Kendrick Lamar Hates Drake Just BECAUSE
An update.
“That fuckin’ song y’all got did not start the beef with us,” Drake rapped on his Kendrick Lamar-Future-Weeknd-Metro Boomin diss track “Push Ups.” A gaggle of men had Drake in their crosshairs on Future and Metro Boomin’s joint albums; in response, Drake made a memorable case for his supremacy. He’s lapped the men in releases and streams, he argued, and Kendrick is too elusive, Rick Ross is too old, Future is too Future. “Metro shut yo’ hoe ass up and make some drums, nigga,” was a perfectly pointed Drake line. But that one lyric about the origin of the beef, not even a punchline, stood out: “That fuckin’ song y’all got did not start the beef with us.” It was like Drake was retroactively saying he started this drama, when it seemed like an Avengers had formed to bring him back down to Earth.
A week and a half (and one pathetic bit of AI-assisted baiting) later, Kendrick Lamar unleashed his reply. What’s the meanest thing you could say to Drake? That he’s light skinned (derogatory), biracial (derogatory)? That he’s a liar, that he’s a loser, that he cosplays having a thick skin? That he’s Canadian, that his abs are contoured on, that he’s just like his own father, the man he wrote movingly on Take Care about being abandoned by? Well, yes! Kendrick goes ahead and says it all.
On “Push Ups” Drake swatted away what felt like a dozen enemies. On “Euphoria” Kendrick digs deep on just one. (Though Kendrick’s line “Ain’t twenty-v-one, it’s one-v-twenty if I gotta smack niggas that write with you” pokes some fun at that imbalance.) The most withering lines:
“I like Drake with the melodies, I don’t like Drake when he act tough”
“I even hate when you say the word ‘nigga,’ but that's just me, I guess/Some shit just cringeworthy, it ain’t even gotta be deep, I guess”
“Let your core audience stomach that, then tell ‘em where you get your abs from”
“Why would I call around tryna get dirt on niggas? Y’all think all my life is rap? That’s ho shit, I got a son to raise, but I can see you don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that”
“When I see you stand by Sexyy Red, I believe you see two bad bitches/I believe you don’t like women, that’s real competition, you might pop ass with 'em”
But the thesis of it all is that Kendrick just really hates Drake. He recalls an interview DMX gave about the “Rich Baby Daddy” rapper: “I don’t like anything about Drake," DMX said on “The Breakfast Club” in 2012. “I don’t like his fucking voice. I don’t like the shit he talks about. I don’t like his face. I don’t like the way he walks, nothing. I don't like his haircut.” DMX’s line worked as a throwaway observation; Kendrick turns it into a war cry, a rallying refrain. “This ain't been about critics, not about gimmicks, not about who the greatest/It's always been about love and hate,” he begins. “Now let me say/I'm the biggest hater/I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress!”
“It’s the year of the HATER,” the writer Frazier Tharpe tweeted. So you’re telling me it’s my time
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