Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s internet-breaking beef has stomped into some deep, dark territory, but you wouldn’t know it from all the GIFs.
For weeks, allegations have been flying back and forth as the hip-hop giants battle it out to decide who really rules rap’s “big three.” What started out as the usual displays of puffery and kayfabe has devolved into disturbing claims including pedophilia and assault. Yet at the same time, the internet has continued to do what it does best, churning out lighthearted reaction videos and even humorous GoFundMe campaigns. If this beef has proven anything, it’s that people on all sides—artists and fans—will stop at nothing to chase clout and cash.
Speaking on CBS Mornings this week, Carl Lamarre, Billboard’s deputy director of R&B/hip-hop, observed how massive this feud has gotten. “We have not had this kind of chatter, to where it’s exploded in terms of pop culture, so far this year,” he said. “Even if you look at the streams, Kendrick’s ‘Not Like Us’ record has topped Spotify and Apple.”
That impact has spread online as well. On social media, posts declaring victors—or, conversely, acknowledging the inanity of it all—have racked up thousands of likes and views, as have streamers’ videos reacting to each song release. But the majority of posts are tongue-in-cheek observations about the beef’s dramatic escalation; the internet has been grateful for the distraction, excitedly checking in for updates. (Will this end in someone’s ass getting whooped, users ask, or a Sprite commercial?) The persistent, meme-filled discussion of the feud is not unlike the conversation that occurs on social media during a sports game, as users quip about each “play,” as if this is a match in which Lamar and Drake are scoring real points.
Threaded into the fun is, of course, a nastier current: the content of the diss tracks themselves, and how dramatically at odds it is with the tenor of the internet’s commentary. The conflict picked up in earnest this March, when Lamar’s guest verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That” rejected Drake and J. Cole’s previous declaration in their song “First Person Shooter” that they and Lamar are the three biggest names in hip-hop. While Cole rapped in the song, “We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali,” Lamar’s “Like That” verse shot back, “It’s just big me… What? I’m really like that / And your best work is a light pack.” From there, it was on.
Cole might’ve caught heat back in April for bowing out of the conflict early and apologizing to Lamar, but at this point, it seems like he made the wise choice. Drake, Lamar, and their allies have been lobbing songs back and forth for weeks, and each track has gotten more brutal than the last.
Drake went from simply naming other artists he deemed more successful than Lamar in his first response track, April 13’s “Push Ups,” to calling out the rapper for alleged domestic abuse on May 3’s “Family Matters,” as well as insinuating that Lamar is not his son’s biological father. Lamar’s inaugural diss, April 30’s “Euphoria,” accused Drake of poor parenting, while his May 3 track “6:16 in LA” called him “a terrible person.” But he dramatically upped the ante with two more tracks on May 3 and 4, alleging Drake had a secret daughter, that he runs a sex-trafficking ring out of his mansion, and that he’s attracted to underage girls. By the time Drake dropped his latest response on May 5—a self-defense against those latter claims (“If I was fucking young girls, I promise I’da been done arrested”)—the entire affair had exploded from traditional bravado to potentially criminal accusations.
Alleged pedophilia has become a central theme of the Kendrick-Drake saga, thanks to multiple Lamar tracks that accuse Drake of inappropriate acts. (On “meet the grahams,” Lamar called Drake a “predator,” and on “Not Like Us,” he rapped that Drake is “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.”) Drizzy, meanwhile, rapped in “Family Matters” that Lamar’s camp “hired a crisis management team / To clean up the fact that you beat on your queen.”
At this point, the allegations are so alarming that both rappers’ reputations might be tarnished forever. To make matters even worse, the lyrical savagery has now coincided with actual violence. On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that Toronto police are investigating a shooting that took place outside of Drake’s mansion and seriously wounded a security guard. (Toronto Police Inspector Paul Krawczyk has reportedly said that it is too early to determine the motive of the shooting.)
While the alarming accusations keep piling up, so have the financial incentives for fans at home to participate in this beef. For example: On Saturday, rapper and producer Metro Boomin sauntered into the decade’s biggest rap battle with the “BBL Drizzy” Challenge, imploring other artists to join Lamar in dunking on Drake. (The title alludes to a rumor that Drake had a Brazilian butt lift, an allegation the rapper has not addressed and that prompted Rick Ross to dub him the now-infamous moniker.) Metro asked participants to rap over the beat from the AI-generated comedy track “BBL Drizzy.” Whoever produced the best verse, the artist wrote on X, would receive an original beat produced by the multi-Grammy nominee himself. Later on, Metro upped the reward, offering $10,000 to the winner with the best verse—plus a free beat for the runner-up. (It is unclear how Metro is judging these submissions, but the public has been weighing in on their favorites as well.)
Further fanning the flames, it looks like the artists themselves are giving fans another reason to jump in. According to multiple social media streamers, Lamar lifted copyright restrictions from their diss tracks—which means that reaction videos and other content created about them are eligible for monetization. One streamer has indicated that Drake did the same. Is there any better way to drown your adversary with gossip than to give the masses a chance to make money off their public humiliation? Neither Drake’s nor Lamar’s camp responded to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
To top it all off, GoFundMe has also been forced to crack down on multiple fake fundraisers inspired by the controversy, including one titled, “RIP Drake(champagnepapi): Fans Unite in Grief.” At this point, it seems like the only people who aren’t trying to chase clout or money from this mess might be the women and children mentioned in the accusatory lyrics themselves.
As Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre put it in an astute piece about the squabble, these allegations leave listeners “in an impossible position: Whether it’s true or not, you have to consider that the allegations of Kendrick’s physical abuse of his wife and Drake’s relationships with underage girls might be true. You can’t just write that off as typical rap beef shenanigans, right? You have to consider the women who are the ones who have really suffered, who don’t have the agency to speak for themselves. Drake and Kendrick are not thinking about that at all. To them, this is all just material for jokes and trolling.”
Further driving the point home, Pierre observed that this dynamic is especially crucial right now, “as Russell Simmons hides out in Bali and Diddy’s cases pile up; as alleged abuser Dr. Dre, Kendrick’s one-time mentor, approaches billionaire status; as convicted abuser Kodak Black, who was featured prominently on Kendrick’s last album, is still a megastar; as support for Tory Lanez, who sits behind bars for firing gunshots at Megan Thee Stallion, is still deafeningly loud, including from Drake. They think we don’t give that much of a shit about anything other than jokes and trolling either.”
Unfortunately, as long as views and money are on the line, the unsettling dissonance between the jokes and the reality probably won’t shift from its status quo.
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