THE NORTH STAR

Two prominent figures in the hip-hop industry, Drake and Kendrick Lamar, have started a back-and-forth since April. Although all of it came down within the last month, the history of it extends back to 2012. Here’s the full timeline, and everything you need to know about the beef.

It all started when Drake invited the up-and-coming Kendrick Lamar onto his ‘Take Care’ album, and took him as an opening act on his Club Paradise Tour. A year later though, in a guest verse on Big Sean’s ‘Control’, he called out a bunch of rappers including Drake, J. Cole, A$AP Rocky, and many more. His exact lines were “ And that goes for Jermaine Cole, Big KRIT, Wale, Pusha T, Meek Millz, A$AP Rocky, Drake, Big Sean, Jay Electron’, Tyler, Mac Miller, I got love for you all but I’m tryna murder you *”. Drake responded with “It just sounded like an ambitious thought to me. That’s all it was. I know good and well that [Lamar]’s not murdering me, at all, on any platform.”

Almost a decade later, Drake and J. Cole dropped their collaboration on Drake’s album, ‘For All the Dogs’ called ‘First Person Shooter’. In his verse, J. Cole says “Love when they argue the hardest MC/ Is it K-dot? Aubrey? Or me?/ We the big three like we started a league ….”. Basically, J. Cole is referring to himself, Kendrick Lamar, and Drake as “The Big Three” of hip hop. A year later, Lamar denied the existence of “The Big Three” during the premiere of Metro Boomin’ and Future’s album, ‘We Don’t Trust You’, in the song ‘Like That’ by saying “Motherf**k the big three, *****, it’s just big me.” J. Cole responded to Lamar on the diss track ‘7 Minute Drill’, but quickly apologized and removed the song from streaming services.

Drake dropped the diss track “Push Ups” on April 19, 2024, which was a response to ‘Like That (by Future and Metro Boomin). The targeted individuals were Future, Metro Boomin, The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, Rick Ross, and (surprisingly) Ja Morant. Following the song, Drake released another song, titled ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’. The song features the AI generated vocals of Tupac and Snoop Dogg. Drake used these AI vocals to play mind games with Lamar, as these artists were some of the biggest influences on him. Following the release of these songs, Tupac’s estate threatened legal action for the use of his voice, which made Drake take down the song, and Rick Ross responded to ‘Push Ups’ with his own song titled ‘Champagne Moments’.

Kendrick Lamar responded with an almost six and a half minute track called ‘Euphoria’ on April 30th, 2024, in which he says “Know you a master manipulator and habitual liar”. He released yet another diss track called ‘6:16 in LA’ 3 days later on May 3rd 2024.

Starting off with the name, many people across the internet have found many connections to 6:16 across history and other events. 16th June is infamous for being celebrated as Father’s Day. People have speculated that Kendrick could be taking a jab on Drake’s parenting skills, a follow up on his line in Euphoria “Y’all think my life is rap?/That’s h*e shit, I got a son to raise/ But I can see you know nothin’ ‘bout that”. Kendrick also says that he has a rat in OVO, Drake’s label. The cover art, a black leather Maybach glove, hints towards the gloves used by OJ Simpson, which might be Kendrick saying that Drake’s team is commiting crimes and getting away with it, which ties into allegations made in other songs. Kendrick was also clever with the music, since the song is made around Al Green’s sample of “What a Wonderful Thing Love Is”. This song is directly connected to Drake and his family, since his father’s cousin has been credited for being the guitarist on the sample.

In retaliation, Drake released “Family Matters” later that day, calling Kendrick Lamar a domestic abuser and saying that one of his children was fathered by American Filmmaker, Dave Free. Drake starts off angry with the line “ I said it, I know that you mad/ I’ve emptied the clip over friendlier jabs/ You’ve mentioned my seed now deal with his dad/…” which references Kendrick bringing Drake’s son, Adonis into the feud. As Drake dissects Kendrick’s relationship with his family, Drake says “ Say you hate the girls I f*k, but what you really mean?/ I been with Black and White, and everything that’s in between/ You the Black messiah wifin’ up a mixed queen/ And hit vanilla cream to help out with your self-esteem”. Drake alleges that Kendrick is cheating on his fiancee with white girls. Drake names many people including The Weeknd, Rick Ross, Metro Boomin, Rihanna, Dave Free , Lil Wayne, and 21 Savage. Drake also says that Kendrick can only get hits when Baby Keem writes his songs.

Less than an hour later from the release of “Family Matters”, Kendrick dropped “Meet The Grahams”, which is a letter to Drake’s family. The title “Meet The Grahams” is a reference to Drake’s name, “Aubrey Drake Graham”. The song starts with a letter to Adonis, Drake’s son: “Dear Adonis, I’m sorry that man is your father, your dad is not responsive/ I look at him and wish your grandpa would have worn a cond*m/ I’m sorry that you gotta grow up and then stand behind him/…”. He continues by making predatorial accusations against Drake calling him a pedophile and calling him out for running sex trafficking schemes out of his mansion. He also says that Drake is hiding a secret daughter.

On May 4th 2024, Kendrick releases “Not Like Us”, which is the song which practically ended the beef with iconic lines like “Why you trolling like a b*tch ain’t you tired?/ Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A MINORRRRRR/” . He also says “Certified Lover Boy? Certified Pedophiles” continuing his claim on the sexual trafficking run out of Drake’s mansion. He also threatens Drake with releasing more information about him as he says “Shape the stories how you want, hey, Drake, they’re not slow/ Rabbit hole is still deep, I can go further, I promise.”

Drake, already having lost, tries to make a comeback on May 5th, 2024. The song “THE HEART PART 6” became hated for the line “Just for clarity, I feel disgusted, I’m too respected/ If I was fking young girls, I promise I’d have been arrested/ I’m way too famous for this shit you just suggested/”. This line backfires on Drake completely along with the line “Only fking Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns, I’d never look twice at no teenager”. He says that Kendrick’s information about his 11-year old daughter was fed to him by Drake’s inner circle, and Drake continues with his domestic abuse claims on Kendrick.

Though the feud ended at this point, there were other instances outside of music. Drake’s Toronto mansion had a shooting, hurting a security guard, and was broken into the next day. It is safe to say that this beef took the whole world by storm, providing entertainment to the people that followed along.