In the evolution of the art of diss tracks, Kendrick constructed a masterpiece that honours every style and rapper that contributed to the form while catapulting diss tracks to otherworldly terrain.
After Drakes’s double diss, Noble Prize-winning rapper Kendrick released ‘Euphoria’ packed with so many mind-melting messages that it crashed lyrics site Genius as fans rushed to decipher the cryptic bars. A feat no diss has managed before. Kendrick leaves Easter eggs at every turn to open and takes jabs at everything from Drake’s relationship with his Blackness to various ghostwriter allegations.
Drake came back confident and correct, lobbing hefty accusations Kendrick’s way on ‘Family Matters‘ — the main one being that the Compton rapper has been allegedly physically violent toward his fiancée; more than that, Drake rapped like fire on ‘Family Matters’ and delivered one of his most impressive tracks to date.
That’s when the gloves came off. Kendrick responded within an hour with the destructive diss ‘Meet the Grahams’, personally addressing each member of Drake’s immediate family, from Adonis to his mom. He accuses Drake of having a substance abuse problem, being a sexual predator, abandoning an 11-year-old daughter and having a snitch on his team.
24 hours later, Kendrick beat Drake at his own game and attacked again with a club banger, the summer song, and a contender for best record of the year. ‘Not Like Us’ dismantled Drake’s entire reputation with haymakers over West Coast bounce and a playful snipe about him being a paedophile (“Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A Minor”). It also cemented Kendrick’s ability to cross over into the commercial landscape.
Before sundown, ‘Not Like Us’ was viral, pumping out of soundsystems at the NBA games, Red Bull USA street dance battles, and blasting out of lowriders across Compton. OVO stans had to yield to its electricity. Tom Hanks and numerous other celebs were co-signing it as the diss track stormed Billboard Charts as number one while breaking a multitude of additional records.
Drake immediately refuted these allegations and claimed he planted the maniacal information for Kendrick to use in his response ‘The Heart Part 6‘ (very weird play). But the damage had already been done. As Drake threw in the proverbial towel and wiped his IG clean, Kendrick took the throne as the King of Rap and took their beef to higher ground. Memes have joked that “The Pop Out- Ken & Friends” was Kendrick’s “Hatechella”, a ‘Haters Ball’, but nah, it was a love letter to LA. Kendrick performed four out of five of his disses after he paid respect to all the West Coast OGs, departed, present and new gen.
Dressed like 90’s Tupac, he delivered a diss-driven concert to a 16,000-strong crowd where he ended with ‘Not Like Us’ five times and one more as an instrumental version so the entire stadium could bellow out the bars in joyous unison. Folks all the way over in Harlem streaming “The Pop-Out’ live threw a block party with a jazz band in honour of the historic moment.
Posing for a mass picture, Kendrick grabbed the mic. “This sh*t makes me proud then a muthaf**ka, y’all don’t know. This sh*t gets me emotional, dawg. We done lost a lot of homies to this music sh*t, a lot of homies to the street sh*t. For all of us to be on stage together, unity, from each side of muthaf*kin’ L.A. Crips, Bloods, Pirus, that sh*t is special, man.”
While the credits continue to roll, Kendrick’s swinging at an owl piñata in the viral music video for ‘Not Like Us’ shot in Compton and “dancing on Drakes grave” with top-tier West Coast Krump dancers, as Metro Boomin’s ‘BBL Drizzy’, a reprise to a Kendrick wisecrack that Drake had butt implants, plays on. There’s even footage of couples walking down the aisle to it and ‘Family Matters’ vs ‘Not Like Us’ video games dropping.
The future sounds bright if battle rap could unify the diaspora in this way, and if diss tracks could reinvigorate lyricism, creativity, and the rap scene on this level.
As the applause and fandom fades, you can’t ignore that as evolved as the art of diss and the future of hip hop would appear, there’s a bad aftertaste lingering. While all four corners of the globe two-step to songs from a feud where direct accusations of paedophilia, misogyny and domestic violence were used as artillery (and the alleged victims, mainly women and children, were simply collateral), it’s evident one particular style in the art form needs to go. Music is supposed to entertain and be enjoyed by the masses, but it should also empower and elevate. Not take us back to the beginning, at those first diss tracks written bygrown-ass men using women as punchlines. Damn.
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