Drake and Kendrick Lamar get personal on simultaneously released diss tracks
- Published
Kendrick Lamar (left) and Drake have been embroiled in an increasingly bitter war of words
The intensifying feud between rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake has reached new heights, with the simultaneous release of two scathing diss tracks.
After weeks of back and forth, the new songs get personal, with allegations of domestic violence and secret children.
Drake's track, Family Matters, appears to suggest that one of Lamar's children was fathered by another man.
Lamar's response, Meet The Grahams, alleges that Drake is addicted to gambling, sex, drugs and alcohol.
Drake rejects the claims as a "shambles".
The two songs, released within minutes of each other on Saturday morning, are much darker than earlier missives in their war of words.
Drake, who is the most streamed rapper in the world, casually suggests that Lamar is a perpetrator of spousal abuse, rapping: "They hired a crisis management team/To clean up the fact that you beat on your queen."
Outside of the song, Lamar has never been accused of any form of domestic violence.
Drake also addresses the legal aftermath of his earlier diss track, Taylor Made Freestyle.
The song, which used Artificial Intelligence to duplicate the voice of Tupac Shakur, was taken down after a complaint from Shakur's estate.
In Family Matters, he accuses Lamar of pulling strings behind the scenes to force that outcome.
"You called the 2Pac Estate/And begged 'em to sue me and get that [expletive] down," he says.
Drake is the most-streamed hip-hop artist in the world
Lamar wasted no time in retaliating. His song, Meet The Grahams, arrived 20 minutes later, along with the warning: "You [messed] up the minute you called out my family's name".
The Compton-born rapper proceeded to call out Drake's parents, and his six-year-old son, by name.
"Dear Adonis, I'm sorry that that man is your father," he raps in the opening bars. "Let me be honest, it takes a man to be a man, your dad is not responsive."
He later calls Drake a "deadbeat" and suggests he has secretly fathered another child.
Drake responded to the latter accusation with an Instagram post, stating: "Hold on, can someone find my hidden daughter and send her to me pls... These guys are in shambles", accompanied by several laughing emojis.
Elsewhere on Meet The Grahams, Lamar repeats allegations that Drake has used ghost writers instead of composing his own verses, and that he has undergone plastic surgery.
Kendrick Lamar's fourth album, Damn, won a Pulitzer Prize
Lamar also alleges that people on the payroll at Drake's record label OVO are "sex offenders".
The lyric appears to be a reference to Canadian rapper Baka Not Nice, who began his career as a security guard for Drake, and who was charged in 2014 with forcing a 22-year-old woman into prostitution.
The rapper, whose real name is Travis Savoury, pleaded guilty to assault, external, but the prostitution charges were dropped.
Drake and Lamar's feud dates back to 2013, when Lamar was a relative newcomer.
During a performance at the BET Awards, he boasted that his skills had "tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pyjama clothes". The line was interpreted as a reference to Drake, whose soul-baring blend of rap and R&B had changed the sound of hip-hop.
The feud simmered for a few years, boiling over again last year when J Cole and Drake described themselves, along with Lamar, as the "big three" of rap, on the song First Person Shooter.
Lamar responded with a fiery verse on the song Like That, declaring that there was no "big three - it's just big me".
Since then, both sides have released a number of diss tracks, with the tension continually ramping up.
The fall-out has been good for business, however, with both sides scoring hits in this week's Top 40.
Related topics
- Published9 May
- Published1 May
- Published26 April
- Published22 April
