In the past two months, the world of music has erupted around hip-hop’s biggest rivalry in decades. This drama between Drake and Kendrick has been brought to the forefront as of late, but this has gone longer than expected, and became far more personal than just a rap battle.
Kendrick and Drake weren’t always enemies. Their relationship began amicably in the 2010s with Lamar’s appearance on Drake’s Club Paradise Tour in 2012 and shared features on songs like “Buried Alive Interlude,” “Poetic Justice,” and A$AP Rocky’s “F**kin’ Problems.”
But everything changed with Lamar’s infamous verse on Big Sean’s 2013 single “Control,” in which the West Coast rapper targeted competitive threats at several prominent rappers including Drake. The track went viral and strengthened his career, but left him with many people against him.
Drake and Lamar had stayed on neutral terms, but over the years, there were sneak disses through their releases. Drake had gone after Lamar on his albums Nothing Was the Same and If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, and Lamar criticized Drake’s supposed use of Ghostwriters in his albums To Pimp a Butterfly and his single “The Heart Part 4.”
As the years passed, the situation had ultimately de-escalated to a point where, on Drake’s 2023 album For All The Dogs, J. Cole’s featured verse on number-one hit “First Person Shooter” proclaimed that he, Drake, and Lamar comprised a “Big Three” alliance of the top rappers in the hip-hop industry.
Lamar’s “Control” verse over a decade earlier and reinvigorated his feud with both J. Cole and Drake. The situation rallied many industry voices to pick a side; artists like The Weeknd and Kanye West supported Lamar, while Nicki Minaj and 50 Cent defended the opposition.
With many artists having sides for or against Lamar and Drake, Metro Boomin was one of the artists who had conflict with Drake.
Metro Boomin Accused of Pedophilia by Igor Moyzeson
There has been a lot of buzz recently regarding some of Metro Boomin’s old tweets from about a decade ago. This has been flared up by a recent controversy between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, with it being started by Metro Boomin’s song “Like That” off of his recent album We Don’t Trust You.
As a response to “Like That,” Drake responded with diss tracks of his own called “Push Ups” and “Family Matters.” Metro Boomin took to X to clap back at some of Drake’s lines such as, “Metro shut [up] and play some drums,” or, “Just like how Metro’s [friend] slimed him for his main squeeze.”
Specifically, Metro said, “Now go make another song telling more lies cause we both know you can’t tell everyone why I don’t [like you]. That wouldn’t be a good look either for you so ‘Imma’ spare us both ‘wit’ that,” alluding to Metro’s ability to continue to throw shade at Drake and keep tarnishing his name.
On top of this, Metro dropped a beat called “BBL Drizzy” on SoundCloud and YouTube. In a tweet he said, “Best verse over this gets a free beat just upload your song and hashtag,” which encouraged his fans to write their own disses for Drake and rap them over this beat.
However, in the midst of all of this, Drake fans decided to do some digging and see what they could find out about Metro. These tweets from about a decade ago spread through social media like wildfire and the hashtag “MetroGroomin” started to quickly get passed around as a result.
This was due to certain things statements he made that tried to justify things such as grooming pedophilia, for example, “age ain’t nothin but a number.” These tweets clearly made many mad as it led to a lot of pushback from the community.
While Metro did try to defend himself by saying that these tweets were from his teenage years, when he was still under 18, many looked at the dates that they were posted and realized that he was actually an adult when he published them.
Additionally, Metro did try to claim that many of these tweets were “jokes.” However, it still disturbed many, especially when Metro openly acknowledged that he felt as if he was tweeting like a “child molester” and that he dressed like “a true pedophile.”
Metro is still yet to say anything official regarding this matter. Many have pointed out the irony of Kendrick Lamar and Metro calling out Drake for his pedophillic tendencies when Metro has all of these tweets from years ago.
This drama also coincided with Lamar and Drake, leading to more tracks being released.
Diss Tracks or Personal Attacks? Back to Lamar and Drake.
Cole was the first to respond, releasing “7 Minute Drill” as part of his surprise mixtape Might Delete Later two weeks later on April 5, 2024. While the song directed disses at Kendrick’s music, it received widespread criticism – prompting the rapper to ironically delete Might Delete Later and issue a public apology to Lamar in the days after its release.
With J. Cole out of the feud, Drake aimed at Lamar with the release of “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle” on April 19, 2024. While the former track gained popularity for its disses against Lamar, the latter received backlash for its use of AI-generated vocals in the voices of Snoop Dogg and the late Tupac Shakur. When Shakur’s estate threatened legal action, Drake quickly removed the song from streaming services.
Nearly a month after “Like That,” Lamar responded with surprise diss track “Euphoria” on April 30. With accusations claiming Drake has neglected his child Adonis and fabricated his public image, Lamar’s distaste for his rival became evident to millions of listeners.
Lamar didn’t stop there. A few days later on May 3, he released “6:16 in LA” through his social media, making jabs at Drake’s ties within his record label OVO Sound and seemingly baiting him to respond.
Hours later, he did; releasing diss track “Family Matters,” accusing Lamar of infidelity and domestic abuse against his wife, Whitney Alford. Perhaps the most shocking part of the release was the accompanying music video, which featured a replica of the iconic red van from the cover of Lamar’s acclaimed 2012 album good kid, m.A.A.d city being crushed in a junkyard.
At that point, the back-and-forth feud had been damning, but limited to simpl
e mockery and spiteful lyrics. But it only took 52 minutes after “Family Matters” for Lamar to hit back with the rivalry’s most inflammatory single yet.
With “Meet the Grahams,” Lamar broke the conventions of the diss tracks heard so far. Instead of being completely targeted towards Drake, Lamar instead began by rapping to Drake’s son Adonis, his mother Serena, and a previously unknown daughter which the Canadian rapper has allegedly hidden from the public eye for 11 years.
Not even a full day later, just a few hours later, Lamar had continued with the disses, releasing another track titled Not Like Us. He continues the conflict with Drake by calling him a “Certified loverboy? Certified pedophiles.” Lamar uses this track to further label Drake as a predator and is a completely different vibe from Meet the Grahams, as the vibe for Not Like Us calls out Drake and his friends in a less serious tone compared to Meet the Grahams which was far more personal.
“I want them to reconcile, you know, peace and all that,” says Jonathan Yi, a SAS senior who kept up with the drama.
While some just want this cycle of hate between the two to end, some enjoy the drama.
“Kendrick’s winning, that’s it bro.”, replied Noe Vasquez.
As a response to all of the tracks that were directed towards him, Drake released The Heart Part 6 on May 5th, which is a reference to Lamar’s “The Heart” Series. In this track, he denies the allegations Lamar made towards him, including the one of how Lamar stated that Drake had an 11-year-old daughter. The Heart Part 6, this marks the last introduction to the conflict between Drake and Lamar, but Lamar has stated that he has more songs to come.
