By Uri Powell
Alpharetta High School
Hip-Hop. One of the most respected and recognized genres of music. Hip-Hop is a huge makeshift of culture, authenticity, and history. Hip-Hop has many notable and remarkable artists including DJ Kool Herc, Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, and more. Even though the story of hip-hop is changing over time, there are many modern artists who continue to shape the genre like Eminem, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar. Especially Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
The whole feud began in 2013, When Kendrick Lamar was featured on a song by Big Sean named “Control”. In the song, Kendrick Lamar mentioned various names of other notable rappers such as J. Cole, ASAP Rocky, Pusha T, Jay Electronica, and even Drake multiple times along with six other artists. Drake specifically did not love how he was called out and dissed in the song. Over the next few weeks, Drake stated that he took it personally, lost respect for the song and was uncertain about working with Kendrick Lamar.
For the next decade, Drake refused to work with Kendrick Lamar under any circumstances. Over time, the two developed the habit of underlying disses and insults about each other in songs. If you forward this timeline to oct. 2023, J. Cole released a song named “First Person Shooter” stating that himself, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar were the ultimate undisputed “Big Three” of modern hip-hop. Not too long after, Kendrick Lamar released a song titled “Like That” where Kendrick very clearly expressed that he would not like to be grouped with J. Cole and Drake and stated there is no ‘Big Three’, And that there’s only a “Big Me”. Many say this was the spark to recent rap battle between the two.
After Kendrick Lamar released “Like that”, Drake responded with a song named “Push Ups” which made fun of Kendricks height and his contract. Kendrick soon fueled the fire by releasing “Euphoria” which completely just disses Drake’s personality just after Drake released his song “Push Ups” in Apr. 2024. In May. 2024 Kendrick also released a couple more songs dissing Drake completely. One of those songs were named “Not Like Us”. The song “Not Like Us” states that Drake steals music from multiple locations in America, especially Atlanta, because he has no culture of his own. Kendrick included lyrics in the song aimed towards Drake like “How many opps you really got? I mean, it’s too many options”, “Certified boogeyman, I’m the one that upped the score with ’em”. Those lyrics reveal that Kendrick still does not associate himself with J. Cole and Drake in response to the song “First Person Shooter”.
Kendrick Lamar’s song “Not Like Us” became a historical global number-one hit. The song stayed at the top of charts, and took over social media. The song broke the all-time record for the longest running number one song in history of the hip-hop charts for 22 weeks. The day the song released, Spotify, the biggest music streaming service in the world, broke the record for the biggest single day streams with over 6.5 million streams in one day for a hip-hop song in U.S history.
In my opinion, the historical song of “Not Like Us” by Kendrick was proof he was one of the best rap/hip-hop artists of all time. Drake had his time to shine, and now it’s Kendricks time to take over. Since Drake fueled the fire, Kendrick put him out instead of the fire. Drake isn’t from America, he just utilizes it for money and fame. He invaded the hip-hop culture, he is a culture vulture and he got burned from trying to take over. Kendrick has remained popular and is considered impactful. Kendrick is such a great artist that he has 27 Grammy Awards which makes him the most recognized and awarded rap in history while Drake only has 5 Grammys, none of them are recent. We obviously can’t forget to mention that Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize for his album “DAMN”. He is also the first rapper in history to win any kind of award so important that he is also named one of the best poets in history. Kendrick makes history, Drake watches it, he’s probably sitting in his bed right now thinking ‘How can I write like Kendrick?’…Truth is, he can’t. He never will. Kendrick is one of kind. Kendrick could ruin his whole career is he wanted to.
A couple months after the song “Not like Us”, Drake sued his record label Universal Music Group. Why didn’t he sue Kendrick? Because he knew he would lose and most likely end up as a meme truthfully. Drake accused the record label of advertising Kendrick’s music more than his. I feel the judge was right the dispose the lawsuit, it’s his fault he can’t win a rap battle. Kendrick Lamar is just better, I’m listening to him while writing this article anyways. At the end of the day, Kendrick was ultimately right, Drake might have some people wrapped around his finger but when it comes to culture and true music, he’s not like us.
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