“Fighting, fighting, fighting the world / I’ve been fighting the world / Fighting, fighting, fighting the world / I’ve been fighting”
Introduction:
Let’s talk about early 2010s hip-hop, shall we?
When we think of the early 2010s, it seems like most people look back on that time as a glory era for insane cherry colored turbo pop music, a truly titanic age where giants like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Kesha ruled the airwaves (which did still exist back then). Even the B-tier names felt huge and inescapable, and trust me, there were a lot of B-tier pop stars vying for commercial relevance in those halcyon days. When the historians write the annals of music history through a 21st century lens, (and they better do it soon considering how quickly music journalism seems to be dying), they will look back on the early 2010s as an era for pop music, first and foremost. There may have been other kinds of music littering the airwaves in those days, but it’s the pop music that shone the brightest, hardest, and loudest.
Which does make it kind of weird to consider that it was a pretty important turning point for hip-hop, too.
Hip-hop was around during the early 2010s, but as someone who transitioned into adulthood during those days, it definitely wasn’t at the forefront of my mind, the way it was in the mid-2000s when I was really beginning to get into music, or even the late 2010s when popular music was nothing but hip-hop. In the early 2010s, hip-hop felt more like a niche genre more than ever, and to the extent I was even aware of the goings on of the rap world, it was either pop-rap buffoons like Flo Rida, B.o.B or the Black Eyed Peas, or the really out there experimental blogosphere Kanye-esque guys that even Pitchfork would put in regular rotation. I first began covering music in the late 2010s, in the glory era of Soundcloud trap, where rap podcasts, collectives and websites had really risen to the forefront of the culture as its gatekeepers and tastemakers; and looking back in hindsight, much of the stage set for that era is really rooted in the innovations of the early 2010s. But make no mistake—hip-hop was not much of a commercial force in the era of Dr. Luke. And so the so-called “Big Three” of that era–or hell, many of the artists who we now think of as the leading lights of that generation of rappers–had not yet ascended into the status of generation-defining superstars the way we know them today.
But at the same time, if you were paying attention, you could tell that we were on the cusp of something big. I don’t know when I felt it exactly; I don’t remember where I was when I first heard it, but all I knew was that when I first heard Kendrick Lamar’s legendary verse on “Control”, I just knew nothing would ever be the same again.
Yeah, this was the first time I was moved to listen to Kendrick Lamar. I was a pop snob back in those days, and I wasn’t much invested in the rap world aside from my then-perennial favorite Kanye West (a regrettable choice), but I had been hearing whispers of this hot, new, up-and-coming rapper from Compton who people were already declaring to be the savior of hip-hop. This was around the time he was blowing up with his breakthrough record, Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City, a widely acclaimed concept record about Kendrick’s youth in the streets of Compton that was lighting up the hip-hop world in 2013, but which was silo’-ed off enough from my music listening circles that I wasn’t really motivated to listen to it until the mounting hype around him finally snowballed enough to convince me to check him out. But it was “Control” that really pushed me over the edge, because it was a song that demanded your attention and respect no matter where you were. It wasn’t technically a Kendrick song; it was a Big Sean cut off his now mostly forgotten second album Hall of Fame, which is fitting considering that most people forget that Big Sean is even on this song in the first place. But it’s understandable when you consider the monumental verse Kendrick lays in it. Put it simply, Kendrick walks into this verse looking to set the world on fire, and he achieves that by proclaiming his status as the King of New York, fully prepared to “drop a bomb on this shit”, and calling out every single other hot and up-and-coming rapper from that era of hip-hop to step up their game, through these immortal lines in particular —
I’m usually homeboys with the same n****s I’m rhymin’ with
But this is hip-hop, and them niggas should know what time it is
And that goes for Jermaine Cole, Big K.R.I.T., Wale
Pusha T, Meek Millz, A$AP Rocky, Drake
Big Sean, Jay Electron’, Tyler, Mac Miller
I got love for you all, but I’m tryna murder you n****s
Tryna make sure your core fans never heard of you n****s
They don’t wanna hear not one more noun or verb from you n****S
What is competition? I’m tryna raise the bar high
Who tryna jump and get it? You’re better off tryna skydive
Out the exit window of five G5’s with five grand
And you have to understand that when he released these bars, hip-hop was at a significant plateau point in its history. Maybe some of y’all look back fondly on that period now, but all I remember, at least in the mainstream, is the same 4 or 5 guys rapping about bling and bitches with such regularity that all the songs started to sound basically interchangeable. In hindsight, there was clearly more brewing underneath the surface, but I think the ultimate point of this verse is that the guys who actually had it weren’t raising the bar high enough, and Kendrick saw this verse as an opportunity to get these guys to step up their game. I actually don’t think this diss was even all that inflammatory; I hesitate to even call it a “diss”, but it lit up the rap world nonetheless, engendering a veritable mountain of discourse in both the normie and hardcore rap spaces, and including the rappers he namechecked. Some of them took it in stride, of course; two of the guys he namedrops are with him in “Control”, although Big Sean would famously talk shit about this verse and start his own mini-beef with Kendrick in the years that followed. But the fact that most of these guys later went on to become some of the biggest names in hip-hop goes to show that this verse had a deep impact regardless of the firestorm it caused. I’m not gonna go so far as to say it helped set the tone for hip-hop’s eventual dominance of the decade, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
But today, we’re focusing on the guys who walked away from this verse not so much challenged, but butthurt. Because one rapper in particular did not respond well to being put on blast like this, and for the next eleven years, the two of them would trade barbs and disses that would only intensify with time, culminating in the rap beef that’s unfortunately the subject of our article today. Yeah, surprise, Drake, Kendrick’s erstwhile former collaborator on songs like “Poetic Justice”, as sensitive and on-brand as he’ll ever be, responded to “Control” first through a series of subliminals, prompting Kendrick to fire back with his own volley of subliminals. This got Drake making public statements in interviews, things seemed to cool off a bit until Kendrick made the beef official in 2014 with a bunch of not-so-coded references about “endin’ their friendship”. This sparked a full on battle of diss tracks which escalated in 2015 and 2016, when the two were in the throes of some of their most acclaimed projects. Things actually seemed to taper off after a while, mostly because Kendrick vanished entirely from the public eye after 2018 and Drake became embroiled in his own slew of controversies and just generally plateauing artistically to the point of no return. I actually thought no one was going to pick up on this beef again; that it was just a vestige of a different time in hip-hop.
Guess it shows how I wrong I was. No, the circumstances that birthed Kendrick’s fiery competitive verses on “Control” seem to have moved him to release another similarly Muhammad Ali-coded call to arms against his rivals in the game. Only now he does it ina far less compelling context.
The song:
Like I said, I didn’t think anyone remembered the Drake-Kendrick feud anymore; the last time it was a big deal in hip-hop, we didn’t even have TikTok yet and streaming was in its infancy. It feels like an artifact of a bygone era, and with hip-hop having recently reached a commercial nadir after years of being the most dominant genre around, the revival of a onetime feud from a previous generation of rap superstars did not feel high on anyone’s laundry list of projected musical highlights of 2024. But if the opening months of the year are anything to go by, it seems like the genre has managed to worm its way back into commercial relevance through one of its all-time most reliable vehicles for notoriety—the rap beef. Yeah, as it turns out, the recent Megan-Nicki beef is not an isolated incident. If 2024 is going to be the year of the Rap Beef, well, this is as good a time as any to reignite old enmities, I’d say.
What makes this latest chapter in the Kendrick-Drake saga so interesting is the unexpected shift in alliances it represents.
The song we’re discussing today is called “Like That”. Again, as with “Control”, this is not technically a Kendrick Lamar song; it’s a Metro Boomin’ and Future joint. What makes that fact remarkable is the song is a pretty pointed diss at Drake, two people whom Metro and Future have worked closely with together in the past; among other things, Metro was the main producer of Drake and Future’s 2015 collaborative album What A Time To Be Alive, and it was apparently the failure of that album’s promised follow-up to materialize that led Metro to gradually sour on Drake. But Future siding with Kendrick against Drake is the real surprise here; Drake has won and lost friends and shuffled across collaborators like nobody’s business for years, but Future has been one of the few who’s stayed constant on Drake’s side the longest. Even as late as 2022, they were collaborating together, so it’s really shocking to see him essentially endorsing Kendrick’s diss against Drake.
(Real quick—the entire album series off which the song is released is weird; it’s a two-parter series called We Don’t Trust You and We Still Don’t Trust You and it’s full of Drake’s old contemporaries and collaborators taking potshots at him—aside from Future, we also see the appearances of A$AP Rocky (now with Drake’s former beau Rihanna) and the Weekend (Drake’s onetime protege). What a time to be alive, indeed.)
But the real shocker here is the involvement of J. Cole, another target of Kendrick’s diss on “Like That.” It’s surprising that he’s somehow found himself on the side of Drake, even though he has a much more substantial history of collaboration with Kendrick. How did he end up on this side of the table to begin with? Well, Cole and Kendrick were mostly cool before this, with Kendrick even being one of the few artists Kendrick has frequently collaborated with; but Cole found himself dragged into the Drake-Kendrick feud thanks to his presence on Drake’s 2023 song “First Person Shooter” a diss explicitly targeting Kendrick Lamar. It’s well to note that Cole’s verse itself didn’t directly target Kendrick, but he does make a pretty big claim on it that was enough to get Kendrick’s attention—”Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? /We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali.” This led to Kendrick directly namedropping his line in his diss verse, bringing J. Cole firmly into this triangle of feuds and reigniting a whole series of events which led to J. Cole putting out a response himself, a point which I’ll get to later.
So this is where we’re at right now, a rap beef that’s essentially the hip-hop equivalent of the Stately Quadrille of 1756. This is exactly the kind of thing I live for.
The review:
The thing about Kendrick that I think most casual listeners have forgotten is that there’s more to the guy than just the serious, brooding, savior-posturing conscious rapper he’s often made out to be.
There’s multiple layers and dimensions to his career that have become surprisingly sanded off in the public imagination, perhaps not helped by his years-long absence from the limelight which only ended just recently with his latest releases. Most people forget that there was more to him than just being political or streetwise—that he could also be loose, silly and unserious on record, that he was as much a shitposter as Lil B the based God or Kanye in his more off-the-rocker moments, that he had the commercial instincts to distill the less palatable aspects of his conscious image, and most importantly, that he’s not always as high-minded and wise beyond his years as his reputation seems to suggest. He’s a confessed sex addict, has supported and platformed abusers in the past, controversially used slurs to make a well-meaning but possibly misguided point, he’s remained mum on social issues that he’s arguably profited off of in his music, and most importantly, he’s an ego driven guy who thrives on competition above all else, and if you set him off, he will respond.
Kendrick may be hyper-aware of the social ills of the world, and that laser-precise vision does occasionally temper his more braggadocious moments, but let’s not forget that he’s still a rapper who’s heavily invested in playing the game, and from the very beginning, his stated aim was to enshrines himself as the best rapper alive. He’s had, and continues to have, every intention of climbing to the top through any means necessary. He’s always been an extremely competitive rapper, and that spirit of competitiveness shines through in some of his best tracks, especially when he’s taking shots at other rappers. A verse as hot as “Control” doesn’t come from someone with no ego who doesn’t really care about what other people think of him, ya feel?
And you’ve gotta believe that Kendrick may be feeling some threats to his current stature as a titan of rap music. For most of his initial run in the 2010s, he was practically unassailable as the undisputed king of hip-hop, the only guy with the critical acclaim and commercial success to really sustain the high pedestal we were gradually putting him on. But that stature has become a lot more vulnerable in recent years, what with his lengthy hiatus and disappearance from the public eye basically undermining his social impact, especially as rap beef and American politics only intensified during the pandemic years. Let’s just say many people were clamoring for something from Kendrick in those fraught days, and the lengthy silence rubbed people the wrong way. It was easy to imagine that his eventual comeback would inevitably disappoint considering the expectations that had mounted in his nearly four-year absence. And while Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers did well overall and engendered a fair amount of acclaim, it was and still is divisive amongst a lot of fans and casual listeners, who took stock of its many inconsistencies and contradictions, including its seemingly self-defeating posturing where Kendrick assails and really examines his perceived savior complex while not really landing on a solid conclusion about it either way. His public image is clearly something he’s been thinking about for years, perhaps even to the point of subsuming his artistry entirely if he’s not careful.
So it’s not surprising that the moment two of his most well-known contemporaries levied shots at him, he’d come right out of the gate firing back.
Let’s get one thing clear before we begin—“Like That” is not a diss per se. It’s more like a first shot more than anything else; it’s a remarkably brief verse for something that’s currently setting the rap world ablaze, it doesn’t really go into much detail about its targets. It’s a quick one-hander verse where Kendrick takes several straight volleys at Drake, some of which are pretty explicit references too—“Ah, yeah, huh, yeah, get up with me / Fuck sneak dissin’, first-person shooter, I hope they came with three switches” is a pretty obvious reference to “First Person Shooter”, the 2023 song that sparked this most recent beef; and this one “‘Fore all your dogs gettin’ buried / That’s a K with all these nines, he gon’ see Pet Sematary” being a reference to Drake’s latest album For All The Dogs.
I don’t wanna go all Genius.com on you guys, but I did want to point out some interesting references on here right out the gate, including this one “And your best work is a light pack / N****, Prince outlived Mike Jack’” in which he subliminally positions Drake as Michael Jackson and himself as Prince. As a music nerd, I live for these kinds of parallels, and I do see what Kendrick means by this—Drake has infamously compared himself to Michael Jackson in the past, and considering that MJ is the King of Pop and the guy who basically invented most of the modern blockbuster pop tropes we live by today, Kendrick is basically calling Drake a pop rap doofus. This is evident in how he contrasts Michael Jackson to Prince, who, while also a big pop star, always had a more artistic and experimental sonic bent to him, as opposed to MJ, who, while a mold-breaker himself, mainly prioritized pop excellence and showstopping performances more than the actual artistry of his music. Where the parallel breaks down, I think, is that Drake’s breakneck pace of releasing records every year or so resembles Prince, whereas Kendrick’s proclivity for long breaks between albums, lengthy hiatuses and shunning the public eye echoes Michael Jackson.
Now, I’m not gonna lie, when I first heard the song, I didn’t know how to go about reviewing it, because it’s not so much a song as it is an event, and I don’t even know if I can judge it by the standards of a real song the way you could Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hiss”. That’s not to say it’s a bad song musically, of course; Metro Boomin’ has always been a solid producer, and his work here is perfectly serviceable. It’s got a nice driving rhythm and some booming bass that serves as a nice bedrock for the volleys to come, and it really pays off when Kendrick’s verse comes on. Kendrick comes at it with his trademark vocal dynamics and he comes right out of the gate firing shots. Setting the lyrics aside for a second, I really do love the way Kendrick weaves his way around the beat; it makes for a really interesting listening experience, to say the least. But even though so much of this review is centered around Kendrick, I don’t want to take anything away from Future, who really holds his own on the track, which is remarkable considering that it’s not tailored to his usual slurry, atmospheric soundscapes and mushmouthed delivery. It’s perfectly fine as a song. But it’s not just a song, is it?
Now, as a diss track—I had mixed feelings about this one at first. For a song that had set the internet on fire, the actual incendiary parts of it are remarkably brief, brief enough to leave you wanting more honestly, and I’m not sure that’s an entirely good thing. Again, it’s more of a warning shot than an actual diss track, which is entirely fair. Maybe Kendrick’s saving that full-on “Control” style takedown for the full album. But the brevity of the verse is not the problem; the problem is the context in which it dropped.
We’re currently in the year 2024, and we’re light years removed from the heydays of each of the participants in this feud. It’s not exactly peak season for any of these guys, ya feel? Both Drake and J. Cole have been gradually settling into their curmudgeonly old age, their late periods, which is going to present an insurmountable barrier to making this beef interesting. Maybe a full-on Kendrick and Drake war would’ve been interesting back in 2013, when Kendrick was an emerging street prophet ascending into Messianic status and Drake was a conflicted up-and-comer hungrily ascending up the ranks despite knowing it will change him for the worse, but in 2023, after Kendrick had just released a mostly divisive and messy record that dismantles his Messianic pedestal, and Drake released his sixth straight record full of moody monotone ramblings about his ego-driven isolation, it just doesn’t ring the same. These two are not currently at their best; but even if you stack these two against each other and evaluate them base on who they currently are, it’s clearly no competition, right? The odds seem heavily stacked in favor of one party. (At least that’s what I thought at first… more on that later).
Similarly, a Kendrick and Cole beef probably would’ve been marginally more interesting had it ignited when these two were competing to become the best conscious rapper of their generation; there probably could’ve been a great narrative around it being a battle of former partners and collaborators turned rivals, a la Biggie and Pac. Alas, that presupposes that it would’ve been a competition at all; and I don’t just mean that one side would’ve squashed the other. I mean both parties have to be interested in competing to begin with, and J. Cole did not initially did not seem to want to. See, the thing about J. Cole that sets him apart from most other rappers is that he’s a very bohemian guy who, from the beginning of his career, has shunned most of the ego that seems to typically come with being a famous rapper. Unlike Drake or Kendrick, Cole didn’t seem to care much about being the best or ascending to the throne—he was perfectly happy doing his thing, staying in his own lane, and not particularly deigning to intersect with the majority of his peers. A quick glance at his album tracklists will reveal a stunning lack of features, which is unusual amongst rappers in general, especially those from Cole’s generation; in the heavily pop-driven atmosphere of the early 2010s, features were a dime a dozen. This also meant that Cole didn’t really seem all that interested in starting beefs or engaging with them. The only real beefs he’s had in his thirteen-year career are with goddamn Diggy Simmons (who? Exactly) and Noname, which wasn’t really a “beef” so much as it was a massive L blundered into by Cole at one of his most insecure moments; this is to say that his “shunning of macho rap ego” wasn’t always successful.
But yeah, other than that, he’s just never seemed like the kind of guy who participates in rap feuds; even his verse on “First Person Shooter” was largely positive and complimentary towards Kendrick. And while Kendrick doesn’t exactly spare Cole on “Like That”, he doesn’t go out of his way to target J. Cole much either, save the pivotal line responding to Cole’s “big three” reference—“Motherfuck the big three, n****, it’s just big me”. So I initially didn’t think Cole was even going to respond to this, especially considering the respect and collaboration that’s driven the relationship between these two guys in the past. So it was a real shocker when Cole actually did put out a response —
And I’m not kidding when I say everyone was surprised. J. Cole is not a rapper who disses people. He’s the kind of guy who would rather lecture Lil Pump than whoop his ass on record. If he’d been the one beefing with MGK in 2019, it would’ve ended with a sermon and maybe MGK wouldn’t have abandoned hip-hop for emo rock (a dark alternate timeline indeed). People were predicting that Kendrick’s verse wouldn’t have merited a response from Cole; or at the very least, that the one more likely to fire back first would’ve been Drake. So when this response came out, it attracted a lot of attention… mostly negative attention, considering that it sucked and no one liked it. The problems with this verse actually give us a good window into a lesson regarding how to make a successful diss track—because Cole’s verse breaks one fundamental rule of diss tracks—the disses have to be based on something real; or at least real enough that people will believe it. And unfortunately for Cole, his verse is stuffed to the brim with weak shots that even he doesn’t seem to believe.
The biggest offender here are these lines, which take aim at Kendrick’s discography in the most laughably ridiculous, easily disprovable manner—
“He still doin’ shows, but fell off like The Simpsons
Your first shit was classic, your last shit was tragic
Your second shit put n**** to sleep, but they gassed it
Your third shit was massive and that was your prime
I was trailin’ right behind and I just now hit mine
Now I’m front of the line with a comfortable lead
This line, this blow-by-blow rundown of Kendrick’s entire discography, is listed straight off of Jay-Z’s 2001 song “Takeover”, his diss track against Nas where he lists down Nas’ catalogue of records right up to that point —
I’ve been in it five, smarten up Nas
Four albums in ten years n****? I can divide
That’s one every let’s say two, two of them shits was due
One was nah, the other was “Illmatic”
That’s a one hot album every ten-year average
The context for this verse, for those of you too young to remember the Jay-Nas beef of the early aughts, is that Nas, the Queens conscious rapper and street poet, had largely been considered a one-album wonder in 2001, at the time of “Takeover’”s release, thanks to the unfortunate fact that he followed up his debut album, 1994’s Illmatic, widely considered one of the greatest rap albums of all time, with a disappointing string of follow-ups that either failed to live up to the magic of that first record or went straight pop and placed Nas in a context he was entirely ill-suited to. And yeah, Nas bounced back eventually, and now there’s been some critical reappraisal of some of those follow-ups, which have been given more credit by rap fans listening with fresh ears, but that’s missing the forest for the trees. The point isn’t to have the diss be literally true; the point is for it to be true enough to feel credible.
And J. Cole just doesn’t seem to grasp this. First off, claiming that Kendrick, of all people, “fell off” is wack—Mr. Morale had a divisive reception, yes, but it still garnered enough cultural cachet that I’d hardly describe it as falling off. Secondly, it’s not even clear which Kendrick albums he’s referring to when he lists the “first”, “second”, “third” and “fourth”. For one thing, Kendrick has five albums? I know I’m splitting hairs here, but Section.80 exists, and though it wasn’t a big mainstream hit and would only be discovered by most people in retrospect, it’s still a real album and not just a mixtape or EP (and a good one at that). But the reason I’m even indulging in this line of thinking at all is that if you don’t factor in Kendrick’s forgotten first album, the sequencing of the disses makes no sense? If he’s just talking about the four big records, then to Cole, first shit (which could only be referring to Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City) was the classic, but it was the second shit (To Pimp A Butterfly, widely considered the greatest rap record of the 2010s and one of the greatest of all time) that “put n**** to sleep”? Really? Are you kidding me? And then the third (DAMN) was his prime, huh? Well that’s technically true, from a certain point of view—it was his most mainstream album up to that point, and gave him his first #1 hit as a lead artist, but considering Kendrick’s overall trajectory, I’m not sure I would describe that period as his prime per se. And I don’t want to seem like a nitpicky asshole splitting hairs about one bar—I’m not saying this because I disagree with Cole’s opinion; I’m pointing out that Cole’s bar directly contradicts the widely-held popular consensus regarding Kendrick’s discography, which, from an objective standpoint, is anathema to an effective diss track.
And there’s other things about “7 Minute Drill” that bring it down, too; the beat is oddly chintzy and is so in opposition to Cole’s usual soulful rap stylings that it not only fails to give him a strong enough backing to lead the diss off with, but also exposes how outside of his comfort zone he is. But that only highlights the real issue with this verse—which is that Cole clearly does not want to be doing this. He says so in the song itself—”If he wasn’t dissin’, then we wouldn’t be discussin’ him / Lord, don’t make me have to smoke this n*** ’cause I fuck with him / But push come to shove, on this mic, I will humble him / I’m Nino with this thing, this that New Jack City meme / Yeah, I’m aimin’ at G-Money, cryin’ tears before I bust at him”. And that just doesn’t make for a very good diss track. Like most things, it takes two (or three in this case) to tango, so if one of the parties’ hearts isn’t in it, what’s even the point? I think Cole may have also been trying to play it off like this is a minor inconvenience for him and he’s swatting Kendrick away like a fly, dirt off your shoulder style, but it doesn’t really work because: (a) Kendrick is too big a rapper to be casually dismissed the same way Jay dismissed Jadakiss and the LOX in the last half a bar of “Takeover”; and (b) it’s not credible because you can sense Cole’s reluctance flowing out of every note of the song. If you don’t wanna be dissing Kendrick, then why the hell are you doing this?
I think it will serve us to zoom out on Cole’s fanbase, which seems to be the primary driver in actually getting Cole to release this wack-ass verse to begin with. Cole has always had a crazy nuts fanbase, which only intensified the more the public opinion seemed to waver around Cole in his later albums, especially since his music began getting more and more divisive, and his ill-advised public statements and beefing with Noname didn’t help sell his image any. I think because of all these factors combined, Cole’s fans have gotten somewhat antsy and defensive about his legacy, and the longer it goes on, the less they’re willing to hear anything negative about him. Even as it’s become increasingly more warranted. But if you think that sentiment was bad before 2024, then you have no idea how fast it shifted to overdrive upon word that J. Cole’s forthcoming project, The Fall Off, might be his last. It certainly explains why Cole himself seems to have broken a lot of his unspoken self-imposed rules as of late—he’s started appearing in more features, for one thing, and he actually appears to be playing to the type of typical hip-hop album buzz cycle he’d previously eschewed. I don’t know if this is actually true; I’ve seen enough fake examples that I now take every announcement of an early retirement with a grain of salt, but in any a case, so at the very least, he’s doing enough that it seems like he’s trying to shore up his legacy, and the fans have certainly walked away with that impression. So what better way to go out with a bang then to shut down a diss by one of the greatest rappers of all time, right?
Of course, like I said, the problem is a fundamental one that renders this entire project unsalvageable—J. Cole doesn’t do disses, and every time he deigns to release a diss track, it always feels forced. He doesn’t like doing this shit; he says so multiple times throughout the song. In fact, he regretted it so much that after the negative press the song received, he actually issued a public apology taking back the diss and clarifying that it didn’t really represent who he was as a rapper and artist. Which, to be fair, is a remarkably brave stance for him to take, especially in the cutthroat world of rap politics, so I have to give him props for that. Of course, then he turned around and started going after his erstwhile ally, Drake, which led to another political realignment whereby everyone has now started going after Drake. If we were to go on with the Seven Years’ War comparison we were using earlier, then it’s 1761, Drake is Frederick the Great, and the great powers of continental Europe have now all collectively set their heights on him.
Because the entire project released by Metro and Future, both installments of their two-part EP series, all seem like an elaborate, concerted effort to paint as many targets on Drake’s back as possible. The EP may have been led off by a Kendrick diss track, and officially the media is touting this as a Kendrick vs. Drake feud, but in real life, it’s a Metro Boomin orchestrated event, which is perhaps the most fitting, poetically just way that things could have possibly played out—it’s like a posse cut in reverse. Literally goddamn everyone Drake has ever worked with has gotten on this beat—Future, A$AP Rocky’s here, as are the Weeknd, Rick Ross, literally goddamn everyone. It does not exactly reflect well on Drizzy that all of his collaborators always seem to turn on him by the every end; I’m honestly surprised he’s still on good terms with Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj considering everything. But everyone’s going after Drizzy right now; Kendrick was only the first shot, and in hindsight, it seems like a pretty baller move on its own that Kendrick’s diss managed to sic the entire rap world against Drake.
And I think Drake felt the heat more than we gave him credit for. One of the reasons why this article is taking longer than expected to write is because this is actually a developing story, which is still going on as of the time of writing of this article, and one of the things that dragged it out was the length of time it took for Drake to put out his response. He remained silent for a couple of weeks as other rappers began mounting volleys of disses against him, and the very first snippets of his eventual response turned out to be by way of leaked audio clips which people doubted the veracity of at first. Some people even thought his verses were AI generated, at least sonically. But nope, it was the real deal, and the song, “Push Ups”, eventually got itself an official release.
And considering how many opponents he’s taking on in the song, it turned out much better than I expected it to be. He gets in some good jabs early on, especially that first line—”I could never be nobody number-one fan / Your first number one, I had to put it in your hand” seems to be specifically targeting Future, but in truth it could apply to any one of the artists who signed with Drake that are now currently beefing with him—thinking of the Weeknd, specifically—before getting in on more specific jabs, like telling Metro to shut up and make beats, claiming that the Weeknd abandoned Toronto to live in LA while he stayed put—”Claim the 6ix and you boys ain’t even come from it / And when you boys got rich, you had to run from it / Cash blowin’ Abel bread, out here trickin’ (Out here trickin’) / Shit we do for bitches, he doin’ for niggas (What the fuck?) / Jets, whips, chains, wicked, wicked, wicked (Wicked, wicked)” and even getting in on some jabs at Rick Ross, who somehow got involved in this feud despite being apparently thirteen degrees of separation out of this whole thing—”I might take your latest girl and cuff her like I’m Ricky / Can’t believe he jumpin’ in, this nigga turnin’ fifty / Every song that made it on the chart, he got from Drizzy / Spend that lil’ check you got and stay up out my business”. Why is Drake beefing with Rick Ross? Who cares, it’s goddamn Rick Ross.
But the star of this show undoubtedly has to be the digs against Kendrick himself. One thing that made me so invested in this beef was wondering what a credible diss against Kendrick Lamar could even look like. Considering how badly Cole struggled with his own Kendrick diss, I feel like what ultimately brought his verse down was because there isn’t really much you can levy against Kendrick that would feel believable. Sure, he’s had his moments here and there, but for the most part, he’s led a pretty unassailable rap career that’s hard to really take potshots at. Maybe at the beginning of his career, when he was a young up-and-comer who hadn’t really established his name yet, but now that he’s a big name rapper who no one can touch? That’s a recipe for asymmetrical warfare if I’ve ever seen it.
But I think Drake does a decent enough job on his verse—his disses against Kendrick are largely strategic and make sense, avoiding a direct confrontation and instead opting to remake the playing field entirely in order to shift the framing of it all. For one thing, he gets a few good jabs in on Kendrick’s height, right down to calling him pipsqueak throughout the song; always a wise move when you haven’t got much else to work with. I especially like the pun about “big steppin’”; and of course, from that, you can already tell that the song is stuffed to the brim about references to Mr. Morale’s relatively mixed reception compared to his other albums. The rebuttal to Kendrick’s Prince line also got my attention—”What’s a prince to a king? He a son, n****” and I like how he follows that up with jabs about Drake being a more well-respected figure in Compton than Kendrick is—“Get more love in the city that you from, n***”. But overall, the central conceit tying his verse together is Kendrick’s apparent struggles with his former record label, Top Dawg Entertainment, which he’d been repping with from the very beginning of his career to the point of being the label’s flagship artist. There’s not really a lot information about the precise nature of their seeming dispute, but other TDE artists like SZA have voiced similar frustrations about label mismanagement. The most I can gather is that TDE seems to be getting an allegedly unconscionable share of Kendrick’s album revenues, something like 50%. So the title of the song, “Push Ups”, is essentially a jab implying that Kendrick is TDE’s bitch—”Extortion baby, whole career, you been shook up / ‘Cause Top told you, “Drop and give me fifty,” like some push-ups, huh”.
Of course, there are other bars in here that don’t hold up as well and seem laughable in retrospect, especially the disses about Kendrick being a pop doofus who makes guest appearances on songs by Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift (a point which, strangely, will come up again later). That’s rich coming from the guy who is quite literally infamous for being the corniest, most pop-friendly rapper around and whose appeal to white pop audiences have put his legitimacy within hip-hop into question many times over. But I guess it makes a kind of sense from a certain point of view—while Drake’s credibility has been affected by being too palatable to pop audiences, he actually tends not to buck to pop music trends, at least not to the frequency often ascribed to him. When he first broke out, he was operating in firmly hip-hop territory, and while his music was successful, his moody monotone was very much in opposition to the predominantly upbeat trends of pop music then prevailing in the early 2010s. He also hasn’t made very many guest appearances on pop songs, which would make his diss technically accurate in that Kendrick has more pop features than him. If Drake’s a pop rapper, it’s only because pop music caught up to him; when the Trump era came and everything suddenly became moodier and more downbeat, Drake’s style became representative of the time and he was suddenly the most dominant, inescapable figure around. So I guess it still kind of works, although again, laughable on paper—and when we’re talking about a diss track, the “on paper” aspect matters as much as the deeper thematic analysis.
It’s a perfectly serviceable diss track, if a little predictable, but again, considering the challenge of finding diss-worthy aspects about Kendrick goddamn Lamar, the song does a lot better than you’d expect. I think it was a good tactical move for Drake to take aim at all his haters at once, to give him cover in case he can’t bring good enough bars against Kendrick, and also to give the impression that Drizzy is so important that everyone’s coming for him all at once. Again, harking back to the Jay-Z comparison, it’s like that moment in “Takeover” where Jay dedicates half a bar to lower-level rappers he feels aren’t on his level. But if that was what Drake was going for, it clearly does not extend to Kendrick, given that, as of late, Drake has demonstrated an increasing eagerness to get Kendrick’s response. As of this writing, Kendrick has not deigned to rebut “Push Ups”, and I think that may be driving Drake to put his thumb on the scale, because he has released a second—yes, a second—diss track, and hoo boy, is it a doozy.
First off, I think it’s hilarious that Drake keeps bringing up Taylor Swift in his most recent tracks; he seems oddly fixated on Taylor and how her success intersects with other rappers as of late, and it’s weird that he uses her as a counterpoint to Kendrick’s recent flops. But that’s not the biggest thing of note about this song, “Taylor Made Freestyle”, seeing as it uses the goddamn AI generated voices of Snoop Dogg and the late Tupac Shakur, to deliver its first two verses. And my God, this song sent chills down my spine, and not for any of the good reasons. For one thing, the use of AI in art is a broader debate topic all its own, and it raises plenty of ethical and moral, not to mention legal, considerations too lengthy to get into in this one article. It’s also doubly ironic that it should happen once again to the voice and likeness of Tupac, considering that he was one of the first artist for whom this kind of thing became an issue to begin with—you might recall the infamous Coachella hologram of him that performed alongside Snoop Dogg. And speaking of Snoop, you’d think he’d be more horrified that this were happening to begin with, but I don’t really think he cares much about the broader consequences; the most we’ve gotten out of him is his own puzzled reactions captured live on Instagram, which, c’mon man, surely you can do better than that.
Aside from that, though, I think this track at least puts an interesting angle to the beef, and it’s the one chapter of the entire feud that made me rethink my original conclusions about it. It’s interesting, to say the least, for Drake to essentially use the likenesses of Snoop and Tupac, two West Coast rap legends whose lineage Kendrick has operated within and directly invoked throughout his career—think of the Tupac’s ghost interludes sprinkled throughout To Pimp A Butterfly—to essentially levy psychological warfare on Kendrick. On the song, “Snoop” and “Pac” essentially neg Kendrick into responding to Drake, urging him to live up to his claimed status as the greatest rapper alive and to back it up by avenging the supposed slights against the entire West Coast caused by Drake’s most recent diss. Then Drake comes in on the last verse and essentially goads Kendrick by emphasizing the time element, pointing to the “three or four weeks” of silence on Kendrick’s end and capping off by leaving him with an ultimatum to respond. Purely objectively speaking, it’s a clever and creative move that puts the onus on Kendrick and completely reshapes his greatest of all time narrative—if the greatest of all time can’t even respond to the strays this “singin’ n****” is throwing at him, then he will have not only betrayed his legacy, but the legacy of the entire West Coast.
But conversely, it also risks making Drake look desperate and pathetic for basically begging for a response. Invoking the memory of Snoop and Tupac through AI is a ballsy move, one that indicates that Drake really, really wants Kendrick to answer him. The ball is on Kendrick’s court, sure, but Drake has also opened himself up to more scrutiny than seems worth the trouble. Going the AI route is a can of worms all its own, and Drake may have potentially stepped into more legal gray areas than he can handle. It’s very possible that Drake will sink himself through this verse alone, which means that it’s possible the best thing Kendrick can do is not to respond at all. After all, Kendrick has spent years cultivating his mystique, and it’s that very mystique that he can play off of to justify his lack of a response. “Like That” was a shot in the dark, a random stray that started shit for no reason, making Kendrick look like a troll and a shitposter who incidentally also managed to sic the entire rap world against Drake. Again, there’s potential for that to be considered an incredibly baller move, and if it causes Drake to step in it and tarnish his reputation further than he already has, it’s a giant win. All of his allies and peers, including his erstwhile ally Cole, have already turned against him—what else does he have left? If Megan could cause Nicki to foam in the mouth with one measly line and then not deign to respond to Nicki’s unhinged diss against her, then I think there’s precedent for Kendrick to leave Drake hanging here and claim the W.
So I don’t know. I guess we’ll see what happens next. Like I said, this is a developing story—it’s very possible I might have to do a part 2 of this article any day now.
The verdict:
I’d rate the song itself a 7/10, but I’m not really rate a song, am I? It’s only one in a grander beef that seems likely to keep going.
Originally, the point I was supposed to take away from this article was that “Like That” doesn’t really hit the same highs as “Control” because it didn’t feel like we were at a point where this kind of thing could still be interesting, but maybe I was wrong here? After all, I, like most of the world, am eagerly awaiting Kendrick’s response, I’m wondering the effect the fallout of “7 Minute Drill” will have on Cole’s career (those trans bars in his other tracks have me looking askance at him), and I’m wondering what Drake’s use of AI art and his arguably defensive, groaning posturing will impact his image.
But more importantly, I’m holding my breath to see how this diss influences rap music moving forward. Rap music struggled commercially throughout 2023, but it seems like it’s more relevant now than ever on the back of these feuds—aside from this and the Megan-Nicki feud earlier this year, there’s now a developing beef between Chris Brown and Quavo that seems much more below the belt than anything Drake, Cole or Kendrick have put out on record. Certainly, beefs have been a longstanding hip-hop tradition that have long played a role in galvanizing the genre’s commercial viability during low points in its mainstream success, but at the same time, do we want all of the mainstream rap hits of the year to be mostly disses, rather than real songs? More to the point, isn’t it a little weird that all of these disses have been by older artists and none of the newer, more up-and-coming crop of rappers? Hip-hop has made a comeback, sure, but that’s mostly benefited the oldhead crowd—the only new-ish rappers who have managed really big hits this year are Doja Cat, Glorilla, and Flo Milli—and while those are certainly worthwhile names, it’s still weird that we haven’t gotten many new breakout stars this year.
I don’t know. I guess we’ll see what the rest of this year has to offer us in terms of this weird trend we’re currently seeing.
In The Loop 