Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake. Even though the rap genre offered plenty of memorable moments last year, it would be hard to find a more significant event than the beef between two of the biggest rappers of our time, Drake and Kendrick Lamar. A rap beef can be defined as a dispute between rappers who create songs whose main purpose is to verbally attack each other. This beef has been closely watched by the entire music scene and was at the birth of the most notable rap songs of last year. It can be read on many levels, but at its core we find a powerful story of exploitation and colonialism, a war for the very soul of rap culture that should make us think about how to discuss rap.
NOT LIKE US (Chapter One)
It is not the aim of this article to recapitulate the entire beef, but we will not deny ourselves a short summary for the sake of context. Kendrick Lamar and Drake have had an antipathy towards each other for years and have even sparred on a few tracks in the past. The real rap battle, however, began in March 2024, when world-renowned rap artists Future & Metro Boomin released their collaborative album We Don’t Trust You, on which a guest appearance by Kendrick Lamar hit back at Drake, declaring that there is no “big three” in rap (that’s what rapper J. Cole called himself, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar on the track First Person Shooter), but only “the big Kendrick.” This is a common rap punchline, yet it has sparked an unprecedented rap beef. Drake responded to this jab with a pretty punchy and offensive track, Push Ups, on which he attacks Kendrick from every angle possible. However, these attacks were still in a ranting vein, with Drake primarily swinging for success, money, and influence in the rap scene. At that point, he couldn’t have hoped to spark a truly aggressive battle that would discredit him in the eyes of millions of listeners and earn Kendrick the headlining spot for this year’s Super Bowl LIX halftime show, one of the most-watched live telecasts in the world.
The following tracks were Taylor Made Freestyle (Drake), euphoria (Kendrick Lamar), 6:16 in LA (Kendrick Lamar), FAMILY MATTERS (Drake), meet the grahams (Kendrick Lamar), Not Like Us (Kendrick Lamar), and The Heart Part 6 (Drake) in which both artists pull a lot of personal information on each other (much of it unverifiable), wish each other dead, or use their opponent’s interpersonal relationships to reflect their weaknesses. The issue of these songs is brilliantly described by Tayo Bero in her article Drake and Kendrick Lamar don’t get that women’s pain isn’t a punchline, in which she highlights the use of women—potential victims of sexual violence or domestic abuse—as a tool in their beef.
We will, however, hold off on the song Not Like Us, which is the key to the story of exploitation and discredits Drake as the man who exploits rap culture. “No, you not a colleague, you a fuckin’ colonizer,” Kendrick Lamar raps in the third verse of Not Like Us. He likens Drake to the colonizers who built the railways in Atlanta with the help of slaves long ago. According to Kendrick, Drake emulates this dynamic when he collaborates with Atlanta rappers like Future, Lil Baby, and Quavo to cement his status in the scene. While Kendrick Lamar has been highlighting the systemic socio-cultural issues that bind the African-American population in the United States throughout his career, Drake has perfected his recipe for hits. As HHGA writes in their article Drake: The Pop Star Who Hijacked Hip Hop, Drake’s success is not so much indicative of his talent as it is of the state of the industry. His music is tailor-made for playlists, designed to be consumed in bits and pieces and forgotten as the next trend comes along. Drake makes pop in hip-hop clothes.
THE SOUL OF RAP (Chapter Two)
Which at first glance might not be problematic; we are fans of some of Drake’s songs ourselves, but in rap, access to the culture of the genre is crucial. At the heart of the genre is the process of authentic community building, actively promoting optimal well-being, and preserving culture. People participating in rap culture are symbolically committed not only to anti-racism but also to dismantling white supremacy or addressing systemic inequalities.
Kendrick Lamar is surrounded by his Compton community in the music video for Not Like Us, while Drake is suing his record label, Universal Music Group, for defamation and harassment for helping to spread a “false and malicious” story about him when it promoted and released Lamar’s song Not Like Us. In doing so, he takes aim at the practices of exploiters and finds loopholes in a music industry that often exploits the suffering of African-American communities imprinted in rap music. He seeks help in a system that inflicts pain and trauma on people like Kendrick. This contrast is the perfect symbolism to highlight the difference between the two artists. Kendrick Lamar, after coming out of the beef as the winner, released a successful album, GNX, that builds on the discussion regarding rap culture. For example, on the opening track wacced out murals, he highlights his past in the ghettos of Compton.
„Where you from? Not where I’m from, we all indigenous, Against all odds, I squabbled up for them dividends,“
In this section, he brings to the fore his position as an “indigenous inhabitant” of rap culture, which he did not come to from the outside for the vision of money and fame, but which stems from his life experiences. The battle for the soul of rap could never be won by someone who does not address social issues in his work. As J.C. Hall points out in his article The Right to Rap: How Hip Hop Helps Students Heal from Trauma, in the face of systemic neglect of low-income urban neighborhoods, rap is much more than entertainment: it is a countercultural revolution that embodies lives connected to community action and social change. Rap represents resilience, resistance, and redemption for those living on the margins of society and is still understood today as an art form for the underdog and a tool of resistance.
This reflection describing the essence of rap leads us to the second part of the article, which we would like to dedicate to the discussion about rap itself, or the battle for the heart of the genre. Since rap comes out of neglected urban neighborhoods, it is inherently linked to issues of drugs and violence. Breaking out of these problems is incredibly complicated, both because of the racism that is ingrained in American society and because of the inertia of a system where any effort to make drastic change seems like fighting windmills. This world is perfectly reflected in The Wire, a series by former police reporter David Simon, which maps with surgical precision every conceivable layer of life in African-American ghettos. Even an elementary school teacher’s efforts at empathetic teaching can encounter many obstacles and lead to devastating ends. The Wire series is arguably the most seminal audiovisual work for rap culture and has been cited on hundreds of rap tracks.
Understanding these social issues and the depth of systemic racism is essential to a healthy and quality discussion about rap. A complete misunderstanding of rap culture was demonstrated, for example, by FOX News anchor Geraldo Rivera, who in 2015 said that “hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans in recent years than racism.” Kendrick used a recording of his comments on his tracks BLOOD and DNA from the album DAMN.
LOST MY DOG (Chapter Three)
If we want the issues of violence and drugs to disappear from rap, we must try to change the system that generates these problems. One way to do this is to have a quality and empathetic discussion about the most listened-to genre of our time. An interesting insight into the social problems of the United States is the relationship of different generations of rappers to different drugs. Whereas in the 1990s cocaine and crack were most often represented in artists’ lyrics, today we might look to the new generation of so-called post-verbal rappers like Future or Young Thug for lean. Lean is a mixture of cough syrup, light sodas like Sprite, and hard candies like Jolly Ranchers added for flavor. The mixture is served with ice in a pair of white Styrofoam cups, which themselves have become a visual representation of the drug. When sipping the drink during the course of an evening, the user can achieve a euphoric, unrestrained high thanks to a combination of large doses of the opioid codeine and the antihistamine promethazine. The transformation of the drugs represented in rap culture mirrors the evolution of drug crises in the United States. While the crack epidemic reached its peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s (thus during hip-hop’s golden age), the opioid one is ongoing today. Yes, every artist should approach their influence responsibly, and the glorification of drugs is definitely problematic. However, when discussing rap, we need to distinguish between cause and effect and those artists who were born into a problematic environment or merely adopted its tropes for the vision of fame and money.
There is no middle ground when discussing rap. Either we side with the exploiters of culture or we side with rap. In a time when the music industry suits people like seventeen-year-old Nettspend, who adopts all rap tropes as his own and thus exploits a culture that clearly doesn’t correspond with his life experiences, it’s necessary to accept that if we don’t share those experiences and come from the same socio-cultural background, it’s not our culture. When writing about American rap on the SudetyRaport website, as white men of color living in Europe, we constantly try to keep in mind that it is not our culture, and as our favorite rap essayist, Professor Skye, reminds us, “We are not in a position to properly contextualize.” This idea may sound trite, but it’s a fundamental self-reflection that makes us approach every rap piece with an effort to understand. A similar respect for culture is essential for white rappers who want to build respect and recognition from the best in the genre. There are two paths: either be exceptionally good or give back to the culture more than they take from it. An example of an artist who falls into both categories is rapper and producer The Alchemist, who has earned the respect of the best artists in the industry and has been given the moniker of rap’s favorite uncle.
TODAY I FEEL TRULY FREE (Chapter Four)
Another crucial moment of the last year connected with the search for the soul of the genre, for me (author’s note: I choose to write from the first person here, as it is an intimate experience), were two situations that took place at the Prague concert of Moor Mother & billy woods during the Prague Sounds festival. Not only was it undoubtedly the best concert I’ve ever experienced, but experiencing a performance by someone like billy woods put me in direct contact with the very essence of rap culture. billy woods, perhaps the best rapper alive, tackles urgent socio-cultural issues, colonial history, African-American identity, and many other complex topics with unprecedented sophistication. Seeing him live his songs firsthand was a truly formative experience. At one point in the concert, billy missed a beat, i.e., he was not happy with how he started the next song. He calmly went back to his computer (he was performing alone; he didn’t have a DJ) and rewound the beat of the song to the beginning. At that point he said, “Sorry, let’s do it again. But it’s my culture, so I can do whatever I want.”
A few dozen minutes later, a similarly powerful moment followed when billy discovered that the artist Moor Mother, who was scheduled to perform after him, was running late. He thus told the crowd that he would be playing two more songs. Immediately after this announcement, a man in the front row began shouting out the names of the songs he wanted to hear. Billy Woods replied, “Thanks for the tips, but I feel free today, so I’ll play whatever I want.” He answered kindly, yet I could hear an unprecedented power in his words that carried the pain of all his ancestors who had been abused and murdered for centuries. billy woods, through his performance and words, affirmed that rap is his culture, and we are merely guests who can, at our best, contribute to making it continue to flourish.
SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT (Chapter Five)
Last year was marked by another major event. On October 12th, Kaseem Ryan, producer and rapper under the pseudonym Ka, died. In my opinion, he was the best rapper of all time; he was exceptional in absolutely every way, but that’s a subject for another article. I’d like to dwell on his last album that he managed to release last year before his death, The Thief Next To Jesus. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more thought-provoking rap album, and the multitude of themes and nuances Ka infused into it will surely be the subject of much analysis. Most relevant to this article, however, is the first track, Bread, Wine, Body, Blood. This track is a profound reflection on social and cultural issues in the African American community and a scathing critique of the negative influences of contemporary mainstream rap. Ka focuses on themes that keep the community in destructive patterns instead of uplifting it.
In the first verse, he criticizes materialism, which is often glorified in rap. The lyrics of mainstream rappers, he argues, keep young people ignorant and passive, thus fostering a cycle of poverty and dependency. The second stanza focuses on the objectification of women in rap music. Although he supports sexual freedom and expression, he harshly criticizes a culture that promotes reducing women’s value to their bodies alone. Another strong theme of the song is violence, which is often glorified in rap. Ka criticizes that instead of promoting brotherhood and unity, the lyrics often promote violence among members of their own community. He also points out historical and systemic issues, such as the role of the FBI and the Ku Klux Klan in suppressing African American leaders, and questions why the community does not act more effectively against those who harm it. The chorus of the song “It’s a shared struggle that we all go through / Don’t be the weapon they use to harm you” highlights the shared struggle faced not only by the African American community but by people in general. Ka warns against people themselves becoming tools that are used to harm themselves.
YOU’VE NEVER SEEN SUCH DEVOTION (Conclusion)
And it is this message that leads back to us, the people who consume and discuss rap. We can’t ask rappers not to describe the problems they face in their lives. To not rap about the violence they’ve experienced, the drugs, or the pain. But we must distinguish between community members and colonizers and protect the genre from the parasitic system in which it operates. The point of the article is certainly not to affirm that Drake is an exploiter of the genre, and if we root for him, we are among them. Still, the way in which Kendrick Lamar attacks Drake in the song Not Like Us is thought-provoking and brings to the forefront issues and themes that are absolutely central to rap. Thinking about and discussing its essence is the mechanism that maintains the health and strength of the genre, providing power to the people who need it most. That’s why we need to not abuse it, not exploit it, and approach it with as much understanding as possible. The dedication with which African-American artists, who are the soul of the genre, create is something to be admired. Or as Ka says on the track Such Devotion, “To succeed, you’ve never seen such devotion”.
A playlist is attached to the article to complement the experience and expand on the topics discussed. The individual tracks are carefully ordered, so don’t listen on shuffle.
