De Frente com Gabi #1: The Battle Kendrick Lamar Vs Drake

INTRO

Hello, sweeties!

Welcome to the first episode of “De Frente com Gabi”, the show in which I give you a ton of information that you never knew you needed, but definitely shouldn’t be living without. I am teacher Gabi, and if you’re new here, you should definitely subscribe to our dear channel for more English content and nerd stuff. It’s all made with a lot of love by the teachers of Apollo English Academy, for you!

Today we are here to talk about some hot pop culture tea. In case you’re a person who isn’t aware of the American hip-hop scene and have no idea who these artists are, that’s okay! I will explain it all like you’re 5-years-old, worry not.

PART ONE: BEFORE THE TEA (Kendrick and Drake’s past)

To understand what happened between these two rappers, Drake and Kendrick Lamar, we have to go back in time. 13 years, to be more precise. In 2011, they collaborated in the song “Buried Alive Interlude” in Drake’s album, called Take Care.

In 2012, Kendrick Lamar opened one of Drake’s concerts, since, at this time, he was the smaller artist. Drake showed up in Kendrick’s album, called Good Kid, M.A.A.D City in a track called “Poetic Justice”. By the way, if you enjoy storytelling through music, definitely check out Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, it’s beautiful and truly feels like you’re watching a short film… through your ears.

PART TWO: THE “CONTROL” VERSE

In 2013, Kendrick Lamar featured in a song called “Control”, by Big Sean  and oh, boy… Things get tricky. In this track Kendrick named not only Drake but many other famous rappers at the time, like J. Cole, Pusha T, Tyler, the Creator and even Big Sean himself. He said that, while he loved all of them, he wanted to murder them. And calm down, he didn’t mean it literally, okay?

He means that he wants to be better than them, and even says that he wants their fans to forget that they exist because they’re too busy appreciating Kendrick instead. Now, this may sound rude to you, but that’s the nature of rapping. Many people consider hip-hop a sport in which you have competitors and one of them is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best. All rappers claim to be best, but Kendrick is saying that claiming it isn’t enough, he’s coming for the crown.

Now, most rappers took this super well. As I mentioned, there’s a natural spirit of competition within hip-hop culture, so they accepted the challenge as part of the cultural rap game and some of them even responded in other songs. But Drake… He did not take it very well.

PART THREE: THEIR ORIGINS

This is the best time to tell you where these two rappers came from, because that’s super important for this story. Drake came from Toronto, Canada. He has a white mother and a black father, and he didn’t have much contact with his father until after he became famous. He started his public life as an actor in Canada and later changed his career to rapping. All of this means that Drake was never too involved in the American hip-hop culture. He’s an outsider, which shouldn’t be a problem if he’s respectful enough of the big hip-hop stars that are well-respected in the United States, but that usually isn’t the case when it comes to Drake.

Now, Kendrick is the opposite. He was born in Chicago but his family moved to Compton, in California, when he was a small child. This is important because Compton is one of the cities in which the biggest rap stars in the history of hip-hop were born. N.W.A one of the most influential rap groups ever, formed by names like Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, started in Compton. If you take a step back and look at California and the West Coast as a hip-hop territory, you get even more famous names, like Snoop Dogg and Tupac. So this is where Kendrick was born, a city in California known for its violence and street gang activity, yes, but mainly for its contributions to rapping and hip-hop culture.

So when Drake hears Kendrick rapping like that while naming him, he takes it personally.

He doesn’t understand that rappers may say stuff about each other in their songs, but that doesn’t mean they need to be enemies outside of it. So the years go by, Kendrick and Drake do something called “sneak diss” which means talking about each other in their songs without actually using each other’s names. It was like a cold war, if you interpreted their songs deeply enough you could kind of tell they were rapping about each other, but nothing too drastic.

PART FOUR: THE DISS TRACKS

Fast-forward to October 2023, when things truly, truly escalated. Drake released a song with a rapper called J. Cole (remember him?). In this song, called “First Person Shooter”, J. Cole mentions Kendrick directly in this 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 feel like Muhammad Ali

So, K-Dot is one of Kendrick’s nicknames and Aubrey is Drake’s middle name. He’s basically calling Kendrick, Drake and himself “the big three” of the rap industry. Which sounds fine, but Kendrick doesn’t like that at all. You see, apparently Drake wanted Kendrick to be in this song but he refused, because the man hates Drake. So when J. Cole mentions him anyway, Kendrick doesn’t like it, so he soon responds. In March 2024, Kendrick is in a song called “Like That” with artists Metro Boomin and Future. In this song, he responds to First Person Shooter, saying:

Motherfuck the big three, it’s just big me

Again, remember when he said he wanted to be the best? He was not kidding. There is no big three to him, which is consistent when it comes to Kendrick. Once again, Drake doesn’t like that and responds. What happens next is a succession of songs from these two artists accusing each other of some pretty terrible things. So let’s try to speed-run this!

In April 19th, 2024, Drake released Push Ups, attacking not only Kendrick but a bunch of other people who don’t like him. He calls Kendrick short and says that he’s responsible for making him famous. Immediately after, on the same day, he releases Taylor Made Freestyle using AI voices of Tupac and Snoop Dogg (super important rappers where Kendrick is from) and in this song he makes fun of Kendrick for being friends with Taylor Swift and basically accuses him of not being in control of his own career.

In April 30th, 11 days later, Kendrick releases Euphoria. In this song, he says Drake only wants attention and fame, has no respect for hip-hop culture, exploits other artists to make himself look legit in the industry… Among other things. Three days later, he releases 6:16 in LA, making fun of some of Drake’s song titles (like 8am in Charlotte, 6pm in New York, etc). In this song he asks Drake if he really trusts his friends and says that people in his record label are working for him and giving him private information about Drake.

Drake then releases Family Matters, and this is where things get really ugly.

In this song he accuses Kendrick of beating his wife and getting cheated on by this same wife. He also says one of Kendrick’s children is not actually his but his best friend’s, Dave Free. They are some really heavy accusations and the public is trying to digest everything when, less than one hour later, Kendrick Lamar responds with meet the grahams.

In meet the grahams, he writes letters to each member of Drake’s family, the Grahams. He accuses Drake of not taking care of his son Adonis, of being a sexual abuser, of treating women extremely poorly, of having drugs and gambling problems… It’s one of the heaviest songs I’ve ever heard in my life, and this is when the public realizes that Kendrick and Drake will never, ever be friendly again.

14 hours after meet the grahams, Kendrick released what is, until today, the most popular hip-hop song in the world in 2024.

Not Like Us  is a catchy club banger type of song making fun of Drake. In this song, he calls him a pedophile, a scammer, makes fun of his brand called OVO… He exposes all the things he stole from black American artists to keep himself relevant. It’s a nightmare for Drake, and this song is, without a doubt, the one that declares Kendrick the winner of this fight.

Drake responded a while later with a song called The Heart Pt. 6, but at that point… It was over. To make matters worse, Kendrick Lamar will be performing at the SuperBowl half-time show in February of 2025, which is probably the most famous stage performance in the world, with over 100 million people watching.

CONCLUSION

And… this is how it ended. Drake is still releasing music, a lot of them, but they’re not doing very good in numbers. People are very excited for Kendrick’s new album, which might be coming in the next few months, who knows? As a Kendrick fan, I’m super excited.

Many people think that Drake and Kendrick represent two sides of a coin right now. Drake represents the commercial side of the industry. He cares about numbers, money, doesn’t write his own music, is on social media all the time, while Kendrick is seriously concerned about his craft. He writes his own music, is super involved in every step of the process and is very private about his personal life. The fact that Kendrick won this battle has made people a little more optimistic about the future of not only hip-hop culture, but also the music industry as a whole.

But what about you? What do you think about Kendrick’s songs? Did Drake get what he deserved? Was it a little too much? Let me know in the comments! If you want to know more about this whole thing, there are amazing black American Youtubers making content about all of it and what it means for hip-hop culture, so I’ll leave a few links of my favorites in the description box below. Go check them out too!