This past weekend, after a month of flirting with open warfare, Drake and Kendrick Lamar finally had a passionate three-day back-and-forth, and we’re still feeling the aftershocks. The biggest rap beef of 2024 came to its expected conclusion Sunday night with Drake’s disappointing “The Heart Part 6,” but the online world didn’t stop reacting. The West Coast is behaving like “not like us”. A triumphant battle cry. Educators are dissecting the lyrical complexities of poems. The super fans of both the artists seem to be in overdrive.
Kendrick and Drake are two of the most prominent rap superstars of the millennial generation, and over the years they’ve been drawn as polar opposites—Kendrick, the tastefully restrained storyteller who’s come out every few years. Comes when he really has something in his heart. Share, vs. Drake, the decadent, ever-present workaholic who hasn’t let more than a few months of his 17-year career go by without releasing new material. Their struggle to one-up each other — culminating in the release of six tracks between them just last week — was nothing short of spectacular. Drake used AI to troll Kendrick in vocals from his West Coast heroes to strike a nerve on “Taylor Made Freestyle.” Kendrick responded, paraphrasing on “Euphoria.” DMX’s anti-Drake sentiments of late, drawing blood with a low-tech method. “6:16” samples “What A Wonderful Thing Love Is,” a 1972 Al Green song featuring Drake’s uncle Tenny Hodges on guitar. Drake posted on his Instagram “Buried Alive Interlude, Pt. 2,” one of his 2011 songs nominated. Take care of yourself The album that featured Kendrick back when things were copacetic. The two rappers also swapped each other’s trademarks: Kendrick’s “6:16 in LA” played on Drake’s timestamp-in-a-certain-city song-titling convention, while Drake drew a young thug. took Barter 6-a move by naming his final entry “The Heart Part 6” after Kendrick’s career-spanning series of the same name.
“Not Like Us,” meanwhile, reads as a message to Drake fans who claim Kendrick isn’t capable of creating club-ready anthems. But if you ask the right self-appointed internet rap analyst, every move made in this conflict has quadruple meaning. What we can say for sure: Regardless of their rivalry, these are men who have been on speed dial in each other’s careers since the beginning, which meant this standoff was always going to be decided. It had to be more about who is the best at rapping. It was destined to become what it became — to see who could destroy whose integrity first.
Truth be told, Beef’s apparent ending feels like the end of a chapter in hip-hop’s story, where old-guard teachings meet new-age relativism. When was the last time rappers born in the ’80s commanded so much of our attention? Save for Drake, none of the people who came up in the final years of the blog age still mean anything to any generation other than their own. Drake and Kendrick’s places in the pantheon of style legends are already pretty much established. Everything we get from them now is decorative, which is why the sheer effort these two have put in over the past few weeks is astounding. It also probably represents the end of an era: There’s little material return for Gen Z’s biggest rappers to go toe-to-toe with each other other than trading insults in live streams and interviews, not again. Will be. Not like this. This is for those who spent their childhoods watching rap superstars freestyle on radio stations and BET after school television lineups in the early to mid 2000s. People who remember a time — even if it was their early childhood — when an MC was only as good as their fierce competition, and calling yourself a rapper meant that at any moment your Be prepared to prove superiority.
In this regard, the feud has been a joy to witness. But it’s also been a reminder that, at worst, hip-hop encourages the procreation of grown men who need to be able to get attention in their teens and early 20s in order to stay powerful. Is. In their late 30s, these brothers should be receptive and responsible so that they refrain from abusing women and children to show dominance. That kind of courtesy is apparently too much to ask of men fighting desperately for the crown of a race. And the consequences of these failures are already showing themselves.
Credit : www.gq.com
