By: Leilani Maldonado

In early May of this year, there was a pop culture outrage when Kendrick Lamar and Aubrey Drake Graham began a rap battle within two weeks. This all began in peace, with a simple compliment, then it was turned into horrible allegations and judgment of their personal lives.

On November 15, 2023, Drake dropped his album “For All the Dogs” in which he collaborated with J. Cole on their song “First Person Shooter” where he says that he, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar are the big three of the rap industry. In response to this, on March 22, 2024, Kendrick Lamar collaborated on a track with Metro Boomin and Future called “Like That” where he says that it's not the big three, “it’s just big me”, insulting both rappers by implying he is better than both of them.

After this track was dropped on Metro Boomin’s album “WE DON’T TRUST YOU”, J.Cole responded to Kendrick’s line in the song with his “7 Minute Drill” which he removed from all platforms a week after it was up and apologized at one of his concerts for saying those horrible things about Kendrick. Then on April 19, 2024, Drake dropped the song “Push Ups” where he insults Kendrick for being short amongst other insults, as well as dissing Metro Boomin, despite him only being in charge of the beat of his song. Drake also continues to diss many other people in the general music industry including the Weeknd, despite him having no role in this tension.

After “Push Ups” is released, Kendrick drops his six-minute song “Euphoria” where he says that he hates Drake and that it isn’t something he did he just hates him. He then drops “6:16 in LA” just another track insulting Drake and his career. Only a few hours after “6:16 in LA” is dropped, Drake drops “Family Matters” accusing Kendrick of assaulting his wife and telling his wife to call him if anything happened. He then went on to say that Kendrick was a bad father and didn’t see his kids enough.

Only thirty minutes after Drake dropped this track, Kendrick drops a dark emotional track called “Meet the Grahams” where he says that Drake is a bad father to his son Adonis, to his alleged daughter that he has been hiding from the world, and that he is a pedophile. However, Kendrick did not stop there. The next morning he drops “Not Like Us” stating how Drake is a pedophile which was primarily made to rub in the fact that there would be no way for him to reply to both of these tracks successfully.

Later that night Drake drops his reply to both songs with “The Heart Part 6”, referencing Kendrick's series “The Heart” and parts one through 5. In this track, he denies the allegations of being a pedophile and accuses Kendrick of hitting his wife again. He then continues to make fun of one of his songs from “Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers” when Kendrick had made a song about his mother getting molested as a child. However, Drake thought it was about Kendrick getting molested and eventually got severely called out by people on social media for using such sensitive, controversial, and sad information to insult someone. One of the last things included in this diss track is when Drake says how he had someone give Kendrick information about another hidden child so then he would rap about it but be wrong.

Despite Drake setting Kendrick up and accusing him of spreading false information, he had no proof against the allegations of pedophilia other than his account which was proven wrong in the end. This was proven to be a lie because of multiple accounts from Millie Bobby Brown saying that she and Drake were close, along with accounts of concerning tweets made towards celebrities that started their career under 18 such as Billie Eilish and others. Kendrick’s allegations on the other hand were not proven wrong however there is also no evidence against him other than Drake simply stating that he assaults his wife.

In the end, the internet considers this duel to go down in rap history as well as a victory for Kendrick and his fans.