Ken V Den

Can I just start by saying- this should have never crossed my line of sight in one thousand years for all the circles that I travel. I am aware of hip-hop in the past tense, and even if Drake is the biggest pop star of the modern generation you best bet that don't mean I know his music. If you ever wondered about the songs I choose to pick out during reviews and consider them strange compared to some of the more recognisable bops in a game, that's because I'm drawn to music that I have a contextual relationship to. Music paints memories for me, and I colour my feelings about certain tunes with the shades of the feelings and journeys I was experiencing in those moments. That is to say- I am perhaps the most musically shuttered entertainment industry writer on this planet. Yet of course I knew who Kendrick Lamar and Drake are.

Not well enough to be able to decipher their ridiculous nicknames before someone literally spelled it out for me. KDot? BBL Drizzy? Seriously? These are grown men, right? But I would be a fool not to have heard Humble back when it blew up. I also really fell in love with A.D.H.D at some point for a reason I can't rightly explain. As for Drake? I guess I've heard the obvious songs. Hotline Bling, the one that people were dancing next to cars on TikTok to, probably some others. Can't say I cared too much. Both these artists were entities on a totally other plane of existence to me, leaking through general popular dissemination to my world in bits and pieces. I knew Drake was very successful for whatever reason, and found Kendrick to be very poignant with his lyricism. Now you know my baseline.

It was actually MoistCritical's coverage of this that put me onto the fact that one of the most consequential beefs in the Hip Hop was happening in real time and I have to say- I have been hooked. For nothing other than the sheer spectacle of two artists putting out so much content that one side dropped twice in one day. The latter of which, was literally recorded in less than a day after the Drake's diss and put out immediately. (You can tell because Kendrick literally name drops 'Meet the Family' in 'Not Like Us'. Unless this is all literally a in-joke the two of them are covertly playing on the entire world- Kendrick literally spat out 'Graham's together in less than half an hour. Absolutely beastly.) You never really get to see two men write aggressive poetry at one another in real time and it has been quite the blast to be a spectator of.

As for the raps themselves- well; this ain't the kind of rap beef I'm used to. From the past it always seemed to be about personal matters of one guy saying something about another guy that a third bystander reported to a forth otherwise uninvested party who then decides to turn it into a neighbourhood dispute that somehow ends up roping in the local gangs. But I guess those were the beefs of the old world and we're currently in the new one where people are throwing around actual jail-worthy accusations like they're drunkard in a pub trying to assassinate the bullseye target. And I'm just waiting anxiously to see who ends up with a wayward dart out the back of their head before this is all said and done. (Think I'm getting better at this 'analogy' business' or horrifically worse. Can't decide which.)

Now obviously I am no rap historian marking the various falling outs over the industry through the years, the best I can follow Drake and Kendrick seem to have had somewhat of a frayed relationship since Drake first introduced the man on a track in which Kendrick low-key broke down the entire veneer of 'industry success' as a venomous poison on his soul that would kill him dead if he pursued as Drake did. Then again, Drake and his writers did display an absolute lack of media literacy with their disastrously off-base interpretation of Kendrick's 'Mother I sober' in Drake's latest comeback track 'The Heart part 6', so maybe he literally didn't even understand that was what Kendrick was saying back in the day. Who knows. (Seriously though, I really want to get back to what it was Drake was apparently saying to his mother during that track. He never finishes his thought!)

But nowadays the conflict is a bit clearer. Drake is seen as a poser and Kendrick wants there to be absolute no doubts about which side of the conversation he personally falls on in that discussion. Question the 'blackness' of Drake throughout 'Euphoria', and then breaking down his circle of supposed sycophants in 'They not like us' that stoke the man's ego, telling him how to act the part he wants to be so very badly. Although unfortunately he didn't adopt that circle early enough in his career to be taught the correct way to say the N-word without the hard R. (Seriously, it's induces involuntary teeth grinding to watch the man do his work.) Over all of that heat, it's easy to miss the forest for the trees as the decidedly less cutting and more salacious accusations flying back and forth.

Drake's weird conduct around young women and girls isn't exactly a revelation upon the nature of the universe, but I guess it does take a spotlight to really highlight the problem. Conversely, however, Kendrick does blow that out to it's largest and loudest conclusion without, so far, any evidence- which one might call a little irresponsible if none ever materialises. Drake, on the otherhand, claims Kendrick to be a woman beater, alongside some other vague claims about cheating and illegitimate children ranging from far fetched to utterly inconsequential. These are the big headlines that people pop their head to, and shout out in the middle of the club- however off-colour some of this lines actually are. (Hearing a dancing crowd in the club scream "Certified Loverboy, Certified P*******" is an image that is going to stick with me.)  

At the end of the day, these are people from a whole different world throwing insults at each other through the form of dance-poetry, and is there anything more entertaining than that? It's simply the faces involved, and the talented lyricism, that turn it into a spectacle worth watching. And in becoming a spectacle, it in turn evolves into becoming an Art. Ain't it cool how that works? As long as, you know, this stays within the confines of verses and doesn't spill out into actual acts of violence, because no one wants that... except... Kendrick did make some worrying comments during Euphoria to that regard... but I assume the Christian in him doesn't stand by that. Right? Oh, someone was just shot outside one of Drake's houses- too late, I guess.