Chicago journalists on the cultural impact of the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake
“Them superpowers gettin’ neutralized.” Those are the famous words Kendrick Lamar delivered at Drake ahead of a weekend that many have described as nuclear.
Though Top Dawg Entertainment CEO has now claimed the battle to be over, I haven’t been able to take my eyes off anything to do with the Kendrick Lamar and Drake beef since things got intense on May 3.
The weekend was preceded by Drake dropping his song “Push Ups” nearly a month after Kendrick Lamar reignited their tense relationship with his verse on “Like That” in March. Things got more heated when Drake released the telling “Family Matters’’ track which was stepped on in 15 minutes by K. Dot’s horrific tale “Meet The Grahams,” accompanied by Drake’s personal belongings which led to his upbeat and culturally poignant diss record “Not Like Us.”
That weekend of back-and-forth verbiage between the two rap elites signifies a moment that is now cemented in history; a moment I haven’t stopped talking about and one that I can’t wait to discuss 10, 15, or 20 years from now.
Like myself, other Chicago journalists weren’t lost on the beef’s cultural impact and how the social media tools of the day amplified the drama.
“I feel like this was a historical moment for hip hop in general. We got the top rap artists and hip-hop artists going at it and then going at it in a fashion we’ve never seen before ever,” said Stephen Bekoe, founder of Chicago media outlet iLLANOiZE Radio.
Bekoe says what makes the moment so significant is the real-time clash between Drake and Kendrick throughout that weekend, a moment the genre never witnessed during a battle.
“They’re not just dropping two-minute songs, they’re dropping six, seven-minute songs within like maybe six-hour time spans, you know what I’m saying? It’s actually them listening to each other. They’re going back into the studio to create and coming back out and putting it out,” he said.
Bekoe remembers being at home when he checked on social media to see discourse online with the two artists trending heavily.
Britt Julious, Chicago Tribune music critic, said she made the mistake of going to bed early that Friday night after serving a long day of jury duty. Julious woke up to a state of confusion when she opened the social platform X the next morning.
“It took me a while to realize that Kendrick had then dropped another song after Drake had dropped his song,” she said. “It was confusing seeing it all happen at the same time.”
Although rap beefs are as old as the genre itself– the most notable being the tragedy of The Notorious B.I.G and 2Pac. The two late great rap legends weren’t on the scale of Drake and Kendrick as social media propelled the voice of fans which has united (and divided) them globally.
“It’s like, it’s here, right now almost everyone has a smartphone or a computer, or tablet,” said Julious. “They can get the music instantly and have an opinion on it instantly. They can compare (them) to the other songs really easily as well.”
In addition to the several diss tracks that both Drake and Kendrick dished out, the hilarious “BBL Drizzy” song written by comedian King Willonius taunting Drake over allegations of having fake abs, can’t be escaped and was revamped and accompanied by a contest by producer Metro Boomin.
Creations such as the comedic tune along with the dozens of videos, memes, and breakdowns make the moment much more astronomical. The beef has even been coined “the last good rap beef” by Spotify-owned pop culture website The Ringer as the star power of both Kendrick and Drake –two of rap’s Big Three with J. Cole as the third-– will most likely not be seen again in our lifetime.
Highlights of the feud include a restaurant in Drake’s home city of Toronto naming a dish “the Kendrick Lamar special” after the rapper name-dropped the eatery in “Euphoria.” One social media user even created a playlist of every song the two have dissed each other over the years in chronological order.
Chicago-based Oscar Mayer also infiltrated themselves into the fun with an Instagram post spelling out “BBL Glizzy” with mustard.
“I feel like this year has been a really great year for hip-hop,” said Bekoe. ”And though these brothers have negative issues with each other, I look at it as they put it over a track outside of going at each other in the streets.”
Notably, following the weekend of exchanged disses, it was reported that Drake’s bodyguard was shot outside his Toronto home while two home invasion attempts occurred at his property. As investigations are underway, no stated connections to the beef have been made.
For as highly regarded the moment is, the scathing allegations from both Kendrick and Drake were noted to use women as pawns as they attempted to destroy the other’s character with claims of pedophilia and physical abuse.
“It hones in on how Black women, in particular, are often seen as disposable within certain areas of rap and so, it’s kind of like the Spider-Man meme” explained Julious. “Revealing these truths in your songs does not make me think that either of you is better as men because you’re revealing it in the songs. (It) shows that you’ve learned about it and haven’t done anything about it until now.”
Both Bekoe and Julious agree that the series of hostility comes second to Biggie vs. Pac, beating out the Jay-Z and Nas beef from the late 90s to early 2000s.
“Because of just like the energy behind it,” Bekoe added. “Then putting hip hop back at the forefront of things in a way they did it, they literally gave us a damn project full of diss records.”
As time marches on, we are left with notable lines such as “What is it the braids?” With this summer’s anthem “Not Like Us,” arguably our generation’s “Hit Em Up,” the Compton native will have countless summer barbeques amped up while crowds scream, “O-V-Hoe!”
