Unless you live under a rock, you have probably heard about the rap battle between two top hip-hop artists, Audrey Drake Graham and Kendrick Lamar. You may have even been asked which of the two you think took the win. And you, being uncultured, didn’t have a clue how to answer.
Well, here’s the breakdown of the whole timeline and each diss track, so the next time you’re asked, you can be well-informed.
Although Drake and Kendrick have had their differences for over a decade before this, their beef was brought to a boiling point with this song, First Person Shooter. The song was released by Drake and featured another popular rapper, J-Cole. The whole song is just the two claiming that they are the biggest rappers in the industry and that no one can go toe-to-toe with them. The most notable lyric came from J-Cole’s verse, “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 like Muhammad Ali.”
The idea of Drake and J-Cole being on his level did not sit well with Kendrick, prompting him to shut down this false claim.
Kendrick was featured on Future and Metro Boomin’s song, Like That. In his verse, Kendrick lets Drake and J-Cole know that they are not on the same level, there is no big three, just him. He, of course, threw in some colorful vocabulary, but that was essentially the whole message.
That was not Kendrick’s only diss in that verse. He directly called out First Person Shooter, saying that the track was just sneak disses – which Kendrick isn’t about. Kendrick also made the point that “Prince outlive Mike Jack,” calling out Drake who compared himself to the late Michael Jackson in First Person Shooter.
At the time of the song’s release, people were going nuts, and they could smell the battle that was about to occur.
This was J-Cole’s response to Kendrick’s diss in Like That. The insults were pretty tame and rather standard. He called out Kendrick for taking forever to drop any new work and saying that he “fell off like the Simpsons.”
You’ll notice that the title of the song is Seven Minute Drill. However, the song is only a little over three minutes in length. The name does not come from how long the song is, however it’s taken from how short of time he took to write it – seven minutes. The point of the title was to let people know that he did this quickly, and could put more out even faster.
The song was released on a mixtape which, ironically, was titled Might Delete Later.
Only a few days after the mix tapes released, Cole stuck true to the title’s name and deleted it. On top of that, he gave a heartfelt apology addressed to Kendrick at a live show.
At the time, people clowned on Cole, insulting his lack of courage for backing out of the battle so quickly. Looking back on it now, this may have been the best decision he could have made as the latter half of this battle became a gruesome massacre.
Finally, we are getting into the meat and potatoes of this beef. Push Ups was Drake’s first diss track directed towards Kendrick. The whole track was filled with relatively basic insults – some real playground-level one-liners. Drake really loved to point out the fact that Kendrick is relatively short compared to the average man with bars such as, “How the f*** you big steppin’ with a size-seven mens on?”
Like J-Cole’s diss, this track was focused on calling Kendrick out for falling off recently. Drake even goes as far as to say that Kendrick isn’t even a top rap artist anymore, and then proceeded to list off a handful of artists who got him beat.
This diss, while directed at Kendrick, did not shy away from throwing shade at some other artists who have negatively commented on Drake during the feud. Metro Boomin’ caught the biggest stray of them all with the line, “Metro shut your h* a** up and make some drums.”
Overall, the diss track was relatively tame and was nothing we hadn’t seen before. After this dropped, everyone was waiting for Kendrick to drop. Many were doubtful it would ever come. However, before Kendrick even had a chance to respond, Drake dropped again.
On the same day that he dropped Push Ups, Drake dropped Taylor Made Freestyle. The diss track doesn’t really try to insult Kendrick, more so it was Drake’s way of letting everyone know the ball is in Kendrick’s court now.
This track was met with heavy backlash when it dropped, due to the fact that Drake made use of AI audio programs to create features from Snoop Dogg and the late Tupac Shakur—both of which Kendrick idolized growing up.
The use of AI made the general public instantly deem it a loss for Drake. Eventually, Drake would be forced to take the song down at the demand of the Tupac estate.
This track may have been poorly received by audiences, but it did have one massive effect – it placed an expectation on Kendrick to drop two back-to-back.
Finally, nearly two weeks after Drake’s drops, Kendrick released Euphoria. A six-minute long diss track (double the time of anything put out so far) that not only responded to everything Drake had said thus far, but threw some brutal shots toward Drake. He called him out for having tried to pass his fake abs off as real, for using both ghostwriters and AI, and for constantly lying.
Kendrick also pressed Drake for putting up an act his entire life and accused him of leeching off of other Black artists to steal the culture, “How many more Black features til’ you finally feel that you’re Black enough?”
Perhaps the biggest diss on the entire track came in the final part. In which, Kendrick accused Drake of being a deadbeat father – saying Drake knew nothing of caring for his son.
The diss went hard, a lot harder than anything Drake had put out at the time, and had people shocked. Many did not expect to see Kendrick rip that hard into Drake, but they would soon come to find that this was just the beginning.
Kendrick matched Drake and dropped a second diss before he even had a chance to respond. The track was first dropped on Instagram rather ominously with just a picture of a glove. The song didn’t go as hard as Euphoria did, but it still threw some serious shade.
The main point Kendrick made on the track was that he had a mole within OVO, which is Drake’s label company. This diss track flew under most people’s radar, but it’s a must-listen to if you want to keep up with all the accusations.
This was by far and away the best entry Drake made in this whole feud. Drake did not heed the warnings of Kendrick and made this diss track a personal attack on his family. He called Kendrick a domestic abuser, accused him of being a fake activist, and questioned if his kids were even his.
Not only were the lyrics dissing Kendrick, but so was the music video itself. The video featured a minivan being compressed and destroyed. The minivan is a reference to Kendrick’s first album, Good Kid, Mad City, which’s cover featured a minivan of the same kind.
Both in terms of a diss track and just a song in general, this record goes really hard. However, Drake made one fatal mistake. He took it there and insulted Kendrick’s wife and kids. Kendrick upheld his promise to Drake after this and “took it further.”
Within just a half hour of Family Matters dropping, Kendrick slapped back with full force. Kendrick addresses every member of Drake’s family in letter format and uses them to explain all of the faults Drake has.
It begins with Kendrick writing to Adonis, Drake’s son, telling him that his father is not a good role model and he should not strive to be like him. Rather, Adonis should learn a sense of responsibility and not cut corners to get what he wants.
Kendrick then proceeds to speak to Drake’s parents, explaining to them that their son is a terrible person and all of his problems, such as his many addictions, are their doing. Additionally, Drake exposes to the parents how Drake has used and manipulated them to create a false identity and they just allowed it to happen. This part of the diss was crazy, especially because at multiple times Kendrick straight up tells them he wishes their son was dead.
If you thought it couldn’t get any more insane than Kendrick telling Drake’s parents he wished they didn’t conceive him, then you’re in for a shock because it very much does. Kendrick then goes on to address this, “babygirl,” which is supposed to be Drake’s unknown daughter that Drake refuses to acknowledge. Let me specify that this is all alleged, and that there is no hard evidence of such a person existing. Kendrick tells her that her father’s behavior is not her fault and that she must remain strong despite her father’s actions.
To end the song, Kendrick writes to Drake. He actually apologizes for the whole situation, but lets him know that he brought this ordeal onto himself when he mentioned his family’s name. Despite apologizing, Kendrick still insults Drake. In particular, his credibility. He questions why we should believe any of the accusations Drake has been caught lying on so many occasions.
When this dropped, pretty much everyone watching thought that this was gonna be impossible to top. It was one of the most personal, the most disrespectful, the most scary diss tracks ever. Drake had been taken through the ringer, and he was about to go through it again in less than a day.
The most memorable and quotable song from this whole feud, Not Like Us dropped only 24 hours after Meet the Grahams. In this song, Kendrick managed to beat Drake at his own game, making a song people could dance to at the club. It may not be the best in terms of an actual diss, but as a song it is incredible.
Not Like Us quickly shot up the charts to the number-one spot on Billboard’s list and became the fastest hip-hop song to reach 100 million streams – a feat previously held by Drake. Videos quickly surfaced of the song being played in clubs, something that Drake songs are famous for. Not only were clubs playing it, but the song was also being played atMmajor League Baseball games and in the NBA playoffs.
There were two lines from this song that had people across the internet absolutely rolling. Those two lines were, “Certified Lover Boy, certified Pedophile” and “You probably tryna strike a chord and its probably A-minorrrrrrrrrr.” Both lines are pretty self explanatory, but just in case you’re lost, Certified Lover Boy was Drake’s last studio album and “A-minor” refers to both the musical chord and a literal child.
With this song, Kendrick had both beaten Drake lyrically and in terms of numbers. Drake, however, was not willing to at least go down without a fight.
After Kendrick’s one-two blow with Meet the Grahams and Not Like Us, Drake had a near impossible task of trying to drop something that topped both of those. It wasn’t great, but you can’t say he didn’t at least try.
On this track, Drake claims that all the accusations that Kendrick has made about him being a pedophile and having an illegitimate daughter are false, and that Drake’s team actually purposely fed that “fake” information directly to Kendrick.
People online were quick to question this statement, and rightfully so. If you take a minute to think about it, it would make zero sense for Drake to let Kendrick falsely leak information about him being a sexual predator. What happens when people only hear Kendrick’s song and don’t hear Drake’s rebuttal? Now they just think that Drake is a creepy person and a pedophile. And if Drake really did feed this to Kendrick, where are the DMs or audio recordings proving that he did indeed leak it himself purposefully?
Another thing that Drake did on this record that got a lot of people up in arms was he made jokes regarding the fact that Kendrick was molested as a child. Which is not even true. Drake misinterpreted the song “Mother I Sober” off of Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers. The song is about the sexual assault that his mother endured and how that impacted his own childhood.
Either way, the internet was upset that Drake would insult someone for being a victim of something as serisous as sexual assault.
Overall, the song was not that great, and as a diss track it was even worse. Yet, Drake fans still hyped it up and claimed that this put Drake above Kendrick in the beef. This would be the last song between the two(for now) and Drake would finish it out with a monologue claiming how easy this beef was for him to win.
Do you remember way back when on the song Push Ups when Drake told Metro to go make some drums? Well, he did just that.
Earlier in the beef, Rick Ross, another rapper, nicknamed Drake “BBL Drizzy” accusing him of getting a Brazilian Butt Lift. Metro built off of this and made a whole beat for any artists to use centered around Drake’s BBL (which is the best in history).
The beat is catchy and had people dancing all across TikTok and Instagram. The whole thing was basically Metro kicking Drake while he was already down.
And with that, you are all caught up on every major song that came from this feud. I recommend you give them a listen – the majority are actually really good songs.
