Drake has released his latest diss track in his ongoing war of words with Kendrick Lamar. The Canadian rapper released ‘The Heart Pt.6’ on May 5th after the two began trading lyrical blows in October, reigniting their feud that began in 2013.
In 2013, Kendrick Lamar featured on ‘Control’ by Big Sean, where he took aim at the hip-hop landscape of the time, which included Drake. This began a back-and-forth between the two that appeared to die down by 2016, but reemerged in October 2023 when J.Cole mentioned himself and the two rappers during his feature on ‘First Person Shooter’ by Drake, where he said ‘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.’
The rivalry was revived in 2024
Almost six months later, Kendrick Lamar appeared to reference this lyric during a feature on ‘Like That’ by Future and Metro Boomin, where he said ‘Motherf-k the big three, n-a, it’s just big me.’ This led to Drake releasing ‘Push Ups’ where he dissed many rappers including Kendrick and following it up with another track ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’. However, Drake was forced to take the second track down following threats of a lawsuit from the Tupac Estate, as he used AI vocals of Lamar’s heroes Tupac and Snoop Dogg on the track without permission. Drake himself was victim to AI-generated music in the past.
With the back-and-forth back in full force, Lamar responded with a six-minute track ‘Euphoria’ and ‘6:16 in LA’ on May 3rd. Drake dropped his retort ‘Family Matters’ the same day, where he implied that Lamar had been unfaithful to his partner in the lyric ‘You the Black messiah wifing up a mixed queen/ And hit vanilla cream to help out with your self-esteem/ On some Bobby sh-, I wanna know what Whitney need.’
Lamar responded the next day with ‘Meet the Grahams’ and ‘Not Like Us’. In ‘Meet the Grahams’, Lamar addressed each of Drake’s family members in his verses, his mother, father, his son and a daughter he alleges Drake is hiding from the world. It has previously been revealed that Drake had a son he had not publicly acknowledged.
In ‘Not Like Us’, Lamar used a photo of Drake’s mansion, exposing the rapper’s address. The house was also tagged with symbols for ‘sex offender’, which is a reference to Drake being accused of grooming following comments actress Millie Bobby Brown made about her friendship with the rapper when she was 14, revealing that the two often exchanged text messages.
The latest song in this battle is Drake’s ‘The Heart Pt.6’, which is a reference to Lamar’s songs with similar titles. In it, Drake says he planted fake seeds with Lamar about a secret daughter, addresses the grooming allegations and alleges that Lamar’s partner is having a baby with one of Lamar’s acquaintances.
Drake’s security guard caught in the crossfire
Outside the world of dueling each other with pen and paper, this feud has had real life consequences as police are now investigating a shooting that took place outside Drake’s mansion on Tuesday night, where a security guard was taken to hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries.
