Enter, Pursued By A Diss Track

Hey, it’s me, Henry, sorry for the absence, I've had a busy time in the period while I was gone, with school and everything. Anyhow, I'm going to be talking about Diss Tracks in R&B and Hip-Hop, specifically, the Kendrick Lamar-Drake Feud, its timeline, and how it concluded.

Now see, I am Team K-Dot all the way, but I will be using non-biased research to write this article. So I believe that the feud started way before 2024, but Drake and Kendrick weren’t that angry at each other back then, a few sneak disses here and there but not much. But in October of 2023, Drake stated in “First Person Shooter, Ft. J. Cole” that he, J. Cole, and Kendrick are all part of “The Big Three”, which is the best 3 rappers of all time, but later, Kendrick collabs with Metro Boomin and Future to make “Like That”, and Kendrick drops the lyrics, “Mother the big three, it’s just big me” (Curses blurred for obvious reasons), basically stating that it’s just Kendrick, not J. Cole or Drake or anybody else!

So then Drake, justifiably angry, drops the song, “Push Ups”, which has the verse “You ain’t in no big three, SZA Got you wiped down, Travis got you wiped down, Savage got you wiped down”, But not only is this verse the only disses, in the album cover, he disses Kendrick’s shoe size, so a double whammy. Kendrick is quiet for a bit up until April 24th. Drake thinks he is winning because Kendrick hasn’t responded in a while, so he decides to go to his (ghost)writers and comes out with “Taylor-Made Freestyle”, and it’s just a doodoo pile of trash, using the ai likeness and voice of Tupac(RIP) and Snoop Dogg. It’s obviously just low effort, low quality, but Drake was probably thinking “Hey guys, we did it! Kendrick can’t come back from this! Seeing his idols from his hometown talking trash about him! Way to go guys!” But then, on April 30, Kendrick drops “Euphoria”.

Now when I listened to this song, I thought he would be rapping in a calm, quiet manner, you know, the soothing music and the soft tone of voice, and then it quickly escalated TO THAT. Drake is freaking out because he’s getting dissed left and right, with Kendrick saying he hates the ways he walks, talk and the way he sneak disses, it’s crazy, with Kendrick even mentioning Pharrell Williams and Sexxy Redd, and I (think) this is the first time the word “Ov-ho” is muttered, so you can tell it’s very groundbreaking, Drake is being destroyed, and THEN Kendrick drops “6:16 in LA” which the title has a whole bunch of meanings, but I won’t go into that, but Drake is being destroyed even more in this track,

Then not even the next day, Drake launches “Family Matters”, and he be dissing EVERYONE, he roasted the Weeknd for not signing to his label OVO, and he roasted Kendrick’s partner, Whitney, for Kendrick, whom he calls a “Black Messiah, dating a mixed queen,” like you literally said you dating white and black and everything in between in your own song, like you cannot be talking. He roasted literally every one of Kendrick’s friends from Atlanta, he roasted Pharrell and Kendrick himself, now the only actual funny part of this song was, “You right about _ the big three, it’s only big d, and there’s video proof”.

Meanwhile, Kendrick is in the corner of the room, laughing maniacally with his hands on his stomach. On May 4, 2024, Drake’s death is made public, with Kendrick's “Meet the Grahams” — now this song doesn’t diss any of Drake’s friends or collaborators but his FAMILY?!?!. This track is the most devious, the most despicable thing I've ever heard! He starts right off the bat by saying that Drake is a bad father to his son Adonis and that Kendrick can be his mentor, and then he tells Drake’s parents that he’s a pedophile and a bad person. My jaw dropped through the floor and into the mantle of the earth when I heard these disses. Kendrick literally went onto his villain arc. And then, Kendrick drops one of my favorite songs of all time, not even less than a day later, “Not Like Us”. If “Meet the Grahams” was Drake’s death, “Not Like Us” was his cremation, then after that Kendricks blows up his urn. This song goes hard, it’s beat is good the disses are absolutely insane, he continues on the Pedophile accusations, saying people like Baka not Nice, one of the members of OVO Sound is a pedophile, which he is. There are so many sneak disses in the song, too, I can't count them all.

Drake then does something like that scene from It’s All Sunny in Philadelphia, he goes to his writers: “Ok guys, we need a song that says he DEFINITELY don’t diddle kids, don’t diddle kids, don’t diddle kids, it’s no good diddling kids”, and releases “The Heart Part Six” and it’s just not good, he basically just says, “If I did, where’s the proof?”, and it’s just a sad excuse for a track.

For now, both have been quiet, the music video for “Not Like Us” is growing like crazy, but both sides have been quiet. Thanks for reading this, once again, I apologize for the absence and if I skipped over anything in the beef, but yeah. Peace.