WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: Unpacking the Kendrick Lamar/Drake Beef

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

 This week we explain the feud surrounding Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show between him and Drake. Tune in to hear the timeline of events, the details of the pending lawsuit, and why the Internet took Kendrick's side so decisively.

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, where we examine the truth disparity between what's on social media and what's actually true. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Gouldsby. And today we are going to break down the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Rapper beef. It's an age-old problem. An age-old gift to society, actually is how I would phrase it. For those of you who tuned into the Super Bowl last Sunday, you probably saw Kendrick Lamar's halftime show.

in which he performed one of his many disc tracks on Drake called Not Like Us, a song that won him a couple Grammys. Not just a couple, five. Five. Did he win them for that song specifically? For that song. How are there five Grammys to be won for a single song? I have no idea.

But he took away the big prizes, kind of the number one song, number one record. It's pretty incredible. So we're going to break down why the impetus behind these songs and kind of give you some background that you may need. So I want to first start by saying that Drake is suing Universal Music Group over this song for defamation and harassment, apparently. There was another aspect to the lawsuit at one point that was accusing Spotify and Universal Music Group of conspiring to artificially inflate the streams on Not Like Us,

but he's since withdrawn those allegations. But I believe the lawsuit still stands that he's trying to say that. this defamation has led to serious harm. Apparently people have been trying to break into his mansion. A security guard of his was shot. The threshold you have to reach to prove as a famous person that there's been some sort of defamation is pretty high. Libel is a difficult thing to prove or slander. I guess this is a spoken situation. So I'm not sure how the lawsuit will turn out, but I know that's currently happening. I know the beef started actually in 2011 when Kendrick and Drake did their first song together. Kendrick was featured on Drake's album in an

interlude called Barry Live, which I think is some pretty interesting foreshadowing. Kendrick and Asa Rocky then opened for Drake in 2012. And there is, there was a song that came out in 2013, a Big Sean song called Control, in which Kendrick has a verse where he's calling out different men in rap, including Big Sean, who he's featured on the song with and Drake, where he basically has this lyric where he says like he's got love for him but he's he's trying to kill him um and drake did not like this at all and drake responded in multiple different interviews multiple different videos basically just saying like proving that he wasn't able to take the joke clearly um he said at the at some award show that nothing's been the same since control between him and drake and there's been

kind of like a back and forth between those two for a while now until there was a song that he was featured on in 2024 called Like That with Future Metro Boomin where he says like, there's no big three, it's just big me. And the big three were technically supposed to be Jay Cole, Drake, and Kendrick. And Kendrick's like, there's no big three. It's just me, which is typical rap talk. And then Jay Cole came out with a disc track called the seven-minute drill that has actually since been taken down from what I can tell because it's not on Spotify anymore. And I think this is because he gave a big apology video at a concert where he was like that wasn't necessary.

He didn't want to be making jabs at Kendrick because he actually really respects Kendrick. And he kind of, Jay Cole withdrew himself from the beef after that. And April 2024 is when the distrax between Drake and Kendrick really started to ramp up. The first two were from Drake. One was called push-ups, which was very popular. I did know that song. And the vibe of that song was just like, Kendrick, you're really short.

and your previous record deal made you give them a bunch of your money. And that was the dig. And then there's Taylor Made Freestyle where he's like basically calling him Taylor Swift's, I don't know, second in command maybe, kind of calling Taylor Swift the top dog because Kendrick's first number one single was Bad Blood when he was featured on it with Taylor. And then Kendrick responded pretty intensely with a song called Euphoria. And Euphoria, the lyrics are basically like, I hate you. I hate everything about you.

Oh, and you're not black enough. There's a lot of that. There's a lot of like, you are not an actual black man, which we'll get to that later. He also released 616 in L.A. The same day as 616 in L.A., Drake dropped a song called Family Matters, which I felt like it was kind of a weird disc track where he just talks about like, Kendrick, you have a mixed word. wife. Like, why are you making fun of me for being mixed if your wife is of mixed race? And made a lot of allegations that Kendrick hits her, his partner by saying, like, is it self-defense if she's taller than you and you hit her? Because she apparently, there was some speculation on social media that

she had cheated on Kendrick, which most people believe. Minutes later, apparently, Kendrick dropped a song that was Meet the Grams. At the time that that song dropped, people were like, oh, it's totally over for Drake because it was four different verses each addressed to a different person in Drake's life. One was Drake. One was Drake's mom. One was his son, Adonis. And one was like this secret baby girl, this secret daughter he has apparently. And he basically harps on him for missing her 11th birthday for being in Turks and Caicos. What's up, Garrett? So did social media declare whether or not this daughter was a real person? No. Okay. No. We'll get to that. I think it's kind of assumed that it's true just because people believe Kendrick has a lot of credibility,

but I'd like to hear if you think about that at all. And then there's not like us that came out and that really ended it. Not because it was not only because it was a really popular song, but I think because it had played on this social media narrative around Drake that had been happening for a long time that Drake likes underaged girls. There's been for years too much evidence of Drake really taking a liking to new girls that are up and coming in the industry. The one that I remember being the most publicized was Millie Bobby Brown. He had a real infatuation with her and she talked in an interview about how he took her out to dinner multiple times in a row and they text all the time. And people watch that interview and were like, this is not normal.

Like this is weird. Drake's a grown man. There was a similar thing with Billy Elish. He did the same thing kind of with Kylie Jenner, Haley Baldwin, before she was Haley Bieber, all while they were underage. And they weren't like 11 or 12 year old girls. They were like 16, 17, but it was still weird how young they were and how quickly Drake kind of latched on. But people really liked not like us. That was one that went over very well. And there was actually a pretty funny clip of Billy Eilish singing Not Like Us, which is kind of a switch since the last interview where she's like, Drake's the nicest guy in the world. I love that guy. He's text me all the time. And he had just kind of a creepy reputation for that.

And people liked, I guess, that Kendrick really called it out. It's also just a pretty good song. Not Like Us is interesting. But the theme of Not Like Us is very similarly, yes, there's allegations of his predator status. But also just like you're not black. You're not actually black. You're not from Compton. You're from Toronto.

You don't understand real struggle is kind of like what he's saying there, which, I mean, is something we could unpack all on its own. But that is the thesis of what's being said. And that also took off because social media has a very, very strong narrative around Drake as kind of just this really soft, sensitive guy who gets in these rap battles and releases these disc tracks and then is really hurt when people dissim back. There was a really popular meme format probably two years ago, maybe earlier, maybe later, I'm not really sure. That would basically be like, Drake's the type of guy too. Did you ever see these, Garrett? I actually did, but probably because I know you. Okay, yeah.

So there's like, I mean, a couple of ones that I just found on Twitter when I was like re-looking up the meme were like, Drake's the type of guy to pretend to be asleep so his friends will carry him inside. Or like Drake's the type of guy who won't use hand sanitizer because he feels guilty about killing germs. Like this whole narrative about Drake is that he's just this really soft, sensitive rapper. And he has just kind of a goofy vibe to him that's not like, people don't really take him too seriously. And it's very clear that in a rap battle, a battle where you're going back and forth, that personality is not rewarded at all. I know Drake also dropped a song after Not Like Us, but I don't know what it was called. I've never heard it. Most people don't talk about it. And it was, again, kind of a soft thing from what I can tell. Or maybe it was right before, Not Like Us. I'm not really sure.

but I know there's another song in there that Drake dropped where he it just gave kind of like loser vibes. I don't really know how else to describe it. And Kendrick Lamar is a rapper who won a Pulitzer for his lyrics. So when it comes to using words as a weapon and wielding them, he's going to have more of a dangerous scathing tone to him. So Kendrick won the Pulitzer and he also clearly won this rap battle according to social media. I don't know where the lawsuit's going to go, but I have other things I could say. about Super Bowl show sort of deal, but I feel like that's kind of cheating because I did the research for an article, so maybe I shouldn't say it because I kind of got it online. I didn't get it

in social media. But for those of you who are just tuning in, you just missed my explanation of the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar on the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 11.7 FM. Garrett, do you want to take it away and pick up where I left off? Yeah, there's really not much to pick up. Social media got pretty much hit all the high points. I mean, there's a few things I'm going to add just for context, so we have a better understanding of what all went on. But, I mean, this was one of the best kind of point for point explanations. I think social media has given us over the course of 74 episodes of the show. Yeah, I mean, you hit it exactly on the head.

It started in the early 2010s when these guys kind of came into their own as rappers together. They worked together quite a bit. And then there was this track where Kendrick was like, it's all me, you know, I'm the guy, which is very typical. right like feuding beef has been a part of rap culture since the 80s pretty much it's never not been a facet of it and the kind of mystery not actually a mystery is that most of what they say is not true and everyone knows that most of what they say is not true and that's kind of the point right all the rappers talk about being gangsters none of them are gangsters like a lot of them have like english degrees and stuff you know it it's uh you know all the rappers want to be gangsters and all the gangsters want to be

rappers. That's just kind of a well-known fact. So it is a little bit funny that Drake took a lot of this so seriously up to a point because, you know, while Kendrick is talking about, oh, I'm the best back in, you know, like 10 years ago, this latest song, not like us, is a step in a different direction that rap beefs typically haven't gone. Like you think even, even Tupac and Biggie, right, which is like the most notorious rap beef of all time. They were friends. You know, like actually in real life they were friends and, you know, who knows whether they actually took each other seriously in terms of their allegations. But they also weren't like they didn't take it to court. You know, this is.

Well, and that's Drake. That's another way of soft. Like that's another way of people being like, oh. And there's also a line somewhere in one of those songs where Drake kind of talks about how or Kendra talks about the fact that Drake was trying to bring cease and desist letters into the distracts this like situation. Like there were, he was trying to stop it at a legal level where the point of those is just to come back with a better diss. You know what I mean? Yes, that is, I mean, he responded in a way. I think the whole rap world is like, oh, man.

Like, come on. So we'll talk for a minute about what is the legal situation? Because it is interesting. Drake, like you said, has accused UMG Universal Music Group, which is a huge company and also the parent company of Kendrick Lamar's label. So they basically work for the same company, different divisions. But Drake is suing them saying you promoted Lamar's song over me and to my detriment, to the detriment of my career. And Universal Music Group has come back and been like, Drake, that's ridiculous.

You have as many hits as Michael Jackson. Actually, Drake just surpassed Michael Jackson as the most hits for a solo male musical artist. Most number one hits. He actually still has twice as many number ones as Kendrick Lamar. And commercially, Drake has had more success. He's worth more money. Yeah, he's been popular for longer. That's not to say Kendrick, you know, might not outlive him career-wide.

I don't know. But Drake kind of can't complain, you know, in that regard. Now, are they trying to muscle them out? That's hard to say. And that maybe is where Drake's case has some purchase, is that he's trying to point the finger at UMG and say, you're trying to push me out, you know, in favor of the commercial success of Kendrick Lamar because he's kind of continuing to gain momentum as an artist. Like you said, he won the Pulitzer, which is a very unusual thing for a rap artist. He's the only rap artist

to ever have done it. And I kind of have the feeling will be the only for a long time. That's an unusual feat. And I think just gives credit to Lamar's ability to kind of weave a compelling narrative in rap which is not always been a medium for compelling narratives you know there's a lot of just kind of drivel out there in the in the rap world um you mentioned this um this potential daughter of yes what there is no evidence that he has a daughter what why do he make it up to yeah to slander him you know to make him look bad uh everything that kendrick lamar said is pretty much baseless uh there Drake has never been legally charged. He's never even been arrested.

Like, okay, most rappers have been arrested for something, right? He's never been arrested for any kind of abuse, any kind of predatory behavior, anything like this. You know, okay, maybe it's happened, right? We don't know. But on a legal level, it's never happened and it's never even been alleged. So, Drake is saying, hey, that was totally baseless, which is true. It's also kind of the nature of the game. Exactly.

I mean, that's kind of the whole rap beef thing is. people accuse each other of things they don't do all the time you know you call each other murderers and thieves and thugs and all kinds of stuff you know um and most of the time people people take it by releasing another song did people did you find whether or not the allegations against kendrick that drake put forth could have any truth to them so he actually didn't accuse kendrick of anything in the law in the actual legal battle kendrick lamar is never named but in the um well that's interesting i didn't know that but in the like the diss that he put forth i think it's family matters actually, where he's like, you hit your wife.

Like, you hit women. Is that, did Kendrick get ever, like, has he ever in charge for that? Has that ever been? Again, not to any degree that has raised any legitimacy to the claim. I mean, who knows? Maybe it's happened. But it has, there's never been a legal fight over it, right? Which, I don't know.

I'm sure there's plenty of things that go on in the rap world that there haven't been any legal. Of course. And, you know, you have to look at what this beef has caused in Drake's life and go, okay, maybe there's, like, this is getting a little bit more serious, right? his security guard was shot and injured very badly. Because of this? Like, do we know? But the events kind of leading up to this event where his security guard gets shot suggests that it was due to, due to the song.

And also, people have tried to break into his house in violent means. There was one particularly audacious attempt where a guy dug a hole with his hands to get under the fence to Drake's house. Which if you look up a picture of Drake's house, it is a wrong. robust fence. Anyway, I don't know what this guy is thinking. Like, yep, hands. I got this. No shovel needed.

Wait, that's actually crazy. It is crazy. Was that guy, like, is he going to jail? Oh, yeah. Okay, I figured. Another thing just about Drake's career and kind of his softness is that he seems to be aware of it. He actually appeared on SNL and did a skit where they talked about like how often he beefs with people.

So in the skit, he's sitting at a kitchen table and this, his hat is like sitting on a chair next to him and this lady comes in and just like picks up the hat, sets it on the table and sits down in the chair and then he goes off on this whole like rap rant about how that chair was for his hat. Wow. So it's just, he's making fun of himself. So he's kind of aware. Yeah.

I think he's perfectly aware that he has a tendency to beef. But not particularly well. Not really. You know, I think the general consensus, even on the mainstream news and then all the research, did was, yeah, I think Drake kind of got owned. I guess social media and the news agree then. Yes. I think they do.

Now, I think what also is there is that why did Kendrick Lamar feel the need to take it where he did, you know, to be like, hey, you're a pedophile? Like there's a lot of other accusations he could have made that would have, I think, maybe seemed a little sillier on purpose, you know, to like, okay, he's not being serious. Right. So an unusual situation to say the least that we have a rap beef going into. court. UMG has come out and said, your claims are baseless and pretty illogical. We've supported your career like so thoroughly. So it'll be really interesting to see how the case plays out.

I don't, I didn't encounter really any strong evidence in favor of Drake actually winning the case. Because like you said, the standard is very high. Yes. Especially for public figures. What he's asking for is the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars that, you know, It's sort of offset the success of Kendrick Lamar's song and the relative decline in popularity that Drake has experienced, which is still not that considerable, right? He was touring in Australia during the Super Bowl. He may still be touring. I didn't look. Oh, yeah.

Sold out concerts. You know, things are still going well for him. There was, it was a lie. And you could find out if you went into the comments. But there was a video circulating of, like, they overlaid the audio from the Super Bowl over a video of Drake at some sort of sporting event and was like, Drake, guys, Drake was at the Super Bowl. Drake was watching it. And there were lots of comments being like,

but this isn't a video of him there, but he was there. There's no way he was actually there. There were plenty of comments that were like he was absolutely not there. No way he was sitting there to watch it the whole time. Did you watch the Super Bowl? I watched the halftime show actually right before we started recording. Okay.

So did you hear the audience like screaming as a collective A minor? Yes. And the same thing happened at the Grammys. Like everybody at the Grammys was that is the lyric that people hold on to. Maybe it's because it's catchy. Maybe it's because like it's such a crazy blow of like, you love minors. And I also think there's an undercurrent here in the lyrics from what I've heard and just from the social media conversations that Kendrick just doesn't really respect Drake that much.

I don't know. I mean, Drake is a heavy hitter. He's, he kind of like put a limb out and was like, you can be on my song and you can open for me at my tour. So there's clearly some goodwill coming from Drake. But generally the claims that Kendrick levies against Drake about like you are from Toronto, you don't understand where I've been. It comes from, it feels really personal. It feels like these rap battles are maybe less like we're just beefing and more just like Kendrick being like, I do not like this guy.

And he's gotten a lot of success. Did you get that vibe at all? Yes, actually. And the reason why I have that impression is because of the distinct lack of any statement from Kendrick Lamar in any medium, whether in music or just like to the news or whatever about any regard for Drake. Typically, when these kind of feuds happen, you have just these vitriolic hate in the songs that are just like super nasty. But then, you know, to some journalist or something, they'll be like, eh, I don't actually

hate the guy, you know, that kind of thing. Kendrick Lamar has not said anything to that effect. And he's released a lot of songs that aren't, that aren't like, yeah, I think you're bad rapper, but just like, I hate you as a person. I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk. Like the family matters, right? Erwin Lamar literally just says like, you're a bad dad. Like you're bad at being a dad.

Yeah, I think it's meet the grams. And also you got a nose job. And also. Wait, yes, you got classic surgery. That might be in euphoria. He also accuses him of getting a Brazilian butt lift and all manner of other things, which this is just the last thing I'll say is that there's a really, I found a really funny text exchange between Drake and his mother after that song came out.

When his mom was like, yo, you got a nose. job without me. Oh, wow. Because I thought we were going to get one together if you ever decided to do one. Wow. And Drake was like, you know I'd get two for one if the deal was off. So dumb. Drake is so goofy.

Okay, we're ready to give social media great? I think we are. Okay, three, two, one. A plus. Yeah, they did great. Good job. They knew. I mean, I didn't even have to do that much looking.

I mean, part of this is because this has been developing over years and I like Kendrick. I don't, I like some of Drake songs, but I don't really follow. him that much. I really do like Kendrick. And so following this has been pretty easy. Because I'm like, oh, nice. Oh, my. There are some claims in here. I'm pretty sure I don't think there will be any more in this exchange. I just kind of think he won and he knows it. I think so too. I think we would probably have closed the chapter on this. If we haven't, who knows? I mean, good for me. I'd love to hear more. I'm enjoying it in some way. It's producing really popular music. Yeah, great. Okay. Well, thank you to everybody who tuned in. Hopefully we were able to

teach you a little something about the beef between Kendrick and Drake on the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 1.147 FM. I'm Gillian Parks. And I'm Gary Gelsby. And we'll talk to you next week.