Kendrick makes his beef with Drake an easy decision.
Kendrick Lamar dropped his response to Drake’s ‘Push Ups’ and ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’ and it’s brutal. The result should have been obvious. I am hesitant to even write about a song before it’s been out for a full day, but the song simply reminds me of why I’m a Kendrick Lamar fan. Kendrick told Drake and J Cole to come with three switches, so when it comes time for him to make a song, he uses three different beats. His flows are constantly varied, and his voice does the same, drifting from laid back to sing-song to frantic to a venomous growl. And by god are the Kendrick’s lyrics spectacular. Everything one could immediately bring up about Drake in a beef from his past as a child actor, his insecurities around his mixed-race status, him trying to duck Pusha T, him disrespecting Tupac’s legacy, to the instantly classic diss about how when Drake and Sexxy Redd are on stage together Drake “sees two bad bitches”. Push Ups was a fine diss track, but Euphoria has obliterated it in less than twelve hours in no small part because Drake has been shooting himself in the foot for years.
When Kendrick Lamar returned from his years-long hiatus with Mister Morale and the Big Steppers, the album was controversial. It featured complex and difficult narratives about trauma and abuse. It had an art piece song that was five minutes of a screaming match. As time has gone on, I keep going back to the album because of its complexity and the way Kendrick Lamar completely switched up his aesthetic and how he rapped. Compare this to Drake’s “Honestly Nevermind”, the first album in ages where Drake has seen fit to fully switch up his aesthetic. It completely bombed. Nobody wanted Drake to be making the most boring electronic music possible, so the only song that has lasted in people’s memories is Jimmy Cooks, the one song on the album that’s a full hip-hop cut. Beyond him adopting other culture’s styles, has Drake evolved at all since Views?
This issue has been easy to see in the beef too. With Taylor Made Freestyle Drake attempted to replicate what he did with Back to Back in his dominant 2015. The difference is that Back to Back has hooks. Back to Back has some real energy, and it takes some real guts to make a song talking about waiting four days and wondering where the response is. Drake attempted to do that with the Taylor Made Freestyle, but where Back to Back had the bravado of a man at his peak, Taylor Made Freestyle just sounds bored. On Back to Back Drake was a giant stepping on an ant, and he could get away with that against Meek Mill. Now, against Kendrick, when people have been sick of Drake for years Kendrick could have dropped a diss that was just okay and many people would say he won. Luckily for me and every Kendrick Lamar fan, he made it an easy decision.
