as publicized as this one, Drake had any support left vanish almost overnight. While he definitely would not have won, Drake could still have a reasonable amount of respect within the industry, which is now something Drake wishes he had less than three months after the last diss track was poured over wax.
Conclusion
When you have the entire industry against you, you know it’s bad. When Metro Boomin’ makes a beat with the phrase “BBL Drizzy” constantly repeating and has random people on the internet insulting you from America to Japan, you know it’s bad. When the official social media page of the Argentine national football team posts a graphic of a team huddle with the words “Not Like Us” above it in response to you simply posting that you bet on Team Canada to beat them, you know it’s bad.
Drake in the aftermath of this beef has been utterly destroyed, and any positive reputation as an artist, or even a human being has been pushed back in favor of his performance versus Kendrick. “Not Like Us” is everywhere. It’s played at proms, and it broke streaming records held by Drake, whose main claim against Kendrick was that he had better numbers than him. “Not Like Us” is the number one streamed song in Toronto, and Drake said that he got more love in Compton than Kendrick did in the 6ix. If Drake’s side of this story was a book, it would fittingly be titled “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” But, he knew what he was going up against. He knew that he couldn’t play around with someone who only wanted to see his career end at his own hands, and he fought Kendrick for the lyrical shovel just to dig his grave deeper and faster than K.dot could alone.
This beef isn’t a tale of grandiose triumph, because anyone sensible could see the result coming a mile away. It instead serves as a cautionary tale to never be shallow in a battle where everything goes, to always cover your bases, and most importantly, in reference to the words of Omar from The Wire, “If you come at K.dot, you best not diss.”
In your opinion, who won this beef?
Kendrick Lamar
Drake