Mediating the Kendrick Lamar and Drake Beef

According to the Urban Dictionary, “beef” is to have a grudge with another person.

The beef between the two musicians goes back to at least 2013, when Lamar asserted that he – to put it euphemistically – was a better rapper than Drake (a statement I personally agree with, but that is neither here nor there). Series of diss tracks back and forth between the two brings us to Lamar’s release of “Not Like Us” in May 2024. The song broke the record for most weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs (21 weeks), was the biggest single-day stream of a hip hop track (12.8 million) on Spotify, and played more than 25 million times across iHeartRadio stations.

The nature of Lamar’s lyrics in this song is triggering to say the least. With verses like “Say, Drake, I hear you like ‘em young. Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor” Lamar, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his music, accuses Drake of being a “certified pedophile” and a “predator”. Drake believes that Universal knew these allegations to be false, but aggressively promoted the single anyway.

With the pre-action petition, Drake is only asking the court to make Universal retain information and records related to his allegations (at least for now). As a rap music enthusiast, I feel that what Drake is doing here is tantamount to a bully crying foul to his mom after losing a school yard fight. Not being able to push back musically against the popularity of Lamar’s immensely popular track (a “winning blow” as some have claimed), Drake is now going after the music label in the courts. Putting on a lawyer’s hat for a moment, these proceedings feel like a gigantic waste of time and resources on the already stretched-thin American judicial system. 

Drake willingly entered into and escalated this rap feud and has – figuratively speaking – blood on his hands. In the song “Push Ups”, Drake calls Lamar a “midget” and accuses him of being overly commercial, which is rather ironic given that many would consider Drake not as a hip hop artist, but a pop musician (again, neither here nor there). In another track, “Family Matters”, Drake even accuses Kendrick Lamar of domestic abuse with no evidence to substantiate the claim.

This is a conflict that can – and should – be resolved outside of the courts by these two incredibly successful musicians who – each in their own way – make good music. If only they could stop for a moment, put their egos aside, and find a good mediator, things can come to a more amicable and constructive resolution.

While tension and conflict may lead to a surge in clicks or even fuel creativity, we should – myself included – resist the urge to glamorize this escalating conflict (e.g. Drake’s store in London has been vandalized and his security guard has been shot at recently). While other rap feuds like the legendary feud between 2Pac and Biggie produced some incredible diss tracks (2Pac’s “Hit Em Up” being my personal favorite), it is also worth remembering that that feud ended tragically with the untimely deaths of both rappers.

With regards to the Drake and Kendrick Lamar feud, Jeff Ihaza of the Rolling Stone magazine commented that “it feels like such a colossal waste of energy” and I could not agree more. Instead of all this toxic acrimony back and forth, I for one would love to see Drake and Kendrick Lamar stop the beef and find a way to collaborate (like they used to) and focus on creating good music. If they need a mediator, I’ll volunteer (though I would probably be disqualified on the grounds of lacking neutrality, as I like Kendrick Lamar’s tracks a bit more).