Kendrick Lamar is on a historic run — one so historic that it transcends anything we’ve seen in music thus far.
The start of this year saw the biggest rap feud in hip-hop history. We have seen two heavyweights go bar for bar before. The early 2000s witnessed a fierce rivalry between two New York hip-hop giants, Nas and Jay-Z, culminating in Nas’s classic diss track “Ether.” This brutal composition dissected Jay-Z’s calling him a “phony, a fake, a pussy, a Stan,” the last word referencing Eminem’s famous song “Stan” in which Eminem details a fictional account of being stalked by a creepy fan. Of course, who could also forget the time when the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac swung shots from coast to coast? Especially with Tupac’s vicious diss track “Hit ’Em Up,” where he accuses Biggie of hiring someone to kill him and reveals to the world that he had been having an affair with Biggie’s girlfriend.
While both of these clashes have firmly cemented themselves in hip-hop history, the absolute annihilation of Drake by Lamar truly tops them all. While Jay-Z, Nas, Biggie and Tupac are all world-renowned names in hip-hop culture, none of them came close to the stardom that Drake has seen. In terms of the popularity that Drake is seeing now, the comparisons he draws between himself and Michael Jackson are not far off the mark. Now that Lamar has firmly won the battle, he has cemented himself as one of the hottest artists in music right now, eclipsing Drake in popularity. And he is riding out this momentum to its fullest capacity — he seems to be in the middle of an imminent album release, and every move he makes appears to be a direct provocation towards Drake.
Let’s rewind to May 4 of this year, one of the most eventful days in hip-hop history. After Lamar taunted Drake with his track “6:16 in LA” — in which Lamar claimed that the people working for Drake’s label, OVO Sound, secretly hated Drake and were feeding Lamar information — Drake dropped his highly anticipated response to Kendrick, “Family Matters.” In the song, Drake alleges that Lamar is raising a child born from an affair between his best friend Dave Free and his fiance, Whitney Alford, all while also accusing Lamar of physically abusing his fiancee. These claims threw the hip-hop community into its defining discourse of the summer.
However, that discussion didn’t last long.
Roughly 30 minutes after the release of Drake’s provocative “Family Matters,” Lamar responded with “Meet the Grahams.” If “Family Matters” was scathing, “Meet the Grahams” was devastating. It featured an ominous piano playing over a slow, menacing beat. In it, Lamar writes letters to all of Drake’s family members, including his son, mother, father and Drake himself. He concludes by alleging that Drake is hiding another child from the world.
The combination of confidently stated allegations, the foreboding beat and visceral content overshadowed any discussion of Lamar’s potential wrongdoings. Within moments, the spotlight was back on Drake. Things only got worse for him as Lamar released the song of the year, “Not Like Us,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and continues to break streaming records. It’s a hit that could get an entire venue singing verses about how Drake is allegedly a pedophile.
Now, to add insult to injury, Lamar will be the halftime performer at this year’s Super Bowl. While back in 2023, Drake’s song “First Person Shooter” featuring J. Cole rapped about how the two artists’ collaboration was “as big as the Super Bowl,” Lamar will now actually be the performer — where he will almost certainly play “Not Like Us” and quite literally have the entire world calling Drake a “OV-Hoe” and how he’s “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-Minor.”
While losing a rap battle is bad, it doesn’t get more demoralizing and decisive than that.
To make all of this worse, Lamar used his Super Bowl performance announcement as an opportunity to assert his victory and taunt Drake: “You know there’s only one opportunity to win a championship, no round twos.” Since the announcement, there have been claims that Drake has turned down the Super Bowl halftime show twice. However, those claims have since been disproven.
Continuing his impressive streak, Lamar recently released a new, untitled track on his Instagram. As the new song was released without an official name, fans have unofficially dubbed it “Let the Party Die” or “Black Air Force Ones.” This shows that Lamar has returned to his typical subject matter. Similarly to previous albums, he continues to talk about the evils of the world, claiming that his faith in God is what keeps him afloat. His rapping ability and flows feel just as good as they did 10 years ago, with just as much hunger and drive to be the greatest emcee to ever touch a microphone.
In my opinion, Lamar had already secured his place as the greatest rapper of all time. His album “To Pimp a Butterfly,” stands as the pinnacle of hip-hop artistry, surpassing even legendary albums like Nas’s “Illmatic,” Eminem’s “The Marshall Mathers LP” and Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.” But his influence is larger than ever, transcending music and bleeding into the rest of broader western pop culture.
Kendrick has said a lot of things this year. However, there is one statement that rings more true as time goes on.
Kendrick is “what the culture feeling.”
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