Tracing the lyrical jabs, rivalry, and roots of how two of hip-hop’s biggest rappers– Kendrick Lamar and Drake– shaped a decade-long feud.
Unless you’ve spent the last few months living under a rock with no internet access, you’ve no doubt heard about the Drake and Kendrick Lamar drama. It’s one of the biggest beefs in recent hip-hop history, dominating social media and showing up on news sites since the first diss track dropped.
But what started the feud, and who released what, when? The answers to these questions and more are below in this detailed timeline of the lyrical battle.
The feud between Drake and Lamar brewed for more than a decade before coming to a head in 2024 with a series of diss tracks released by each respective artist.
You know Drake and Lamar have beef. But how did it start? This timeline of the rappers’ feud will bring you up to speed.
Initially, the two stars seemed to have a pretty positive relationship. When Drake’s career began blowing up back in 2011, he invited several big names to appear on his “Take Care“ album. One of them was Lamar. In 2012, Lamar returned the favor and featured Drake in his single, “Poetic Justice.”
However, the tides started shifting in 2013. In his verse in Big Sean’s “Control,” Lamar took shots at several peers, including Eminem, Pusha T. and, of course, Drake. Drake initially took the digs in stride, claiming it was “all love” between the two. Months later, though, the Canadian rapper would release “The Language.” Several media outlets interpreted its first verse as a response to Lamar’s verse on Big Sean’s track.
Kendrick took another shot at Drake during the 2013 BET Hip-Hop Awards cipher, rapping, “Nothing’s been the same since they dropped ‘Control’/And tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes.”
Drake addressed the diss on the cover of Vibe in early 2014, saying he already “stood [his] ground” against the Compton native and praising him as a “genius in his own right.” Lamar echoed Drake’s feud-dismissing sentiments in the fall of that year, declaring to Dazed, “I got no beef with Drake.”
Even though both artists insisted there was no bad blood, the sneak disses continued from 2015 through 2022. One of these is Lamar’s “The Heart Part 4.” When it was released in 2017, there was speculation it was about Big Sean or Drake. Lamar confirmed it was about the latter years later — but not before the rap battle reignited in 2023, this time bigger and more glaringly apparent than before.
In October 2023, featured on Drake’s “First Person Shooter,” rapper J. Cole claimed that he, Drake and Lamar were the “Big Three” greatest rappers in modern hip-hop. Lamar wasn’t a fan of this claim and clapped back in March 2024 in a song called “Like That.” In his verse on the track, which also featured Metro Boomin and Future, Lamar slammed both Cole and Drake and denounced the “Big Three,” saying: “Motherf—k the big three, n—a, it’s just big me.”
A month later, Drake released two tracks, “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle.” Both contained digs at Lamar. In “Push Ups,” Drake digs at Lamar’s short stature — the rapper is 5 feet 5 inches tall — but “Taylor Made Freestyle” delivered a lower blow. The track contains AI-generated vocals of Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg, two of Lamar’s influences, claiming to be disappointed that Lamar hadn’t responded to “Push Ups.”
This move ultimately didn’t bode well for Drake, though. Following the release of “Taylor Made Freestyle,” Tupac Shakur’s estate threatened to sue him if he didn’t remove the song within 24 hours. They called the song “a flagrant violation” of the law and a “blatant abuse” of Shakur’s legacy. Drake obliged, scrubbing the song from his social media pages.
On April 30, 2024, six days after the release of “Taylor Made Freestyle,” Lamar clapped back with a scathing six-minute song called “Euphoria.” The diss track called out Drake’s fashion sense, hip-hop merits and use of the N-word. Lamar didn’t stop there, though. On May 3, he released “6:16 in LA” in an Instagram Reel and used the song to attack Drake’s crew, claiming those closest to him were conspiring against him behind his back.
Fourteen hours after Lamar released “6:16 in LA,” Drake responded with “Family Matters.” This time, he honed in on Lamar’s relationship with his fiancée, Whitney Alford. Drake suggested there was infidelity in their relationship, claiming one of Lamar’s children was fathered by his friend and label co-founder Dave Free. He also called Lamar a cheater and domestic abuser.
Twenty minutes later, when the clock struck midnight on the East Coast on May 4, Lamar dropped “Meet the Grahams,” using his lyrics to call Drake a deadbeat father, suggest that he fathered a secret daughter and allege that he’s running a sex trafficking ring out of his mansion.
Lamar wasn’t finished, though. The same day he released “Meet the Grahams,” he dropped “Not Like Us.” Music critics praised this track, feeling it solidified Lamar’s victory in the rap battle. Some publications even called it one of the best diss tracks ever made. In this song, Lamar doubles down on the claims he made in “Meet the Grahams,” continuing to allege that Drake is a pedophile, saying, “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young / You better not ever go to cell block one / To any b—h that talk to him and they in love / Just make sure you hide your lil sister from him.”
On May 5, Drake released his rebuttal, “The Heart Part 6.” He used the song to debunk allegations of having a secret daughter and once again suggested that Lamar’s fiancée had a child with Dave Free. Unfortunately, Drake’s latest diss track didn’t have the intended effect. It received mostly negative reviews, racking up more than a million dislikes on YouTube.
“The Heart Pt. 6” was the last diss track released in the feud, but the shade didn’t end there, though most of it came from Lamar’s end.
On June 19, 2024, Lamar headlined a concert in Inglewood, California, called The Pop Out: Ken & Friends, where he performed “6:16 in LA” live for the first time and invited Dr. Dre to perform the intro to “Not Like Us.” Lamar performed the song six times total that night.
Lamar released the “Not Like Us” music video on July 4. The video, directed by Dave Free, featured appearances by Lamar’s fiancée and children. By then, the West Coast-born rapper was deemed by most as the winner of the feud, and numerous websites, including Variety, called the video a victory lap for Lamar.
The internet has had plenty to say about the very public, deeply personal feud. Here are a few thoughts on the Drake-Lamar beef and its effect on the rap community.
While members of each artist’s respective fanbases seem to have shown their support of their favorite rapper throughout the feud — at the time of writing, Lamar’s “Not Like Us” is the year’s best-selling song in the U.S. and Drake’s diss tracks helped him become the first artist to surpass 100 billion streams on Spotify — many of their peers are unimpressed by the very public battle.
Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, called the feud “negative” before adding, “Even this year, the most fun we’ve had was from a fight. A song from a fight, from a rap beef. Which I enjoyed every minute of. It was very fun. But still, kinda negative in a certain light.” Questlove expressed his disappointment over the diss tracks on Instagram, writing, “This was a wrestling match level mudslinging and takedown by any means necessary — women & children (& actual facts) be damned.” He finished the somber message by declaring, “Hip Hop Is Truly Dead.”
Rap beefs aren’t a new phenomenon. They’re as old as the music genre itself, influenced by the freestyle battles that have become synonymous with hip-hop. But while beef tended to stay within the community in the early days, this battle almost immediately crossed over to pop culture. Bill Stephney, a former Def Jam executive, told the BBC, “That 100 million people can consume that so quickly is just such a profound technological change. It’s hard to even fathom it.”
The tracks within the feud have resulted in an overwhelming amount of buzz, from Reddit forums to media think pieces, all while dominating the streaming charts. This backs Stephney’s statement, confirming that where rap beef was once only known by those who closely followed the culture, it’s now easily accessible, and those who are listening want more.
So, who won?
Most fans, hip-hop enthusiasts and music critics favor Lamar as the winner of the feud because of his calculated release tactics and brutal character-assassinating claims. It doesn’t hurt that “Not Like Us” topped several of Billboard’s lists for weeks.
However, a population of rap commentators, fans and artists still deem Drake the winner. One of these is Gillie Da Kid, who wrote on his Instagram page, “That s—t over with, man! Kendrick can’t come back.” Azealia Banks is another member of Team Drake, writing on her Instagram story, “‘Push Ups’ is the crown jewel of it all.”
The Drake and Kendrick Lamar drama has both positive and negative implications for their respective careers and personal lives.
One of the positive implications is solidifying both artists’ positions at the top of their game. Sidney Madden of NPR Music told Amna Nawaz of PBS these two are “on the Mount Rushmore of hip-hop’s current rap acts.” He went on to say this feud — mostly the public’s interest in it — confirmed their relevancy in the industry. They also showed themselves as trailblazers, leveraging social media and AI in ways their peers haven’t.
The negative implications are a bit more severe, however. There were serious allegations amidst the mudslinging, with Lamar calling Drake a pedophile and trafficker and Drake calling Lamar a domestic abuser. These accusations can’t be ignored. Nawaz points these out in her conversation with Madden, quoting an opinion piece from The Guardian: “In the course of the nasty back-and-forth, they have made women, women who are possibly survivors of sexual abuse, harassment or domestic violence, the collateral damage of their violent mudslinging.”
If these accusations are even remotely true, they imply the music industry goes to great lengths to protect its own, no matter what’s at stake for the victims.
Many call Kendrick Lamar, Drake and J. Cole the Big Three of modern rap, as they are considered three of the biggest rappers to emerge out of the 2010s.
Most people say fellow Comptonite Dr. Dre discovered Kendrick Lamar. However, Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith met Lamar, who was going by K. Dot at the time, seven years earlier when he was just 16. Not long after, Tiffith offered the young rapper a deal with his label, Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE).
Drake released “Family Matters” at around 11 p.m. EST on May 3. Lamar released “Meet the Grahams” less than 45 minutes later.
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