The Met Gala is on Monday! There will be a Hung Up chat in the Substack chat when the carpet starts. Fingers crossed this year’s event rises to the occasion.
I’m so sorry Kendrick Lamar, I was not that familiar with your game. There is hater running through his veins. I had low expectations for the rap beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, which started after Kendrick took shots at Drake on song by Future and Metro Boomin. A Canadian lightskinned versus a California hotep — how the mighty have fallen. I could not have been more wrong. Kendrick enters the studio aiming for destruction and Drake has a sweatshop of “associate social editors” (Zack Bia1’s little friends) frantically pulling clips.
Drake released the diss track “Push Ups,” which pokes fun at Kendrick, Metro Boomin, Future, and Rick Ross. Five days later he returns with “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which features verses from AI-Snoop Dogg and AI-Tupac. It took six days for Kendrick to fire back with the six-minute-long “Euphoria.” You know how sharing a Zoom link is somehow longer than a CVS receipt? That’s how long this song is: Kendrick mocks Drake’s Toronto accent, his elastic relationship with blackness, being an absent father, his braids.
On Friday morning Kendrick dropped “6:16 in LA,” which mimics Drake’s flow and copies his “[timestamp] in [city]” title convention. The song is smoother than the last, using a mixed Al Green song; it was produced by Jack Antonoff.2
“Are you finally ready to play have-you-ever? Let's see/Have you ever thought that OVO was workin' for me?/Fake bully, I hate bullies, you must be a terrible person/Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it…” This is Shoshanna Shapiro in the Girls episode “Beach House” asking her friends if her social anxiety is “holding me back from meeting the people who would actually be right for me instead of a bunch of fucking whiny nothings as friends!” This every Oppenheimer scene where his friends complain about him. This is lethal. (As I said on Twitter, “all your friends hate you btw” would kind of be the end of my life. I would never have a good night of sleep again.)
I wish I had a camera on Drake’s location the way I have in Remy’s crate. Imagine it: Drake is walking around that ugly mansion wearing a bulletproof shouting for no reason. Drake so mad he has steam coming out of his ears. Drake standing at the foot of his stairs with his staff in front of him, calling them forward one by one like this is America’s Next Top Drake Leaker. Drake watching The Departed to get some ideas.3 Drake terrorizing his own home like he’s Tedros. More on this beef as it develops, or whatever.
More from Hung Up This Week:
“I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I HATE the way that you dress…” What if I told you Kendrick Lamar hates Drake just because?
A transcript (and recap) of the Chicago event I did with Joanna Goddard and Big Salad. Onstage, we talked about divorced women: “My mom is divorced. My grandmother was also divorced. I think I just grew up watching Waiting to Exhale too much and Runaway Bride too much.”
A chat with Rose Dommu of Mall Goth about Challengers: “Tashi is the person with the most power in Challengers, and when the way she’d traditionally accessed that power—tennis—is taken away from her, she finds a way to get it back. I think ultimately the person Tashi is playing against isn’t Art or Patrick, it’s herself.”
I was on the “HBO Girls Rewatch Podcast,” hosted by Amelia Ritthaler and Evan Lazarus. The season five finale is maybe my least favorite episode of Girls which made me want to talk about this episode even more.
“Give him my regards did you take Ozempic?”
You can tell when a celebrity actually does run their social media, because they don’t know what they’re doing. When Melissa McCarthy posted a photo of herself and the director Adam Shankman (The Wedding Planner, A Walk to Remember, Hairspray) before they went to a gala in Los Angeles. "Pastels only to honor the incredible @matthewbourne13 at the @ctgla gala last night with this fella @adamshankman!!" McCarthy wrote in the caption. "Thiiiiis much closer to my dream of dancing on stage." (Cannot explain why but on first glance I thought she was with Bruce Springsteen and was even more confused.)
In the comments, Streisand posted her nonsequitur: "Give him my regards did you take Ozempic?"
Streisand apologized on Twitter shortly after, but it was the “did you take Ozempic” heard ‘round the world. “OMG - I went on Instagram to see the photos we’d posted of the beautiful flowers I’d received for my birthday! Below them was a photo of my friend Melissa McCarthy who I sang with on my Encore album,” Streisand wrote. “She looked fantastic! I just wanted to pay her a compliment. I forgot the world is reading!”
McCarthy was good-natured about it when TMZ asked her if the comment was out of line. "I think Barbra is a treasure and I love her," McCarthy told a pap on Tuesday. I wish everyone involved the best, and I hope Barbra Streisand never hires someone to oversee her Instagram full-time full-time, just part-time full-time.
Presented Without Comment:
A “love note” Benny Blanco left for Selena Gomez.
These two have been dating for nearly a year, during which she memorably called him “my absolute everything in my heart” and “the best thing that ever happened to me. The end.” (She has a way with words we will be studying until the meteor hits.) Benny Blanco has a cookbook coming out, apparently, and I actually am not interested in learning more about that. But I will be patiently waiting for everything the Foodie Snark reddit has to say about it.
Does Normani Run Her Own Stan Accounts? Well…
Not yes and not no: Normani whose debut album will arrive eventually (June 14, maybe, but who knows) was profiled by The Cut this week, and responded to the online theory that she runs her own stan accounts. (One fan page posted a screenshot of Normani’s Instagram, and it appeared that Normani’s page was logged into the app.)
Doesn’t everyone have a hand in their own stan account these days? “I think we can skip this question” is such a funny answer. You can read the profile here — it’s good!
That’s all this week! Thank you for reading. I hope this newsletter was better than the Dua Lipa album, which was almost as bad as the Maggie Rogers album. Irina Shayk is looking for a new boyfriend. Do you have any suggestions? Have a good weekend!
Random DJ (allegedly) who maybe dated Olivia Rodrigo.
It is better than all of his contributions to Tortured Poets combined.
Drake watching Ratatouille for the other side’s POV.
my god. Cole got out just in time like Club Chalamet with the twin towers 😭
Somehow Taylor is connected to like three different beefs this week Hunter which is hilarious cause she didn’t even say anything