Drake birthday: A timeline of the rapper’s beef with Kendrick Lamar

One is a chart-dominating artist who pops streaming information as ceaselessly as he does champagne bottles; the different is probably the best rapper of all time, with a number of Grammy wins and a Pulitzer Prize to his identify.

Many followers would agree that Drake and Kendrick Lamar function in totally completely different lanes. Drake entertains with summery rap-pop jams comparable to “One Dance” and “Hotline Bling”, dabbling in lure, dancehall and R&B alongside the approach, whereas Lamar has asserted himself as a deft lyricist succesful of mixing road smarts with a literary wit. Yet their as soon as pleasant relationship has descended into years of traded barbs and thinly veiled disses, fuelled by followers who conflict over which one is the higher artist.

In March, Lamar managed to spark a fan frenzy with his rap function on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That”, wherein he straight responds to a verse by fellow rapper J Cole on Drake’s 2023 track, “First Person Shooter”.

Then, Cole rapped: “Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali.” (Ok-Dot is a nickname given to Lamar, whereas Drake’s beginning identify is Aubrey Drake Graham.)

On “Like That”, Lamar appeared to dismiss Cole’s suggestion that they’re on the similar degree as artists: “Motherf*** the big three, n***a, it’s just big me,” he rapped. “N***a, bum, what? I’m really like that / And your best work is a light pack.”

Meanwhile, as Drake in contrast his industrial success to that of Michael Jackson, Lamar referenced the historic beef between the King of Pop and Prince throughout the Eighties: “N***a, Prince outlived Mike Jack.”

Lamar dropping not one however two diss tracks in the house of every week (”euphoria” and “6:16 in LA”) then absolutely ignited an all-out feud between the two hip-hop titans, after they initially began out on pleasant phrases.

Here’s a take a look at their relationship over the years.

2011 – Kendrick Lamar’s profession beginnings and preliminary friendship

Lamar and Drake have been as soon as on comparatively pleasant phrases, with the Canadian artist inviting Lamar out on his Club Paradise headline tour.

Lamar mentioned in an early profession interview that he and Drake “clicked immediately”, describing the fellow rapper as a “genuine soul” and revealing that Drake was the first particular person exterior of his instant staff to listen to his debut album Section 80. Drake later invited Ok-Dot to function on his forthcoming second album, Take Care.

Around the launch of Lamar’s critically acclaimed second album, Good Kid, MAAD City, on which Drake featured, pressure appeared to start brewing between the pair, seemingly partially on account of their differing attitudes in direction of wealth and fame.

Where Lamar tends to keep away from sharing particulars of his private life on social media, Drake is understood for sharing frequent posts about his lavish way of life to his thousands and thousands of Instagram followers, from personal jets to couture and luxurious vehicles. Lamar mentioned this overtly in interviews, hinting that he believed bragging about cash and fame was superficial, and his personal music tackled deeper issues.

The two additionally appeared to develop colder in direction of each other as Lamar started to expertise industrial and demanding success, scooping main awards and receiving common reward for Good Kid, MAAD City and being invited to star on tracks by different main artists.

In public, Drake continued to congratulate Lamar for a quantity of his successes, till 2013, when Lamar dropped a verse on Big Sean’s monitor “Control” that made it clear he thought of himself above different rappers… together with Drake.

While rappers comparable to A$AP Rocky, who was additionally name-checked, appeared happy to be namechecked by Lamar in any respect, believing his aggressive nature to be wholesome for hip-hop, Drake appeared much less enamoured.

“Was that real or was that just for the people?” he requested in an interview on Hot 97 after Lamar’s visitor verse got here out. “Those were harsh words, right? It’s like, you can’t just say that and then see me and be like, ‘Yeah man…’ pretending like nothing ever happened. That’s not real, man.”

Drake doubled down on this stance in a later interview the place he implied that Lamar was extra a few “moment” than creating our bodies of work, questioning whether or not he would launch one thing that might high Good Kid, MAAD City.

He then launched his third album, 2013’s Nothing Was the Same, wherein he appeared to take goal at Lamar on “The Language”, rapping: “F*** any n***a that’s talking that s*** just to get a reaction.”

On the similar monitor, he referred to himself as “the kid with the motormouth / I am the one you should worry about.” He additionally appeared to mock Lamar’s angle in direction of wealth, rapping: “N***as downplaying the money but that’s what you do when the money down.”

On a latest episode of the What’s the Dirt YouTube present, wherein host Matt delves into beefs between distinguished hip-hop artists, it was steered that Drake was being contemptuous of Lamar’s rapid-fire supply, and felt that his personal music had extra substance.

“It’s clearly about Kendrick,” he mentioned, citing situations the place Lamar appeared to chuckle at Drake’s expense throughout interviews and suggesting Ok-Dot may need mentioned one thing behind the “Hold On” singer’s again, which later made its method to him.

Drake’s resentment may need grown after Lamar seemingly mocked Drake for being “sensitive during a freestyle with ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab Soul and Isaiah Rashad: “Nothing’s been the same since they dropped ‘Control’/ And tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pyjama clothes.”

Fans have been satisfied he was speaking about Drake, given he’d cited the title of the fellow rapper’s latest album, Nothing Was the Same.

Drake then acquired private a couple of weeks in a while Future’s monitor “S**t”, the place he identified that Lamar performed his greatest exhibits at the time round his hometown in Los Angeles whereas supporting Drake on tour in 2012: “Took n***as out the hood like I’m from there / So you know it’s all good when I come there / I hear you talk about your city like you run that / And I brought my tour to your city, you my son there, n***a.”

By the finish of 2013, the relationship between the pair had grown distinctly chilly; they appeared on the similar monitor for the final time with A$AP Rocky on “F**kin’ Problems”.

2014 – the public digs develop extra frequent, at the same time as Lamar performs down the beef

A few months after Drake appeared on Future’s monitor, controversy erupted at the Grammy Awards when rapper Macklemore gained Album of the Year over Lamar, who was nominated for Good Kid, MAAD City, now broadly considered one of the best hip-hop information of all time.

Macklemore, actual identify Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, then shared a textual content on Instagram that he despatched to Lamar after the win, wherein he confessed that he felt the fellow rapper was “robbed” and that he’d been rooting for Lamar to win.

Drake was unimpressed by this, calling Macklemore out in an interview with Rolling Stone the place he mentioned the apology felt “cheap”.

If Macklemore was going at hand out apologies, Drake mentioned, he ought to have provided one to different nominees: “That s*** made me feel funny,” he mentioned. “No, in that case, you robbed everybody. We all need text messages!”

Lamar and Drake continued to take delicate swipes at each other on visitor options, however Ok-Dot appeared to dismiss fan hypothesis and counsel they have been “digging too far” in a radio interview that aired later that yr.

In What’s the Dirt, the host notes that regardless of this, Lamar continued to make digs about what he perceived to be the distinction between his artistry and Drake’s, leaning into the public notion that Drake was a glorified pop artist, slightly than a reputable hip-hop star expert in the artwork of lyricism.

“Comparing these projects makes zero sense,” Matt mentioned, referring to Lamar’s Grammy-winning album To Pimp a Butterfly and Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, each launched in 2015.

“Drake’s project was great for club DJs, gym playlists, cruising in the car… whereas Kendrick’s album touched on real-world issues, was chanted during protests, and is looked at today as one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time,” he mentioned.

In summer time that yr, controversy was sparked after rapper Meek Mill accused Drake of utilizing a ghostwriter for his visitor verse on Mill’s latest LP, resulting in a quantity of barbed exchanges in diss tracks.

Drake defended himself towards the allegations in September, telling The Fader: “I need, sometimes, individuals to spark an idea so that I can take off running. Music at times can be a collaborative process, you know? Who came up with this, who came up with that – for me, it’s like, I know that it takes me to execute every single thing that I’ve done up until this point. And I’m not ashamed.”

However, this didn’t cease followers scrambling to level out that Lamar had hinted at a fellow rapper utilizing ghostwriters in his hit single, “King Kunta”, which featured on To Pimp a Butterfly: “I can dig rappin’, but a rapper with a ghostwriter? / What the f*** happened? / I swore I wouldn’t tell…”

2016 – Drake dominates gross sales and streams, however Kendrick is the important darling

Both artists appeared to chill down as they centered on their respective initiatives, with Drake dropping his fourth studio album, the Jamaican dancehall-influenced Views, in April 2016. The report spawned a quantity of main hits together with “One Dance”, “Hotline Bling” and “Controlla”, resulting in the Canadian star changing into the most-streamed artist of the yr. It additionally resulted in Drake attaining his first ever UK No 1 album, because it additionally debuted at the high of the US Billboard 200.

However, Drake couldn’t resist making a couple of digs round that point, rapping with The Game on his monitor “100” about the notion of him as a pop artist: “I would have all of your fans if I didn’t go pop / And I stayed on some conscious sh**.”

A yr later, Lamar launched his personal fourth album, DAMN, and obtained significantly extra important reward than Drake had for Views. Where evaluations of Drake’s album have been combined, critics lavished reward on DAMN, even straight pitting it towards Views. “It’s Mr Lamar’s version of the creeping paranoia that has become de rigueur for midcareer Drake,” Jon Caramanica wrote for the New York Times. “And yet this is most likely Mr Lamar’s most jubilant album, the one in which his rhymes are the least tangled.”

Drake appeared to try to squash any previous beef, nonetheless, the month Lamar dropped DAMN, posting a touch upon the Instagram web page of Tidal’s editorial director Elliot Wilson exhibiting that DAMN had out-sold Drake’s More Life mixtape in its opening week by 100,000 copies.

“Amazing to see our music moving!” Drake wrote, additionally liking a remark by a fan who steered he, Lamar and J Cole collaborate on a monitor.

Three years after DAMN’s launch, Lamar would grow to be the first rapper in historical past to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, marking the first time a non-classical or jazz artist had gained the distinguished award.

Through this time, nonetheless, Lamar goes quiet with new music releases (with the exception of the Black Panther movie soundtrack in 2018, which spawned a couple of additional Grammy nominations together with Song of the Year for “All the Stars” with SZA).

Meanwhile, Drake continues to dominate the charts with a string of releases together with his Scary Hours EP and his fifth album, 2018’s Scorpion, which included the singles “God’s Plan”, “Nice for What” and “I’m Upset”.

By this level, the public curiosity in evaluating the two artists was so pronounced that even the then-president, Barack Obama, was requested to declare which one he favoured.

2019 – Mr Morale & the Big Steppers

While Drake has appeared to make occasional makes an attempt at hand Lamar an olive department, the Compton rapper stays tight-lipped except he’s taking swipes on a monitor. But after Ok-Dot took nearly 5 years to launch the follow-up to DAMN, his 2022 album Mr Morale & the Big Steppers, Drake apparently couldn’t resist a chance to lash out.

“I know it’s summertime, I’ve gotta give you s***!” he instructed followers throughout a present for his It’s All a Blur tour in 2023. “I don’t know about these guys that go away for three, four, five years and wanna chill out and all that s***. That’s not me.” Drake then introduced the forthcoming launch of his 2024 album, For All the Dogs.

Drake had beforehand been criticised by some for his relentless string of singles, EPs, mixtapes and studio albums, whereas Lamar is infamous for leaving lengthy gaps between releases…

2024

…Which brings us to the current day, after Lamar made a shock look on “Like That”, which seems on Future and Metro Boomin’s collaborative album, We Don’t Trust You.

Ok-Dot appeared to straight reply to J Cole’s verse on “First Person Shooter” from Drake’s For All The Dogs, the place Cole raps: “Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali.”

“Motherf*** the big three, n***a, it’s just big me,” Lamar raps on “Like That”. “N***a, bum, What? I’m really like that/And your best work is a light pack.”

Drake appeared to brush off Lamar’s diss at a latest live performance whereas on his tour with Cole, in help of It’s All a Blur.

“A lot of people asking me how I’m feeling… listen, the way I’m feeling is the same way I want you to walk out of here feeling tonight about your f***ing self,” Drake instructed his viewers, footage shared to social media on 25 March exhibits.

“Because you know how I’m feeling? I got my head up high, my back straight, I’m 10 f***ing toes down… and feeling like anywhere else I go… and I know no matter what, there’s not a n**** on this Earth that can ever f*** with me in my life,” he shouted. “And that’s how I want y’all to walk out of here tonight…”

“But,” he continued, “you know, you can get yourselves gassed up, riled up and move towards the future… Sometimes you’ve got to acknowledge the mistakes you’ve made in the past… right? So that’s what I want you all to do. Everybody in here.”

Lamar turned to overtly naming Drake in his monitor “euphoria”, seemingly a nod to Drake’s function as a producer on the hit HBO teen drama, which he dropped on a random Tuesday, 30 April.

The six-minute monitor sees Lamar open fireplace on Drake’s racial id, alleged use of ghostwriters, and latest remarks and behavior which have led to accusations of misogyny.

One broadly mentioned second on the monitor has been linked to a infamous interview with late rapper DMX. Asked whether or not he favored Drake in the interview, he merely mentioned, “No.”

Pushed to elaborate, he mentioned: “I don’t like anything about Drake. I don’t like his f***ing voice, I don’t like nothing he talks about. I don’t like his face. I don’t like the way he walks. Nothing. I don’t like his haircut.”

Lamar echoes this as he raps: “I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk/ I hate the way that you dress/ I hate the way you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it’s gon’ be direct.”

In different searing traces, Lamar dismisses rumours he has been in search of “dirt” on Drake: “Why would I attempt to name round and attempt to get filth on you? You suppose my life is rap? That’s ho s***. I acquired a son to boost. But I can see you don’t know nothing ‘bout that,” he raps.

The bars hark back to the now-infamous diss track from US rapper Pusha T, “The Story of Adidon”, which revealed that Drake had fathered a son with French former adult actor Sophie Brussaux. Drake confirmed he had a son, Adonis, a month later when he released his fifth album, Scorpion.

Just a few days later and before Drake had properly responded, Lamar dropped another incendiary track, “6:16 in LA”, on his Instagram. The title is once again pointed as it nods to a favoured theme in Drake’s work, seen in songs comparable to “9am in Dallas”, “8am in Charlotte” and “4pm in Calabas”.

Fans have additionally observed that 6/16 occurs to be each Father’s Day and Tupac Shakur’s birthday. In one other grasp stroke, the monitor was produced by Sounwave and Jack Antonoff, the latter finest recognized for his collaborations with pop titan Taylor Swift.

Drake’s final diss towards Lamar was “Taylor Made Freestyle”, wherein he mocked Lamar for supposedly utilizing his collab with Swift on 2016’s “Bad Blood” to realize mainstream reputation.

With Antonoff, Lamar has ensured that his newest monitor is, actually, “Taylor Made”.

Over a lush, mellow pattern of Al Green, he regales listeners with the issues he’s grateful for earlier than he turns to Drake.

“Are you finally ready to play Have You Ever? Let’s see/ Have you ever thought that OVO was working for me?/ Fake bully, I hate bullies, you must be a terrible person/ Everyone inside your team’s whispering that you deserve it,” he raps.

Then, Lamar goes darker as he tells Drake he has moles in his camp, and that the folks he views as shut allies are literally working towards him: “No, you possibly can’t sleep/ These photos bother you/ No, the wires in your circle ought to puzzle you/ If you have been road good you then would have caught that your entourage is barely to hustle you/ A hundred n****s that you simply reduce on wage/ And 20 of ‘em want you as a casualty/ And one of them is next to you…”

On Saturday (4 May), the Canadian artist released “Family Matters”, made up of three parts, in which he accuses Lamar’s pro-Black activism of hypocrisy. In the monitor he additionally accuses him of alleged home violence, and of “begging” the Tupac property to sue Drake for his use of AI variations of the late rapper in a diss monitor.

“You the Black messiah wifin’ up a mixed queen,” he says referring to Lamar’s childhood sweetheart and fiancée, Whitney Alford who’s of combined heritage.

He denied ordering a stop and desist on Lamar, insisting such an order “is for h*es”. He raps: “You referred to as the Tupac property and begged ‘em to sue me and get that s*** down.”

In perhaps his most controversial lyric, heard over the end of the song as the music tails off, he adds: “They hired a crisis management team, to clean up the fact that you beat on your queen. The picture you painted ain’t what it appears.”

But Lamar hit again inside minutes, releasing “Meet The Grahams”his third diss monitor this week, wherein he accused the rapper of harbouring a secret daughter, and of having a collection of addictions to playing, alcohol, medication, intercourse, and spending.

“You got gambling problems, drinking problems, pill-popping and spending problems, bad with money, whore house. Therapy’s a start,” he rapped.

“You lied about your son, you lied about your daughter, huh, you lied about them other kids that’s out there hoping that you come.”

The “Humble” rapper launched a new monitor “Not Like Us” by way of YouTube on Sunday (5 May). The track has racked up over 10 million views in practically as many hours. It options an aerial picture of Drake’s mansion with goal symbols inside.

In his new track, “Not Like Us”, the “Humble” rapper referred to as Drake a “certified pedophile” as he made a number of references to his alleged interactions with youthful ladies.

“Say, Drake, I hear you want ‘em young,” the 36-year-old rapper began, adding that he would struggle in jail on account of his interest. “You better not ever go to cell block one.”

He went on to mock the “God’s Plan” artist’s studio album Certified Lover Boy as he taunted, “Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles.”

The track was launched on YouTube in the early hours of Sunday morning (5 May). The art work options an aerial shot of Drake’s mansion with intercourse offender targets overlaid.

Drake responded shortly with a brand new track titled “The Heart Part 6,” referring to Lamar’s ongoing, five-part single collection “The Heart” that he started in 2010.

“And we know you’re dropping 6 mins after so instead of posting my address you have a lot to address,” he wrote on Instagram.

On the monitor, Drake shuts down the story about him having a secret daughter, claiming that he and his staff planted the pretend story on function.

“The Pulitzer Prize winner is definitely spiralin’,” Drake began off. “The ones you getting you’re stories from, they all clowns/I am a war general, seasoned in preparation/ My jacket is covered in medals, honor and decoration/You waited for this moment, overcome with the desperation/We plotted for a week and then we fed you the information/A daughter that’s 11 years old, I bet he takes it,” he rapped.

Drake went on to disclaim Lamar’s claims that he pursued underage ladies, writing: “I never been with no one underage, but now I understand why this the angle that you really mess with.”

“Just for clarity, I feel disgusted / I’m too respected / If I was f***** young girls, I promise I done been arrested / I’m way too famous for the shit you just suggested, but that’s not the lesson / Clearly there’s a deeper message / Deep cuts that never healed and now they got infected,” Drake rapped.

24 May 2024

Lamar has but to reply to Drake’s newest diss, suggesting he is likely to be glad with the undeniable fact that “Not Like Us” was, at the time of writing, using at the high of the US Billboard chart and, so far as his followers have been involved, the closing nail in the coffin for Drake.

Drizzy, nonetheless, apparently wasn’t executed. On 24 May he appeared on Sexyy Red’s “U My Everything”, from her new venture In Sexyy We Trust. On the monitor, he raps over Metro Boomin’s “BBL Drizzy” beat, which the producer launched on-line and instructed followers to make their very own model of the track.

Metro beforehand featured on Kendrick’s early diss “Like That” in March. The “BBL Drizzy” title alludes to rumours that Drake underwent a “Brazilian Butt Lift” surgical procedure.

“Me and the surgeon got history / I changed a lot of girls’ lives for real, they need a new body, they hittin’ me,” Drake raps on Sexyy Red’s track, as the seashore switches to Metro’s “BBL Drizzy.”

“BBL Drizzy, they want a new body, they ask me for it / The last one drunk, he did it for free ’cause I sent over so many passports for him, for real.”

Has the beef come full circle?

5 July 2024

Lamar rang in Independence Day by releasing the music video for his chart-topping “Not Like Us” monitor.

Coming lower than a month after the Compton rapper carried out the track six occasions at the Pop Out live performance on Juneteenth, the music video takes a number of photographs at Drake and his OVO label.

“Not Like Us” begins off with a shot of Lamar doing pushups on cinder blocks, a reference to Drake’s “Push Ups” and a callback to when the photograph of Lamar figuring out Drake used as half of the track’s rollout.

Also making an look is Lamar’s companion Whitney Alford and their two kids, a callback to Drake’s “Family Matters” wherein he accused Lamar of alleged home violence and his longtime collaborator and “Not Like Us” director Dave Free of being the father of one of Lamar and Alford’s kids.

The most hanging dig, nonetheless, is all the owl imagery, the chook related with Drake’s OVO label.

One scene options Lamar hitting an owl piñata, with a disclaimer at the backside studying, “No OVHoes were harmed during the making of this video”, and the video’s closing shot is of an owl in a cage.