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The Kendrick Lamar/Drake Beef, Explained

By Frazier Tharpe

There's the back-to-back effect, and then there's the unrestrained chaos of dropping long diss tracks, densely loaded with viciously personal power punches, within an hour of each other. On the first weekend in May, Drake commandeered everyone's Friday night to turn up the heat in his beef with Kendrick Lamar with a three-part reply and accompanying music video—only for Kendrick to hit right back with what may be one of the most scathing diss tracks in rap history. This Cold War is firmly and decidedly thawed all the way out—and the [Maybach] gloves are off.

To paraphrase prime Jigga-era Jay-Z , the summer just got hotter. Read on for a full account of 2024's most constantly-evolving rap beef.

The low blows thrown during this weekend’s volley of diss songs have changed hip-hop’s rules of engagement forever—and may have shifted both Drake and Kendrick’s legacies in the bargain.

By Lawrence Burney

Future and Metro Boomin’s decade-in-the-making new album We Don’t Trust You was already one of the most feverishly anticipated rap releases in some time, and on the song “Like That,” Kendrick delivers on that Christmas Eve energy with a guest verse that may as well be a “Control” sequel. But whereas that name-naming 2013 landmark was ultimately rooted in the spirit of competition, this time the gloves are off and the love is done.

Kendrick sets the tone early, declaring that he’s “choosing violence” and it’s time for an opponent to “prove that he’s a problem.” And though no names are officially named, a reference to Drake’s song “First Person Shooter” and the album it lives on, For All the Dogs, means we have to consider this something more than a subliminal. On “FPS” Drake brags about taking Michael Jackson’s mantle for having the most Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 songs, going as far as to hit the “Beat It” steps with a sequined glove in the video. Here, Kendrick finally, formally casts himself as direct opposition, ending his verse with a haymaker referencing MJ’s own longtime Cold War enemy: “Prince outlived Mike Jack.” Sheesh.

Kendrick and Drake have a complicated history, with over 10 years' worth of static. As fanfare around Kendrick Lamar grew, Drake was quick to embrace him, giving Kendrick his own interlude on his 2011 album Take Care and bringing him along for the subsequent Club Paradise tour (which also included J. Cole, A$AP Rocky, Meek Mill, 2 Chainz, Waka Flocka Flame, and others.) But even on that song, “Buried Alive,” tension was in the air, with Kendrick recounting his thoughts while receiving game during a meeting with Drake—then the more established in the industry at that point—and admitting to being irritated by Drake's success.

Nevertheless they linked up for the excellent “Poetic Justice” on Kendrick’s seminal good kid, M.a.a.d. City album—but the collaborative vibes stopped a year later, after Drake was one of the many peers Kendrick named in his timeline-stopping, call-to-arms verse on Big Sean’s “Control.” A month or two after that moment, Drake dropped Nothing Was the Same , and in an interview with Elliott Wilson , slickly managed to give Kendrick his props while dismissing the verse at the same time. Fast forward a month, to a cypher at the 2013 BET Hip-Hop Awards where Kendrick Lamar rapped “Nothing’s been the same since they dropped ‘Control’/and tucked the sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes.” Two months later: Drake hops on a remix to Future’s titanic “Sh!t” and ends his verse with “Fuckn-ggas, gon be fuckn-ggas/that’s why we never gave a fuck/when a fuckn-gga switched up.”

A little over 10 years later, a Future song sampling Three 6 Mafia (whose influence continues to have a stranglehold on the game) is once again the stage for a response. The decade in between has been rife with subliminals, references that could be reasonably taken as warning shots but easily disavowed as harmless if either artist was asked. A spicy allusion to rappers using ghostwriters just months before that whole scandal broke out here . A charged “I put him on MY tour” reminder there . “The Language,” “Element,” “Deep Water,” “100” —all reasonably diss canon but never made official. (To say nothing of Kendrick and his cousin Baby Keem’s “The Hillbillies” conspicuously aping Drake’s “Sticky” flow, or Drake saying he can't be like “one of those guys” who only drops albums every three to five years when announcing For All the Dogs .) NFL star Marcellus Wiley once claimed he bore witness to one of the rappers taking it there when asked about the situation during an ESPN SportsNation interview, but cooler heads prevailed, the rapper's team had the interview buried and to this day we don't know which of the two it was.

In the midst of playing United States vs. Soviet Union, though, both rappers maintained a close relationship with Germany, i.e. J. Cole. Kendrick and Cole have yet to make a rap forum dream a reality with their long-alluded-to collab album (we’ll always have this , though) but stayed in communication on wax in other ways, like Kendrick handling hook duty on Cole’s “Under the Sun” or that time they did a beat swap and freestyle over each other’s songs on Black Friday . Cole and Drake, meanwhile, have always been upfront about maintaining a real friendship outside of rap, but finally doubled down on that on wax with not one but two collaborations last year (their first songs together in 10 years) and Cole joining Drake’s nationwide tour for several dates.

By Abe Beame

In another interview with Wilson, this time alongside Brian “B.Dot” Miller at the tail end of the last decade, Drake mused that the next 10 years would be the time for him, Kendrick and Cole really show and prove who’s built to last. Cole made the subtext plain on a 2021 freestyle over Drake’s then-new song “Pipe Down,” rapping “Some people say that I'm running third, they threw the bronze at me/Behind Drake and Dot, yeah, them n-ggas is superstars to me.” He leans into it even harder in his verse on Drake’s “First Person Shooter” with “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.”

On “Like That,” Kendrick is feeling a lot less kumbaya, rapping “Motherfuck the Big Three, it’s just Big Me.” Between that and dismissively observing that “n-ggas cliquin up” earlier in the verse, some could argue that the song also functions as a J. Cole diss as well as Drake. But you could just as easily say the same about Cole’s recent statements that he’s out to prove he’s the best, as he preps his long-awaited album The Fall Off , a Black Album -esque manifesto he’s crafting to ostensibly end all debate. After all, that Big Three line on “First Person Shooter” does end with Cole declaring himself Muhammed Ali, a sentiment he's been doubling down on in one stellar verse after another for the last few years. He clarified in an interview with Lil Yachty that he never once awarded himself the bronze medal, just merely acknowledged that it was a rampant perception. So in theory, the new Kendrick lines could be received by Cole as the same spirit of competition that he’s been preaching.

Cole would go on to respond to Kendrick with “7 Minute Drill,” a diss track more notable for Cole admitting on it that he doesn't want to really go there with his onetime friend than any especially vicious jabs. As the internet spent the weekend debating if J. Cole's heart was really in it, by Sunday he would go onstage at his own Dreamville Festival to confirm just that. He publicly retracted his diss, apologized to and bigged up Lamar, and even vowed to stay out of it even if Kendrick should respond to “Drill.”

We’ve gone hundreds of words without returning to the duo who delivered this moment: Future, the fourth face on that 2010s Rap Mount Rushmore, and Metro Boomin, the superproducer he’s made some of his most potent music with. There’s a deeper layer to Kendrick choosing a Future and Metro album as the stage to finally go at Drake: Metro has seemingly had his own problems with the 6ix God. Late last year he posted and subsequently deleted a tweet about his acclaimed album Heroes and Villains continuing to lose awards to Drake (and frequent Metro collaborator 21 Savage’s) album Her Loss . During a livestream not long after, Drake hilariously referenced “the non-believers, the underachievers, the tweet-and-deleters,” adding “you guys make me sick to my stomach, fam.” Despite trading a few more subliminal potshots across Twitter and IG , Metro downplayed any beef, saying that the issue was “not deep at all.”

Still, when eagle-eyed fans took note of Metro unfollowing Drake on Instagram—the definitive 21st century signpost of an un-amicable split—ahead of the album’s release, it didn’t take a hip-hop scholar to assume that, as Kendrick would declare, “it’s up.” And for those wondering how a producer-rapper beef would even reasonably play out, Metro makes it clear by serving up a new creative peak on “Like That,” with an obscenely screwface-inducing beat sampling 80s rap duo Rodney O and Joe Cooley's classic “Everlasting Bass,” (which was famously earlier sampled on Three 6 Mafia’s “Who the Crunkest”,) alongside Eazy-E's classic “Eazy Duz It” as well as a splash of “Ridin Spinners.” In effect Kendrick and Metro are following playbooks beloved by the likes of Jay-Z before them, or even Drake with “Back to Back,” in dissing your opponent on a song that’s an undeniable banger whether people know the context or not.

But why would Future, who has approximately 30 ( thirty ) collaborations with Drake, including the 2015 collab album What a Time to Be Alive and two fairly recent tracks on Future’s last solo album, cede airtime on his new project to a noted Drake enemy? No one knows for sure at press time, but it’s possible they have issues of their own. Despite their prolific collaborations, their relationship has had its rough moments from day one. Recall 2011, when an ascendant Future got an assist from Drake remixing the former’s “Tony Montana,” only to publicly bemoan Drake refusing to do a video . And while they toured together in 2016, who can forget that time in 2013 when Future was briefly, allegedly booted off of Drake’s tour for less-than-flattering comments about his music in an interview.

Factor in the name of the album, and Future’s rap on the intro about someone who’s his number one fan despite sneak dissing him on the side, and you don’t need that big of a tinfoil hat to make the leap. Any opinions on the current status of Future and Drake’s relationship is all baseless conjecture for now, but what is irrefutable is that rap beef is geopolitics. One would imagine Drake, who on the chorus of a recent track cheekily wonders what Pluto (Future) would do in a certain romantic situation (answer: not safe for work), wouldn’t simply shrug at one of his most frequent collaborators releasing a project with space reserved for direct shots at him. (That would be like 21 Savage letting Pusha T hop on a track.)

It’ll be interesting to see how this all unfolds, but, one thing we shouldn’t lose sight of is that We Don’t Trust You is, quite simply, incredible. Sure, beef is cool but so is Future reverting to some of his most historically depraved peaks earlier on the track—do not listen closely if you don’t want to hear specifics of the X-rated scenario that may absolve him of one of his 20 carat rings. He’s blacking out mostly everywhere else on the album even harder; 2022’s I Never Liked You is a great album, but We Don’t Trust You arrives immediately battling for an even higher spot in his storied discography. The same can be said for Metro’s beats; I yelled just as loudly as I did at Kendrick on “Like That” later on at the surprise Rick Ross verse as he glides on the soulful, escalating beat for “Everyday Hustle” ... only for the beat to morph a third time as Future returns to take the reins.

Metro’s been talking this album up for the better part of a year, directly acknowledging the high standard set by his and Future’s past work as a unit. They’ve cleared that bar and then some, shaking the rap game up in the process, securing a top slot for a summer outside and any Best Of lists. Silencing all doubters with the music, casting oneself as a step ahead of the competition: it’s energy the late, great Mobb Deep rapper Prodigy would appreciate, which is perhaps why the album is peppered with gripping soundbites from some of his past interviews.

Metro and Future would later spin it back with a second album, We Still Don't Trust You, which while more R&B-influenced, still had time to get in a couple more Drake shots albeit sans Kendrick. (You can read the breakdown on those here .)

Three weeks later, we finally got a Drake response. Early Saturday morning a song leaked to the internet through means that are still unclear, but after initial debate about whether it was real or an A.I.-constructed Drake facsimile, consensus on the internet landed on it being legit , before Drake sent the final version (with a much better beat) to DJ Akademiks to premiere on his livestream.

For about four minutes, over a dark and brooding beat that apparently originally sampled Junior Mafia's “Get Money," Drake fires off shots, disses and rebuttals to all the artists who have been coming at him since “Like That” dropped: “What the hell is this, a 20 v 1, n-gga?”

Drake, blessedly, doesn't resort to any sneak disses that rely on fans to connect the dots; names are named. He chides Rick Ross for jumping in when “every song that made it on the chart he got from Drizzy,” alleges The Weeknd's right-hand-man Cash is “spending all his bread out here trickin” and he tells Metro to “shut your bitch ass up and make some drums.” He even appears to send a stray at Ja Morant for weighing in , rapping “Shout out to the hooper that be busting out the griddy /I know why you mad, I ain't even tripping.” Curiously, Future does not get called out by name but Drake does respond directly to a bar on the “We Don't Trust You” title track, saying “I can never be another n-gga No. 1 fan/Your first No. 1 I had to put it in your hands.” (There's also a line referencing the Rolling Loud stage where Metro and Future first teased “Like That,” where Drake says shit might change “if your BM kiss and tell.” He doesn't go further but do remember the other person on that stage with them for that moment was none other than Travis Scott, who has two kids with Kylie Jenner…)

But the majority of the track's ire is reserved for Kendrick Lamar. Drake has several sophomoric bars attacking his smaller stature, calling him a “pipsqueak” that he had to “hike down to” to for this reply, and a so-called big stepper that “wears size 7 mens.” The main angle Drake takes though is on Kendrick's business relationship with his former label TDE and its founder Top Dawg, alleging that Top took a lion's share of Kendrick's profits and made him do lame pop collabs for money: “Maroon 5 need a verse you better make it witty/Then we need a verse for the Swifties /Top say ‘drop,’ you better drop and give him 50.” (The push-up theme plays off the jokes fans have been making about Kendrick being war ready because he posts workouts on Instagram.)

Drake goes on to declare a more accurate “Big Three” would place 21 Savage, Travis Scott or even SZA ahead of Kendrick before resolving later that the Big Three is just him twice and, presumably, J. Cole. Cole gets a stray reference here too, with Drake dismissing the adulation Cole gave toward Kendrick and the “Like That” verse at his Dreamville Festival last weekend : “I don't care what Cole think, that Dot shit was weak as fuck.”

Drake ends the original version of the song daring Kendrick to drop the nuclear diss he's reportedly sitting on or “shut your mouth,” alleging that Kendrick has had one for “four years” and still hasn't pushed the button. As direct as this Drake song is, the last few bars imply it's just a move to get Kendrick to reply, at which point Drake has more information ready to weaponize.

But the blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to Kendrick's partner Whitney ("I'll be with some bodyguards like Whitney") suggests Drake may not be considering the way his last high profile beef turned out. In 2018 when he rapped to Pusha T that his crew would “let it ring on him like Virginia Williams,” Pusha took the name-drop of his then fiancé as an excuse to take the gloves off and reveal intimate details about Drake's own family. Is Drake intentionally baiting Kendrick to take it to a similar level so he can hit back even harder, or is he once again underestimating his opponent?

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You've got to hand it to Drake: he has a wicked sense of humor. In the week since “Push Ups” impacted, the diss climate has been clouded by a new, decidedly 2024 problem: A.I. The ease with which impostors can use artificial intelligence tools to make a response initiating Drake, Kendrick, or whoever—coupled with “Push Ups” actually originating from a real leak first—has made everyone second-guess the validity of the response tracks that will follow. And with good reason: there have been a bevy of fake tracks in the last six days imitating both Drake and Kendrick. Or were they real leaks that both camps found it more advantageous not to claim?

The biggest debate stirred up over a partial Kendrick “leak” that hit Monday April 15, with lyrics that were less-than-biting and an unimpressive beat. While Daylyt, a rapper affiliated with Kendrick, immediately called it out as being A.I., Drake's longtime OVO affiliate Hush fanned conspiracy flames by imploring Kendrick fans to keep the same energy about it being underwhelming when they “find out it's real.” (Drake responded to Hush's post, laughing.)

The rapper behind the fake song eventually came forward with a video revealing how he made it and a subsequent interview with Complex. Even with that officially debunked, Drake continued to taunt Kendrick with social media antics like repeatedly posting pictures Ant Saleh, one of Kendrick's managers, on his Instagram story, daring the pgLang team to drop their response to “Push Ups.”

On Friday night April 19, Drake finally got tired of waiting and dropped another track—sort of. This isn't quite a “Back to Back” situation, and this new song hardly “counts” as another official diss, but it does apply pressure. Drake leans right into the whole A.I. debate with “Taylor Made,” a track that employs artificially-created verses from the late 2Pac and Snoop Dogg, clearly written by Drake before Drake tags in himself at the end with some new taunts for Kendrick.

There's levels to this: obviously it's funny and witty on Drake's part to flip the annoying “is it A.I.?” debate that's raged all week. Kendrick has been vocal about his idolatry of 2Pac— To Pimp a Butterfly even ends with Kendrick staging a “conversation” with Pac via interview audio that Afeni Shakur granted him permission to use. And Snoop is a west coast rap forefather to Kendrick, one of several legends who formally passed Kendrick the torch at a seminal House of Blues LA show. Drake's zombie-Snoop verse makes note of that moment. He uses the fascimile of the two West Coast legends to “urge” Kendrick not to let their city down by not rising to a moment that he technically started with “Like That.”

But it's more than just jokes; Drake uses his own verse and the two “fake” verses to respond and address some more things. He continues mocking Kendrick for having a deference to his pop collaborations, alleging that Taylor Swift is “his new Top Dawg" and she's making him sit this weekend out to let her new album roll out uncontested. Via “2Pac,” he directly responds to Kendrick's “Like That” line about “snatching chains and burning tattoos,” warning Kendrick that “All that shit bout burning tattoos, he is not amused/That's jail talk for real thugs, you gotta be you.”

Drake even uses a bit of the B-Rabbit, 8 Mile play—getting ahead of jokes your opponent might make about you by saying them first—by using “Pac” to say “Call him a bitch for me/Talk about him likin young girls, that's a gift from me/Heard it on the Budden Podcast, it's gotta be true.” The question of Drake, 37, dating girls in their young 20s is a topic that has come up frequently in the past and more recently as this beef started on The Joe Budden Podcast—Drake's issue with the titular host is deep and layered enough to power its own explainer post.

So Drake gets to seemingly take the wind out of one of Kendrick's potential diss angles, and get a little chin check in on his mortal enemy Joe Budden. Reaction to the track is wildly divisive, with some calling it corny, others taking Drake to task for encouraging more A.I.shenanigans to come, and others saying the pressure is on Kendrick now more than ever to move the ball forward on a fight that he technically initiated.

“Just say his name and I promise that you'll see Candyman.” After trying to apply pressure to Kendrick to respond following his “Push Ups” leak a little over two weeks ago, Drake can reset the Dot Clock to zero. On an unassuming morning on the most boring day of the week, Kendrick came in compelled by the spirit of 2024 Hater of the Year Katt Williams with a six-minute diss track, officially kicking this back-and-forth into high gear.

First things first: anyone blanching at the runtime is not a real rap fan, or at the very least, a real fan and student of this beef shit. Six minutes is nothing—if you weren't outside for say, The Game lighting into 50 Cent for 15 minutes and something like five different beat changes, that's OK… just say that and move on.

While “Like That” continues to top the charts and run the clubs and “Push Ups” has a bounce to it not much more distinguishable than any other Drake banger, “Euphoria” is notable for being more of a straightforward diss track in the classic mold: unrestrained bars and disdain, unconcerned with things like “replay value” and party-starter capability. Diss tracks that can also do damage in the function are great for sure, but not a requirement—just because I'd get kicked off the aux if I ever played “Blueprint 2” or Jadakiss and Beanie's back-and-forth has never stopped me from running those back on my own time often enough.

All of that is to say, the first thing that jumps out about “Euphoria” is that it's genuinely pretty funny. Drake and Kendrick represent two polar opposites of hip-hop values, stardom and appeal (so much so that their being at odds with each other is practically inevitable ), so they often get lumped into extremes and generalizations. Most would assume Kendrick, the Pulitzer-winning master lyricist with dense album themes would lack the ability for something as deceptively simple and outwardly hilarious as say, “Metro shut your ho ass up and make some drums." Drake even poked fun at this idea on “Taylor Made,” challenging Kendrick to hit him with a complex “quintuple entendre.” But while Kendrick does put his pen to work here, he also sounds like he's having a lot of fun in the booth, mocking Drake's Toronto slang ( "Crodie!" ) or ending the track with a sing-songy kiss-off challenging Drake's Blackness. To paraphrase Kiss, Dot does not sound mad .

But let's start from the top. The layers get interesting right off the rip when you check the production credits: “Euphoria” is co-produced by Cardo, quietly one of contemporary rap's most reliable hitmakers . He's been a go-to for Kendrick and TDE since 2016 (including on “untitled 07,” which was alleged to have Drake subs) but he notably helmed one of Drake's biggest songs ever with the diamond-certified “God's Plan.” (And some solid album cuts afterward too, word to “Landed.” ) Metro and Future set this whole thing off under a narrative about choosing sides; if that's true then Cardo producing Kendrick's reply may be him firmly planting his flag on on Team Kendrick.

“Euphoria” is constructed like a full song, complete with a one-minute smooth Teddy Pendergrass intro to warm things up before Cardo's thunderous beat comes crashing in, and another beat change around the four-minute mark where things get even more apocalyptic. (Every Kendrick fan no-doubt did this Denzel gif when the untitled unmastered vibes only turned out to be an intro.)

But the idea that the song takes a while to get to the good stuff is a bit of a fallacy; there are spicy digs being thrown out in those first 60-seconds already. In the same way that Drake used A.I. 2Pac to take the wind out of any “Drake likes younger women” jabs, Kendrick calls any family angle Drake may use—like say, name-dropping his wife on “Push Ups”—as a moot point since he aired a lot of personal business out already on his Mr. Morale album. And as for those Drake allegations, Kendrick slickly alludes that he isn't letting them go regardless when he says “You make music that pacify ‘em/I can double down on that line, but spare you this time.” (Get it, pacify em, pacifier?) Even the track’s title, "Euphoria," can read as one big allusion to that whole angle of attack since Drake is a co-producer on the notorious HBO series revolving around the lives of unruly teenagers.

The whole song has an air of Kendrick holding back on firing his biggest guns, playing his biggest jokers—much like “Push Ups,” there are plenty of “Takeover”-esque “you-know-who did you-know-what, let's leave that between me and you, for now” lines. (The most interesting tease: “I know some shit about n-ggas that would make Gunna Wunna "—who is currently ostracized in some corners of the rap community for appearing to cooperate with prosecutors in the Young Thug/YSL trial—"look like a saint.")

With that said, Kendrick still manages to get a lot off even if he's saving his biggest punches. He adds his own theatrical flair and venom to a lot of the more consistent anti-Drake narratives. He shouts out Top Dawg and turns the “Push Ups” thesis of profit splits back on him. He goes at the ghostwriter allegations, cleverly flipping Drake's “20-v-1” crack to this being a “1-v-20” since Drake has an army of helpers—and he calls two out by name, BEAM (a writer-producer with credits on Her Loss ) and more directly Lil Yachty, whose work towards helping Drake attack new rap styles was clear even before “someone” leaked an alleged reference track for Drake's “Jumbotron Poppin” two weeks ago that has Yachty basically rapping the song word-for-word. (For what it's worth, Yachty has always been credited on that song and several others across Drake's last two or three projects.)

Kendrick also attacks Drake's Blackness, or rather, Drake's insecurities about his racial identity, an attack Rick Ross has been diving at headfirst and Pusha T deconstructed on his seminal “Story of Adidon.” (He also, like Push and Ross before him, alleges Drake has surgically augmented abs.) Kendrick also calls Drake out for dissing Pharrell and Pusha last year on “Meltdown" and in his “Jumbotron” video, pointing out that Drake never even formally responded to “Adidon.” On that song Pusha accused Drake of being a “deadbeat” dad, and to hear Kendrick tell it, six years later despite the courtside seats and concert cameos , he isn't doing much better.

But the real fun lies in Kendrick admitting that while all of these are worthy reasons to get at someone, he just plain dislikes Drake: the way he walks, talks, dresses… even the women he chooses to sleep with (a patently hilariously unreasonable reason to dislike someone, that also may open things up for Drake to double back on his Mr. Morale family angle though.) And it's for that reason why Drake and Kendrick's songs immediately register as a cut above J. Cole's attempt, because there's nothing performative or skill-based challenging going on here for sport. Just pure disdain. To quote Mr. Morale himself, sometimes it ain't even gotta be that deep.

The slickest bar across the entire song finds Kendrick warning Cole and Drake that shit has never been sweet: “I pray they ain't my real friends, if not, I'm YNW Melly.” YNW Melly is, of course, the Florida rapper whose rising career came to a screeching halt thanks to a still ongoing murder trial accusing Melly of the premeditated murders of two YNW associates—ostensibly, two close friends. (Second best line: using Haley Joel Osment's IMDb for a two-for-one A.I. and ghostwriters reference.)

With lines referencing Puff Daddy notoriously slapping Drake and calling out Drake's right-hand enforcer Chubbs by name, Kendrick's threatening to “take it there,” but for now it remains a fun war of words and one that doesn't seem likely to end anytime soon, much less in an anticlimax like the Drake-Pusha T beef. Drake can only have been desperate for Kendrick to respond because he has a fully loaded clip waiting to shoot, and Kendrick for his part here, promises “headshots all year, you better walk around like Daft Punk.” Summer's heating up.

After all this talk about “the clock,” who among us expected Kendrick to follow up his own titanic diss track with another missile just three days later? Friday morning he released “6:16 in LA,” with its title of course being a nod to Drake's series of time-stamp-location tracks that he's been doing since the start of his career. Those songs are usually barfests where Drake unleashes some of his best rapping and shit-talking (at least three of them have subliminals for one-time Drake foes like Diddy, Tyga or Kanye). But where “Euphoria” is thunderous and full of body jabs, “6:16” is the opposite. It runs about half as long and true to its time stamp, the Sounwave and Jack Antonoff beat is decidedly smooth and laid back. Kendrick doesn't even really get to direct Drake bars until about halfway in, but when he does, things get delicious.

Whereas “Euphoria” laid out that things “ain't that deep” and Kendrick just plain dislikes Drake, here on “6:16” Kendrick puts his Littlefinger hat on and starts sowing seeds of paranoia and distrust. You won't find any bars about fake abs on this one, but “have you ever considered OVO is working for me?” is maybe, stealthily, an even more vicious body blow.

“Euphoria” is full of taunts, expertly worded but technically nothing that Drake hasn't heard before—especially from Rick Ross—in the last three weeks. But on “6:16,” Kendrick wants Drake standing around the OVO supper table asking which one of his crodies will soon betray him.

On one of Future and Metro's tracks, Weeknd sang about Drake having “leaks” in his operation, and Kendrick picks up on that thread, teasing Drake that he's no closer to finding the Matt Damon . It's not Cash, Weeknd's manager who Drake dissed on “Push Ups”—and for that matter, Kendrick isn't amused by Drake bringing his own manager Ant into it with IG stories either.

Instead, to hear Dot tell it, Drake should be focusing on his own squad: “If you were street smart, then you would've caught that your entourage is only to hustle you/A hundred n-ggas that you got on salary, and 20 of em want you as a casualty/And one of them is actually, next to you.” Do remember: Pusha T alleged the information he used for “Story of Adidon” came via disgruntled pillow-talking between Drake's right-hand man 40 and a woman he shouldn't have trusted. Is Drake's longtime producer one of the people Kendrick says is whispering that he “deserves” all the ire coming his way? The-company-you-keep jabs don't stop there, with Kendrick needling that even though Drake can safely assume DJ Akademiks and Zack Bia aren't implicated, those are not people he should be proud to have associations with.

And although the track actually dropped at 6:16 Pacific Time, theories are already running rampant about what else the title, and the cover art—a Maybach driving glove—could allude to. Perhaps an OJ Simpson reference—whose charges for double homicide were submitted on June 16? Which is also Tupac Shakur's birthday? Which is also the date Father's Day lands on this year, a date Kendrick alleges Drake doesn't deserve to be celebrated for?

We have entered the psychological warfare chapter of this beef, ladies and gentlemen. Kendrick is rapping like he has a real-time wire in the OVO headquarters, and while this track doesn't match the theatrical highs of “Euphoria,” it's intriguing nonetheless. In the weeks between “Push Ups” and “Euphoria,” Drake pushed a narrative that Kendrick's heart isn't in this beef stuff—and here's Kendrick challenging that idea. He insinuates that Drake is the one ruining the fun, trying to buy dirt on Kendrick that doesn't exist—“I'm sorry I live a boring life”—but if Drake wants to stoop to that level, he's ready to go.

Even amidst the chill vibes of Al Green, Kendrick sounds like Jigsaw on the track, returning to his wanting to play a game of “have-you-ever” motif that originated on “Euphoria.” Is Drake finally ready to play?

On “Push Ups,” Drake rapped that all this beef directed his way had him feeling like the King of Conflict, 50 Cent, so it's only right that he opens his Kendrick response video with a G-Unit spinner.

True to the teases he's been seeding through various streamers, podcasters and other affiliates all week, Drake comes to the battle with a fully loaded clip: “Family Matters” is essentially three songs in one, on three different beats—and that's not counting the separate verse he used to announce the video's release on YouTube. On his Instagram , Drake raps over the “Buried Alive” instrumental—the Kendrick interlude that appears on his seminal Take Care album—mocking Kendrick's flow, calling him jealous and pointing out that he brought him and “that other ho” (read: A$AP Rocky) along on his Club Paradise tour as their first big look.

That's all just a cold open for the main event on “Family Matters,” a seven-and-a-half-minute diss track with an accompanying video. Let's get the ancillary stuff out of the way first. Drake is in a tough spot because he's essentially fending off shots from his own personal Sinister Six, but unlike “Push Ups,” here the non-Kendrick bars he devotes to his other opps—Metro Boomin, Rick Ross, The Weeknd, A$AP Rocky—aren't as seamless and come off as distracting at best, and some of the laziest writing on the song(s) at worst. (Hilariously, Drake opts to completely ignore Ye's attempts to shoehorn himself in last week with a “Like That” remix, save for a stray play-on-words around Kim Kardashian's Skims brand.)

Most of the Sinister Six shots are on the second song, which accompanies images of a hearse in the video. Drake regurgitates jokes about Rick Ross's alleged past as a corrections officer and drops a clunker about Weeknd's music “being played in the spots where boys got a little more pride.” He also implies Abel's issue with him is over an unnamed woman.

We know which woman is at the center of Drake and Rocky's beef, and Drake calls her out by name, although the average fan wouldn't catch it on first listen. Drake warns Rocky that even “Fring” would advise Rocky to leave Drake alone; Fring is Drake's nickname for Rihanna , a reference to her putting him on to Breaking Bad during the height of their romance. The nickname even inspired the name of his now-closed restaurant in Toronto. (Interestingly enough, Drake seems too genuinely hurt by Future's part in all of this to say more than a bar communicating just that.)

But Kendrick versus Drake is the main card in this battle and Drake gets right to it, with a visual of the Duckworth family van from the cover of good kid, m.a.a.d. city being driven to an impound lot and crushed as Drake goes in over the beat he teased at the end of “Push Ups.” Drake raps that he was trying to keep things “PG,” a reference to pgLang, the company Kendrick cofounded with his creative partner and longtime friend Dave Free. The allusions stop being thinly veiled there, though, when Drake comes right out and alleges that Dave is secretly the father to at least one of Kendrick's children with his partner and high school sweetheart Whitney Alford. So, yeah, gloves off.

It gets darker from there later in the third song, where Drake returns to the idea of Kendrick and Whitney being in a strained relationship, and even alleges domestic abuse on Kendrick's part. Some listeners are pointing to this—admittedly unsubstantiated—old bit of gossip alleging Kendrick was involved in a domestic violence dispute that took place at a hotel in Vegas in 2014. Kendrick addressed this rumor during a stop at the Breakfast Club not long after, calling it a false allegation.

That third track is where Drake focuses on Kendrick the most, opening that portion of the video at New Ho King—the same restaurant Drake was robbed outside of in 2009, which Kendrick alluded to on “Euphoria.” The message is, to paraphrase a classic Drake line , “Don't talk to me like I'm that Drake from [15] years ago, I'm at a higher place.” The “Euphoria” rebuttals don't stop there, with Drake inserting shots of the Tupac ring Kendrick said he'd outbid him for, and a shot of someone swaglessly rocking all of Pharrell's classic jewelry pieces Drake bought at his auction. (Between the Tupac ring, Pharrell's jewelry, and the G-Unit chain, Drake is becoming something of a nefarious hip-hop ice archivist.)

The last shot of the visual is Drake holding up what appears to be an engagement ring, not long after he points out that Kendrick never actually married Whitney, before declaring that anyone calling this beef objectively would have to conclude Kendrick is “dead.”

“Family Matters” was barely up for half an hour before Kendrick fired back with “Meet the Grahams.” It would appear that Drake walked himself into another trap not unlike the one Pusha T set for him six years ago: baiting him to drop a diss that would justify a nuclear response that made going at family fair game. It seems safe to assume that Kendrick already had this track ready to go well in advance—perhaps not thanks to some mysterious OVO mole, but because, as he says in the opening lines of “Euphoria," he could predict the angle Drake would take and planned accordingly.

It's all part of a larger strategy; the “Meet the Grahams” artwork is the full picture that Kendrick teased earlier on “6.16 in LA.” It shows those same pair of Maybach gloves along with a shirt, receipts and prescription bottles, including one for Ozempic prescribed to Drake.

So to recap, on “Family Matters,” Drake accused Kendrick of: rampant infidelity, being too interested in living as a bachelor in New York to spend time or even post pictures with his family, and putting hands on the mother of his children, who may only be the mother to one of his children because the other was fathered by his close friend.

And somehow Kendrick manages to go 10 times darker, out spooky-ing Mr. Scary Hours with a bone-chilling, whispery delivery over a sinister beat courtesy of The Alchemist (who allegedly did not realize he was scoring a Drake diss track) on a song that addresses all the members of Drake's family: his son Adonis, mother Sandi, father Dennis and…an alleged 11-year-old daughter. Cue up the George Bush memes: To hear Kendrick tell it, there is a second hidden child.

Rap fans who had been growing impatient that Drake and Kendrick were merely jabbing and not letting haymakers fly can rest easy. Kendrick takes it to the Point of No Return, musing that he wishes Dennis Graham wore a condom the night Drake was conceived and telling both Drake's parents that they raised a man whose house is due to be raided any day now on Harvey Weinstein–level allegations. Kendrick alleges Drake keeps company with sex offenders (the same shooter Weeknd sang about on Future's album), and that their mutual famous friends like LeBron or Steph Curry would do well to steer clear of him before it all comes tumbling down.

And that all comes before the third verse dedicated to this heretofore unknown daughter, and the final verse that's addressed to Drake himself, taking him to task as a deadbeat man-child. Imagine Pusha T's previous Drake disses like “Exodus 23:1” or “Adidon,” only delivered straightforwardly with the maniacal glee toned all the way down and the emphasis on cutting, personal attacks turned all the way up. Pusha may have dropped blackhearted lines like “Ask Steve Jobs: wealth don't buy health,” but that's not quite the same as Kendrick straight up telling Drake he "should die,” after accusing him of being a predator on par with the likes of R. Kelly. (Some fans have been calling hypocrisy in Kendrick's taking this stance but featuring Kodak Black, who has sex offender allegations of his own, prominently on his last album.)

Things are getting very ugly on both sides; it's unclear how it will progress (or rather, devolve) from here. At press time, Drake has taken to Instagram to address only the claim that he has a second child, posting a picture of himself with the caption “Can someone find my hidden daughter and send her to me pls…these guys are in shambles.”

On “Family Matters,” Drake dismissively rapped that he was headed on a long overdue post-tour vacation now that he unleashed his big guns on Kendrick and the rest of the Sinister Six. If that's true then hopefully they have studios in Turks because Kendrick just followed up his macabre open letter to the Graham family with another diss track—hitting Drake with two replies in less than 24 hours.

“Not Like Us” is an impressive strategical feat on several fronts. Most obviously, it applies back-to-back pressure on Drake—turning the tide in Kendrick's favor, suffocating all of the oxygen before “Family Matters” even had a chance to breathe, and aggressively putting the ball in Drake's court to hit back. But perhaps more crucially, it's a much-needed exhale after “Meet the Grahams” that also showcases Kendrick's range.

Rap fans spent the last month asking Drake and Kendrick to skip the round 1 dancing stage and get to the actual haymakers, and when they actually delivered last night, it was a case of “be careful what you wish for” for some. Kendrick's track is the more outright uncomfortable listen, but Drake harmonizing that Kendrick “beats his queen” is just as ugly. Still, even Pusha T mocking Drake's friend's poor health was an easier pill to swallow because of his delivery; "Meet the Grahams" is just joyless.

Just as Kendrick was in danger of losing the audience, and being that kid at the lunch table who takes things too far, he invites everyone to a good ol' fashioned LA block party with “Not Like Us,” which finds him dancing over a Mustard beat that both sets can hit their walks to .

To be clear: He's still alleging Drake is a sex pest who keeps the company of bad dudes—the single art is an image mocking up Drake's Toronto mansion as being on the sex offender registry—but with Kendrick writing to Mustard's bounce, it's just a more compelling listen than “Grahams.” This song won't travel as far up the charts as “Like That,” but it's built to work in the same functions, down to the call-and-response “O-v-Ho” refrain.

And even more so than “Euphoria,” Kendrick reasserts that for all the conscious-minded, poet laureate narratives that surround him, he can crack a good sophomoric joke with the best of them. Take your pick between the likes of “tryin to strike a chord, and it's probably A minor," bastardizing Drake's album title to call OVO “certified pedophiles,” or flipping the 6ix God moniker to “69 God” because he's into “freaky shit.” With an opening line that references the viral classic “call the amberlamps," Kendrick makes it clear from the outset that the content of his disses, notwithstanding, this one will at least have some levity.

Although the track is quintessentially LA, Kendrick carves out time for a whole verse dedicated to Atlanta. Specifically, the argument that Drake is a “colonizer” vamping on other cities for their style and swag, methodically listing out the various rappers he's gotten close to for street credibility, from Future and 21 Savage to Young Thug and 2 Chainz.

While The Alchemist seemingly didn't know he was producing a diss track, Mustard posted on social media that he'll “never turn his back on his city—and I'm fully loaded.” That's yet another big-time producer who has past collaborations with Drake but is by all accounts siding with Kendrick. The support is extending outside of music even—Kendrick's line here about Drake keeping his ex-flame Serena Williams out of his raps earned the song a retweet from her husband, Alexis Ohanian (whom Drake dismissed as a groupie on his 2022 track “Middle of the Ocean”).

Drake laughed off “Meet the Grahams” as being a sign that team PG is desperate and “in shambles,” not long after it impacted. But with “Not Like Us,” Kendrick is proving that he's more war ready than anyone might have realized. He's fully loaded, ready to attack at any time and in any style, and slowly but surely gathering more and more people in the culture to his side. (Remember, on “Euphoria” he claims his disdain isn't just personal, but representative of a larger “we.") All eyes are on Drake now. We can surely expect a relevant movie clip on Instagram, but then what?

The most productive weekend in the history of rap beef continues, with Drake saying fuck all to the Sunday Truce and doing exactly what Joe Budden advised : to hit back at Kendrick's onslaught with a record in the vein of his time-stamp series, straight bars over a hard beat. Only, Kendrick already beat him to a time-stamp title last week with “6:16 in LA,” so Drake counters by co-opting one of Kendrick's recurring series: “The Heart.” (The last official entry, “The Heart Part 5,” heralded Kendrick's Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers album. Surely you remember the music video , where Kendrick applies deepfake technology to take on the visages of everyone from Kanye and Nipsey Hussle to OJ.) Drake even takes a page out of Kendrick's diss manual and applies some classic soul to the proceedings, countering Kendrick's Teddy Pendergrass and Al Green samples (on “Euphoria” and “6:16,” respectively) with an Aretha Franklin sample here.

Aretha sings “Let me see you proooove it,” setting the tone for Drake's angle here that Kendrick's been hitting him with baseless accusations. “The Heart Part 6” is in full reaction mode to everything that's transpired over the last three days, including direct rebuttals to Kendrick's “Not Like Us;” it was clearly written in the last 24 hours. Drake sounds…a little over it all, while nevertheless still promising that shit is about to get dark. (This is now his second track in a row where he plainly states he'd rather be on vacation somewhere than holed up in cold Toronto writing disses.) Drake, buddy, domestic abuse and pedophilia accusations are in the air—we've been pitch black for the last few songs already.

You would think Drake would sound a little more celebratory than he does to start the song, where he takes a victory lap for allegedly going full Sydney Bristow and triple-crossing Kendrick into leaping on Fake Child Intel. “We plotted for a week and then we fed you the information…we thought about giving a fake name or a destination/but you so thirsty, you not concerned with investigation.” Who's lying or who was fooled? Only the Pusha T Investigative Team can solve this.

Drake doesn't dwell there, though, instead moving on to Kendrick's family, doubling down on the two angles that formed the basis of “Family Matters”: that Kendrick has beaten his partner Whitney in the past, he's estranged from their family, and one of his two kids is actually fathered by his friend and creative partner Dave Free. To drive this last point home, “The Heart Part 6” artwork is an Instagram screenshot of Dave leaving heart emojis under, presumably, a picture Whitney posted.

Continuing his through line of using Kendrick's confessional raps on Mr. Morale as ammo, Drake refers back to “Mother I Sober,” the track where Kendrick unpacks his mother's sexual abuse and how it informed an incident in his childhood where his mother was worried he was being abused by a family member even though Kendrick says he wasn't. Dr. Drake's read: He actually was molseted, and that's why he's so hell-bent on calling OVO “certified pedophiles.”

To hear Drake tell it, he's “only fuckin with Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns , I'd never look twice at no teenager.” Elsewhere on the song, he says: “If I was fucking young girls, I promise I'd have been arrested/ I'm way too famous for this shit you just suggested." Drake goes on to parrot a sentiment that's been gaining popularity on social media for the last few days, that there's an inherent hypocrisy to Kendrick going down this path of attack given that he famously protested Spotify's brief removal of R. Kelly and XXXTentacion's music as censorship that he could not support.

Drake ends the track with one last sick joke: “Whitney you can hit me if you need a favor/And when I say I'll hit ya back, it's a lot safer” before going full Mob boss mode on the outro with some tough talk. Most crucially, he tries to take the wind out of Kendrick's inevitable response, wisecracking that Kendrick probably has “10 more records to drop.” Any minute now…

Watch CBS News

Kendrick Lamar and Drake released several scathing diss tracks. Here's a timeline of their beef.

By Caitlin O'Kane

Updated on: May 9, 2024 / 9:43 AM EDT / CBS News

Kendrick Lamar and Drake have each released several ruthless diss tracks against each other over the past week, taking jabs at height and style and making allegations about each others' children and other disturbing accusations. The beef has continued to escalate and amid the drama,  a shooting took place at Drake's home , which is featured on the cover of Kendrick's diss track "Not Like Us." 

At around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, a security guard outside of Drake's Toronto house was injured in a shooting and is in the hospital in serious condition. 

Inspector Paul Krawczyk with the Toronto Police Service said at a news conference that police "cannot speak to a motive at this time." He did not say if Drake was at home at the time of the incident but that his team is cooperating with the investigation. 

In the wake of the feud, Kendrick's track "Not Like Us" has broken a streaming record, with the most single-day streams of a hip-hop song in U.S. Spotify history, according to Chart Data , which monitors music streaming charts. The record was previously held by Drake and Lil Baby's song "Girls Want Girls." 

The back-to-back diss tracks have proven to be fruitful for Kendrick, who saw a 49% spike in streams from May 3 to 6 compared to the previous week, according to Billboard . Drake, however, saw a 4.9% decline in streams during that same time period, but his streaming numbers are still about two times higher than Kendrick's.

Here is a timeline of the Kendrick and Drake beef and a breakdown of their new diss tracks.

Kendrick featured on "Like That"

Kendrick and Drake started out as cordial collaborators, with Drake featuring Kendrick on his 2011 song "Buried Alive Interlude" on his second studio album "Take Care" – just after Kendrick released his first studio album, "Section.80." 

In 2012, Kendrick opened for Drake during his Club Paradise tour. Drake raps about this on 2016's "4PM in Calabasas," saying when he was told to take an R&B singer on tour, "I told 'em no and drew for Kendrick and [A$AP] Rocky."

But over the years, Kendrick and Drake have taken jabs at each other.

On 2023's "First Person Shooter," a collaboration between Drake and J. Cole, Cole calls himself, Drake and Kendrick rap's "big three." 

But it seems Kendrick doesn't ascribe to that belief. He was featured on Future and Metro Boomin's "Like That," released in March, saying there is no big three, "it's just big me." That seemed to have sparked what is now a massive feud with back-to-back diss tracks released by both Kendrick and Drake.

Drake's "Pushups" disses Kendrick's height and talent

On April 13, Drake, whose real name is Aubrey Drake Graham, released "Pushups," a diss about Kendrick in which he calls him a "pipsqueak," and says he wears a size seven men's shoe.

He also says Kendrick isn't in the "Big Three," listing other artists who are better than Kendrick, and referencing Kendrick's collaborations with Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift . Drake also takes swipes at other artists, like the Weeknd . 

Kendrick's name is not mentioned by Drake, only in the intro by DJ Akademiks. But as the beef heats up, Kendrick and Drake start to get more blatant in their attacks on each other.

Drake releases "Taylor Made"

On April 19, Drake, 37, released a second diss track about Kendrick called "Taylor Made," again poking fun at Kendrick's height, talent and closeness to Taylor Swift. 

He alleges Kendrick has not released a diss track in response because he was allowing Swift to release her album " The Tortured Poets Department" on April 19 and have the spotlight.

"The first one really only took me an hour or two, The next one is really 'bout to bring out the coward in you, But now we gotta wait a f***ing week 'cause Taylor Swift is your new Top, And if you 'bout to drop, she gotta approve," Drake raps. 

Drake does, however, praise Swift as the "biggest gangster in the music game" and admits he also moved his album release date to allow hers to drop first.

"Taylor Made," however, featured AI-generated vocals from late rapper Tupac, and after Tupac Shakur's estate sent Drake a cease-and-desist, Drake removed the song from all platforms, according to Billboard.

Kendrick responds with "Euphoria"

On April 30, Kendrick, 36, responded to Drake's tracks with "Euphoria." In it, he takes ruthless jabs at Drake, who is the executive producer of the HBO show "Euphoria."

Kendrick criticizes Drake's parenting of his 6-year-old son, Adonis, rapping: "I got a son to raise, but I can see you don't know nothin' 'bout that." He says he teaches his son "morals, integrity, discipline," but says Drake doesn't do that for his own son. 

He also takes jabs at Drake's crew – OVO, or October's Very Own – and criticizes Drake, who is half white, for appropriating Black culture.

Kendrick's "6:16 in LA" produced by Jack Antonoff

Drake famously has several songs with times in the title, including "9AM in Dallas," "4pm in Calabasas," and "6PM in New York." The song's title is a direct reference to these Drake tracks and the inclusion of producer Jack Antonoff appears to be a direct response to Drake's "Taylor Made" song.

Antonoff is a frequent collaborator of Swift's, producing "Reputation," "Lover," "Folklore," "Evermore," "Midnights" and her newest album " The Tortured Poets Department ."

Kendrick was featured on Swift's 2014 song "Bad Blood," which was on her "1989" album. 

On May 3, Kendrick, who is also known as K.Dot, released "6:16 in LA" on social media. In the song, he alleges people who work for Drake's OVO record label and apparel company dislike Drake and may be secretly working for Kendrick. 

Drake goes deeper with "Family Matters"

The same day Kendrick dropped "6:16 in LA," Drake released "Family Matters," a nearly eight-minute song in which he alleges one of Kendrick's children with longtime girlfriend Whitney Alford was actually fathered by his manager, Dave Free. 

He also alleges Kendrick alerted Tupac's estate about Drake's usage of an AI-generated Tupac verse. And, in another scathing line, he alleges Kendrick pays for sex. 

He also takes a jab at the Weeknd again and at rapper Rick Ross, saying that using Ozempic gave him a side effect of jealousy. 

"Meet the Grahams" alleges Drake has a secret child

In what is one of the more scathing tracks in the back-and-forth disses, Kendrick addresses Drake's family members in "Meet the Grahams," released later on May 3. He raps to Drake's son, saying, "Dear Adonis, I'm sorry that man is your father."

He gives Adonis advice and raps: "And you nothing like him, you'll carry yourself as king, can't understand me right now? Just play this when you 18."

He also has verses that address Drake's mother and father. "Dear Sandra, Your son got some habits, I hope you don't undermine them," he raps. "Dear Dennis, you gave birth to a master manipulator," he says. 

In the most surprising verse, Kendrick starts off with the line "Dear baby girl," alleging Drake had a daughter 11 years ago and kept her hidden from the world. He gives the alleged daughter advice and describes Drake as a deadbeat dad who allegedly pays for sex.

"I wanna tell you that you're loved, you're brave, you're kind, you got a gift to change the world, and could change your father's mind," he raps to Drake's alleged daughter. 

He also has a verse addressing Drake, making more scathing allegations about Drake's alleged gambling and drinking habits and saying he responded this way because Drake spoke about his family.

Kendrick releases "Not Like Us" 

In a May 4 drop, "Not Like Us," Kendrick makes disturbing accusations about Drake allegedly having inappropriate conduct with minors. He also makes similar allegations about Drake's friends and continues to question Drake's talent.

In his newest diss track, Drake denied these allegations, as well as allegations about having a daughter.

Drake responds to allegations in "The Heart Part 6" 

In his most recent album, 2022's "Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers," Kendrick has a track called "The Heart Part 5." Drake's newest track, which dropped on May 5, plays on this title and in the song, he responds to Kendrick's bombshell allegations.

"The Pulitzer Prize winner is definitely spiralin,'" he starts, referring to Kendrick, who in 2017 became the first rapper to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. 

The cover art on the track is a social media comment from Dave Free, the man Drake alleges is the actual father of one of Kendrick's children, with two heart emojis. 

In the song, Drake says the people Kendrick is getting his information about Drake from are "clowns," and that Drake's team planted fake stories about an 11-year-old daughter to see if Kendrick would take the bait.

He also directly addressed the allegations that he had inappropriate conduct with minors. "I never been with no one underage, but now I understand why this the angle that you really mess with," he raps, saying he would've been arrested if the allegations were true.

Fans are now awaiting more surprise tracks from Kendrick, a 17-time Grammy winner from the Compton neighborhood of Los Angeles and Drake, a five-time Grammy winner from Toronto, Canada. 

• Entertainment
• Kendrick Lamar

Caitlin O'Kane is a New York City journalist who works on the CBS News social media team as a senior manager of content and production. She writes about a variety of topics and produces "The Uplift," CBS News' streaming show that focuses on good news.

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Kendrick Lamar & Drake’s Rap Beef: A Timeline Of Their Cold War, Which Just Started Sizzling Again

Updated May 2: With both rappers releasing new tracks in the feud, this post has been upated to reflect the changes since it was first published.

Way back in 2017, when I first started working at Uproxx, I wrote a piece called Bringing Drake And Kendrick Lamar To The Brink Of Battle about the longstanding cold war between the two prominent rappers, who fans have interchangeably considered the top of rap’s hierarchy along with J. Cole.

Collectively, they’ve been called hip-hop’s “ Big Three ,” but on Kendrick Lamar’s new verse on “ Like That ” from Future and Metro Boomin’s new joint album We Don’t Trust You , the Compton rapper derides the concept , declaring, “Motherf*ck the Big Three / N****, it’s just big me.”

He also spends a significant portion of his verse throwing shade at Drake, which some fans have interepreted as a response to Drake throwing some of his own on his J. Cole collaboration “First Person Shooter” from For All The Dogs .

Now, if you’ve found yourself wondering why these two have spent so much time and energy trying to dim each other’s light, here’s a timeline of their feud to help make sense of it all.

2011: Drake Invites Kendrick Lamar To Collaborate On Take Care

The first official collaboration between Drake and Kendrick appears on Drake’s second album, Take Care . On “Buried Alive,” Drake cedes the stage to Kendrick, who delivers an unbroken stream of consciousness reflecting on his already antagonistic relationship to fame. Even then, it was clear he wasn’t sure what to make of Drake’s extended hand; during the verse, he muses that their association would change him and not necessarily for the better. “So blame it on Mr. OVOXO / The reason why I’m breathin’ all the vanity I know,” he raps, the first sign that things were all hunky-dory despite their initially friendly footing.

2013: Kendrick Lamar’s Verse On Big Sean’s “Control” Sets The Rap World On Fire

It’s funny; the origin of Kendrick Lamar’s big break from the industry as a whole came on a song that isn’t even technically commercially available. For a while, K. Dot played the game, collaborating with Drake twice more (on his Good Kid, MAAD City single “Poetic Justice” and on ASAP Rocky’s “F*ckin’ Problems”) but when given the opportunity to collab with fellow rising star Big Sean on his second album Hall Of Fame , Kendrick instead went full scorched earth on “Control,” inviting the entire rap world to catch his fade. The song, which was released as a promotional single but ultimately cut from the album over sample clearance issues, brought an immediate response from dozens of rappers — but not the one he seemingly most wanted to react.

“I didn’t really have anything to say about it,” Drake told Billboard in August of that year. “It just sounded like an ambitious thought to me. That’s all it was. I know good and well that [Lamar]’s not murdering me, at all, in any platform. So when that day presents itself, I guess we can revisit the topic.”

2013: Kendrick Calls Out Drake On The BET Hip-Hop Awards

Revisit the topic Kendrick did, referencing Drake’s non-response in his Cypher verse at the 2013 BET Hip-Hop Awards. “Nothing’s been the same since they dropped ‘Control,'” he flexed. “And tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes.” Unfortunately, despite name-checking Drake’s album, he failed to elicit a direct response, although some cited Drake’s verse on Future’s “Sh!t” as an indirect one: F*ck n****s gon’ be f*ck n****s / That’s why we never gave a f*ck when a f*ck n**** switched up.”

Since then, the two have exchanged a handful of subliminal potential disses, but never anything that either seemed to think was worth escalating the conflict over. A few examples include:

2013: Drake’s “The Language”

Nothing Was The Same was allegedly littered with references to Kendrick, none overt. However, it’s hard to overlook the first verse from “The Language” in which he decries “any n****s that’s talkin’ that sh*t just to get a reaction / F*ck going platinum, I looked at my wrist and it’s already platinum” — a subtle nod to Good Kid, MAAD City reaching the million-sold milestone two years after its release (by comparison, it took Drake’s debut album, Thank Me Later , just a month to accomplish).

2015: Kendrick Lamar’s “King Kunta”

When Kendrick incredulously wonders, “I can dig rapping / But a rapper with a ghost writer? What the f*ck happened?” many retroactively took it as a pointed reference to Drake’s “ghost writer” controversy, which was kicked off by Meek Mill later that year when he detailed being surprised that Drake asked him for a verse on a nearly completed reference song. After the scandal broke (and Drake cooked Meek with the onslaught of “Charged Up” and “Back To Back”), fans pointed to Kendrick’s bar as an example of foreshadowing… even though he never mentions Drake on the track.

2015: Drake’s Verse From The Game’s “100”

“I would have all of your fans / If I didn’t go pop and I stayed on some conscious shit,” has long been construed as a gloating shot at Kendrick for being unable to match Drake in commercial success. Another example of a line that could be about K. Dot: “I’m in the club every time that they play the competition If they even play the competition and I seen the response they get.”

2015: Kendrick’s Verse From Dr. Dre’s “Deep Water”

“Motherf*cker know I started from the bottom” begins the verse, calling back to one of Drake’s best-known but most scrutinized hits. (“I don’t give a f*ck about your whereabouts” could also be seen as a reference to the Canadian rapper’s tendency to release songs titled with timestamps and locations , such as…)

2016: Drake’s “4PM In Calabasas”

Less of a diss and more of a reminder, Drake made it a point to take credit for taking the risk of backing Kendrick and ASAP Rocky in 2011, eschewing the advice to bring R&B singers on his tour. “When they told me take an R&B n**** on the road and I told ’em no and drew for Kendrick and Rocky / I tried to make the right choices with the world watching.” Might have bit him in the backside.

2017: Kendrick’s “The Heart Part 4”

Ahead of releasing the Pulitzer-winning DAMN. , Kendrick made it a point to tell Drake : “Jay-Z Hall of Fame, sit your punk ass down / So that means you ain’t bigger than rapping.” After taking some parting shots on the original version of “ Element ” (which didn’t make his Pulitzer-winning album, DAMN. ) he went so long without dropping new music, that it seemed their feud had ended by virtue of sheer boredom on either rapper’s part.

2023: Drake’s “First Person Shooter” Verse

Despite taking in one of Kendrick’s Big Steppers tour stops (after Kendrick expressed confusion at Drake and Kanye squashing their own feud on that album), Drake seemingly couldn’t resist getting in some digs at Kendrick on his J. Cole collaboration, nor slighting him during his own tour , telling fans he wouldn’t disappear on them for years at a time (suggesting that’s what Kendrick did between 2017’s DAMN. and 2022’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers ).

2024: Kendrick Lamar’s “Like That” Verse

And here we are, full circle — sorta. Truthfully, this feels more like it should be an intermission, although it’s also the first time in over 10 years Kendrick openly baited Drake with an invitation to throw down. We’ll see if the time Drake predicted all those years ago finally comes to pass, or if Kendrick’s craving for conflict continues to go unsatisfied.

April 2024: Drake Strikes Back And Gets AI Involved

On April 13, a song purported to be Drake’s response leaked online . The song, “Push Ups,” found the embattled Torontonian showing his teeth at many of those who’d taken the opportunity provided by “Like That” to air a decade’s worth of grievances against him. However, the main target was, of course, Kendrick Lamar. “Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty / Then we need a verse for the Swifties / Top say drop, you better drop and give ’em fifty,” he raps on the track, making it fairly clear just who he’s talking about.

“Push Ups” was given an official release a few days later, but Drake still wasn’t done clapping back at his opponent. Within days, he’d already released a second track, “ Taylor Made Freestyle ,” which featured AI-generated verses from Snoop Dogg and Tupac deploring Kendrick’s representation of the two rappers’ beloved West Coast. Unfortunately for Drake, that one didn’t go over so well, with Tupac’s estate threatening legal action and forcing him to delete the track the same way J. Cole did “7 Minute Drill.”

April 2024: Kendrick Releases “Euphoria,” Scoring With Fans

On the final day of the month, though, Kendrick may have scored the last laugh. His scathing Drake diss, “ Euphoria ,” appeared on YouTube without warning, bearing a slew of cutting lines that put Drake up against the ropes in the minds of many fans. And while Drake seemingly tried to brush off the damage he’d done , the ball is in his court once again — although Kendrick warned that his next response would be even worse.

Kendrick Lamar Drops Yet Another Drake Diss Track, ‘Not Like Us’

By Jem Aswad

Executive Editor, Music

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Kendrick Lamar continued to ramp up his increasingly personal musical battle with Drake by releasing “Not Like Us,” his third song in 36 hours, early Saturday evening. The song is posted on Lamar’s official YouTube channel — which essentially guarantees its authenticity in an era when an AI deepfake must always be considered — and features an aerial view of Drake ‘s mansion outside Toronto, with sex-offender map symbols on it.

Popular on Variety

As usual, there are so many lyrics that we’ll leave the deep analysis to the experts, but there’s not much mystery about the Atlanta-themed lines that close the song, which lists a number of the A-town rappers Drake has worked with (Future, 21 Savage, Lil Baby) and finishes with a dig at both Drake’s diss track against Lamar (“Family Matters”) and his 2018 song, “God’s Plan.”

“You run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars/ You not a colleague, you a fuckin’ colonizer/ The family matter, and the truth of the matter/ It was God’s Plan to show you’re a liar.”

The song fades out with Lamar leading a female chorus chanting “O-vee-ho” — a play on Drake’s company, OVO — and making fun of his hit “Toosie Slide” again.

Kendrick dropped 3 different songs in 24 hours. pic.twitter.com/6t5B4F0KJY — . (@tsnmknd) May 5, 2024

In just the past 36 hours, Lamar released a diss track titled “6:16 in LA” on Friday morning, then both rappers dropped response tracks , one after the other, on Friday evening, with Drake putting out “Family Matters” and Lamar releasing “Meet the Grahams.”

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The Deeper Meanings Behind Kendrick’s Drake Diss “6:16 in LA”

Kendrick Lamar’s “6:16 in LA” is full of layers and double meanings. Here’s a full breakdown.

Kendrick Lamar warned Drake that he’d go “back to back” on “Euphoria” earlier this week, and now he made good on that promise with “6:16 in LA.”

Dot spends much of the song surgically picking apart Drake’s OVO crew, planting seeds that there is a rat among them. This angle is especially effective given how paranoid Drake already was before all of this (on songs like “Champagne Poetry,” he raps about how his “cleaning staff’s plotting extortion” on him). 

The smooth flip of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” makes the track sound amazing even without the shots, but of course, Kendrick even found a way to hide a deeper meaning behind the sample itself, which has ties into Drake’s family (more on that below).

“6:16 in LA” is full of layered references and even more “ quintuple entendres,” so here’s a breakdown of all of the deeper meanings behind the track.

The title “6:16 in LA” has a lot of symbolism behind it. The most obvious interpretation is that Kendrick is using Drake’s long history of releasing songs with timestamp titles against him. But there’s more. Dot dropped the track at 6:16 a.m., and the numerology in “6:16” could represent at least five other meanings.

June 16 (6/16) is the date that Father's Day is celebrated in many countries, including the US and Canada. This might be Kendrick’s way of doubling down on bars he had on “Euphoria” about Drake being a deadbeat dad (“I got a son to raise, but I can see you don't know nothin' 'bout that”) as well as a possible reference to Drake having an absent father during his childhood.

June 16 is also Tupac’s birthday. Kendrick has a deep affinity for Pac and revealed that he took offense to Drake buying his million-dollar ring on “Euphoria.” And of course, Drake tried coming after Kendrick last month by using artificial intelligence to create a Tupac diss verse on “Taylor Made Freestyle.”

HBO’s Euphoria, executive-produced by Drake, aired its first episode on June 16, 2019. The show has been criticized for sexualizing teenaged female characters, and after naming his last song “Euphoria,” this could be Kendrick’s way of subtly commenting on the rumors of Drake’s odd history with underaged women.

OJ Simpson’s murder case began on June 16, 1995, and this reference could tie into the black leather glove on the song’s cover artwork (more on that below), which might be Kendrick’s way of implying that some of Drake’s own crimes will soon come to light.

Fans are also pointing to the Bible verse, Corinthians 6:16, which reads, “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’” This could be yet another jab at Drake’s tastes in women.

The cover art

The cover artwork features a black leather Maybach equestrian glove. The image immediately evokes the memory of the notorious black leather gloves that were used as evidence in OJ Simpson’s 1995 murder case. Under this interpretation, Dot could be implying that members of Drake’s team, like his right-hand man Chubbs (who Kendrick previously mentioned on “Euphoria”), have committed crimes and gotten away with it. The actual glove on the cover art is used for horse-riding, though, so it also could be a callback to Drake’s bar on “In The Morning” where he rapped, “I love thick women because my aunt, she rode equestrian.” To this day, nobody really knows what the hell he meant by that, and this image could be Kendrick’s way of calling back that unusual bar and making fun of Drake’s history with women.

View this video on YouTube

The song is built around a sample of Al Green’s “What a Wonderful Thing Love Is,” which has direct ties to Drake’s family. Drake’s father’s cousin, Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, was a guitarist and songwriter for Al Green, and he’s credited for playing on this specific song. The track is also rumored to be co-produced by Taylor Swift’s frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff. If that’s true, then “6:16 in LA” would literally be a “Taylor made” song. Antonoff produces a lot of Swift’s music, so this could act as a response to Drake’s AI “Taylor Made Freestyle,” where he insinuated that Kendrick has to take orders from the pop singer. Because of all this, it’s uncertain whether the song will ever hit streaming services. Clearing an Al Green sample is difficult, especially when it’s attached to a family member of the guy you’re dissing. And it’s doubtful that Antonoff wants to officially throw himself in the middle of this rap war, especially since he more than likely produced this song for Kendrick before the beef broke out and didn’t know it would be used for a diss record. Still, this was a brilliant maneuver on Kendrick’s part.

The bars on “6:16 in LA” seem to have one central goal: make Drake question everything. Throughout the song, Dot implies that there are snakes in Drake’s OVO camp, and he keeps the lyrics vague enough to leave the rapper suspicious of everyone around him, with bars like:

“Off-white Sunseeker at the marina/ Fuck a Phantom, I like to buy yachts when I get the fever/ Wine cooler spill on my white t-shirt, the sightseer/ Trifecta, money, morals, and culture, that's my leisure/ My visa, passport tatted, I show up in Ibiza”

In the song’s opening bars, Kendrick seemingly mocks Drake for constantly rapping about rich shit that normal people can’t relate to (like going “from the Vava to Cinquante-Cinq, then back to the Vava” ), but there could also be some hidden layers behind them. Drake recently purchased a new Rolls Royce Phantom , and this could be a double entendre, with Dot implying that he doesn’t have to move silently like a ghost (or in the same vehicle as Drake) and he’d rather make it very loud and clear that he’s pulling up on people. Cole and Drake also reunited in a Rolls Royce Ghost in 2019, which might have pissed Kendrick off. Drake also recently bought a yacht , so in the next line, Dot raps that he doesn’t need glamorous items because “money, morals, and culture” are enough to satisfy him, implying that Drake is filling these holes in his life with material possessions. Finally, Drake frequents Ibiza as a vacation spot, so Dot appears to be saying he’s not afraid to pull up on him anywhere.

"Conspiracies about Cash, dog? That's not even the leak/ Find the jewels like Kash Doll, I just need you to think/ Are you finally ready to play have-you-ever? Let's see/ Have you ever thought that OVO is workin' for me? Fake bully, I hate bullies, you must be a terrible person/ Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it” 

Drake is already a very paranoid guy, with a habit of rapping about how he doesn’t trust people , so Kendrick instills even more distrust in him by insinuating that members of the OVO camp have been leaking information to him. This narrative was already established by The Weeknd on “All to Myself” when he sang about Drake having “leaks in his operation.” And on “6:16 in LA,” the “conspiracies about Cash” line might be Kendrick’s way of saying that Drake thought The Weeknd’s manager (Amir “Cash” Esmalian) was the one leaking information about him, which is why he sent shots at him on “Push Ups.” The “find the jewels like Kash Doll” line left everyone confused at first ( even Kash Doll herself ), but Dot might be referencing the time she was robbed of $500,000 worth of jewelry last year. Separately, there were also rumors that Kash Doll and Drake were dating a few years ago.  

“ It was fun until you started to put money in the streets/ Then lost money 'cause they came back with no receipts/ I'm sorry that I live a boring life, I love peace/ But war-ready if the world is ready to see you bleed ”

Back in 2018, Pusha-T alluded to the fact that Drake offered $100,000 to whoever could give him ammunition to use against the Virginia rapper when they were beefing, and now Kendrick is implying that he’s trying to do the same thing this time. On “Euphoria,” Kendrick already made it clear that he won’t use these shady tactics in his own beefs, rapping, “Why would I call around tryna get dirt on niggas? Y'all think all my life is rap?” Now, Kendrick is using these bars to convince people that Drake is actually the one fighting on his back foot, desperately paying the streets to get dirt on his opponent.

“ A hundred niggas that you got on salary/ And twenty of 'em want you as a casualty/ And one of them is actually next to you/ And two of them is practically tired of your lifestyle/ Just don't got the audacity to tell you ”

Kendrick goes on to say that some members of Drake’s OVO crew have a deep disdain for him and that they’re actually closer to Dot than he might realize. Pusha-T already revealed that he found out Drake had a child through a woman who was pillow-talking with OVO producer Noah “40” Shebib, so it wouldn’t be that shocking if there were more leaks in the camp. The person “next to” Drake that Kendrick is referring to could be his right-hand man Chubbs, but there’s no way of telling for sure. 

“ You're playin' nerdy with Zack Bia and Twitter bots/ But your reality can't hide behind wifi/ Your lil' memes is losin' steam, they figured you out / The forced opinions is not convincin', y'all need a new route/ It's time that you look around on who's around you/Before you figure that you're not alone, ask what Mike would do ”

First, Kendrick makes fun of Drake for aligning so closely with Zack Bia, a DJ and record executive who just opened up on the It's All A Blur Tour (here’s a full deep dive on Bia if you’re interested). Then Kendrick brings up the rumors that Drake uses Twitter bots to troll his opposition online, something that was happening to Pusha-T last year.  Kendrick hints that the memes Drake has been posting over the last few weeks aren’t working, before imploring The Boy to start investigating his own crew and find out who’s betraying him. Dot closes the diss by playing on Drake’s affinity for Michael Jackson, weaving his song “You Are Not Alone” into the bar and sarcastically telling Drake to put himself in the singer’s shoes now, since he thinks he’s “actually Michael Jackson.”   

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A complete timeline of Kendrick Lamar and Drake's beef, from its 2013 origins to their latest diss tracks 'Not Like Us' and 'The Heart Part 6'

• Kendrick Lamar and Drake's feud shows no signs of ending soon. 
• Both rappers released multiple diss tracks that took blistering personal shots. 
• Drake is also feuding with other artists, including Metro Boomin, the Weekend, and A$AP Rocky.

Two intruders attempted to enter Drake's home in Toronto after Kendrick Lamar shared the address in a diss track amid the hip-hop stars' bitter public feud.

In the cover art for Lamar's latest diss track, "Not Like Us," released on May 4, the rapper shared an aerial image of Drake's mansion near Toronto. The image also has pins on the mansion, resembling those used on sex offender maps, leading fans to believe Lamar is suggesting Drake's house is full of sexual predators.

In the song, Lamar doesn't mention the address but makes the allegation that Drake and his entourage are pedophiles. Drake denied that he had any inappropriate relations with underaged women in his latest track, "The Heart Part 6," released on May 5.

In the week following the release of "Not Like Us," a shooting took place outside Drake's mansion, and there were also reports of people trying to break into the property. These incidents have not been connected to the rap beef.

Lamar and Drake's long-running beef reignited in March when Lamar dissed Drake and J. Cole on Future and Metro Boomin's track "Like That" from their latest collaborative album, "We Don't Trust You." This was followed by responses from Drake and Cole, but Cole later stepped down from the fight.

At first, fans encouraged the beef. Diss battles, which rappers use to prove themselves, are common in hip-hop, and it was seen as some friendly competition between three hip-hop heavyweights.

Feuds can also be a clever marketing tactic to help artists boost streams and sales. "Like That," for instance, topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for weeks, and "We Don't Trust You" debuted at the No.1 spot on the Billboard 200. Lamar's "Euphoria" and Drake's "Push Ups" have also climbed the Billboard chart in the last week.

However, the feud intensified last week when Drake and Lamar released six more tracks aimed at each other, four from Lamar and two from Drake. These tracks were more aggressive, with both stars making unverified allegations of sexual assault, pedophilia, and domestic abuse against each other.

Here's what to know about the feud taking over hip-hop.

Drake and Lamar have been making digs at each other since 2013

Lamar and Drake started out as friends, with Lamar opening for Drake's "Club Paradise" tour in 2012. The pair's feud began when Lamar rapped that he was better than all the rising rap stars, including Drake and Cole, when he featured on Big Sean's 2013 song "Control."

"And that goes for Jermaine Cole, Big K.R.I.T., Wale, Pusha T, Meek Millz, A$AP Rocky, Drake, Big Sean, Jay Electron', Tyler, Mac Miller / I got love for you all, but I'm tryna murder you n*****," he rapped.

Drake appeared to respond on the track "The Language" from his 2013 album, " Nothing Was the Same ," rapping: "I don't know why they been lyin' but your shit is not that inspirin'/ Bank account statement just look like I'm ready for early retirement / Fuck any n**** that's talking that shit just to get a reaction."

The two rappers last featured on the same song in 2013 and, since then, have made small digs at each other in their tracks and in interviews.

In 2015, many fans believe that Lamar accused Drake of using a ghostwriter, pointing to Lamar's 2015 track "King Kunta," where he raps, "I can dig rappin', but a rapper with a ghostwriter? / What the fuck happened?"

Lamar hasn't confirmed if the "King Kunta" lyric is about Drake.

Later that year, Meek Mill also accused Drake of using a ghostwriter in a since-deleted post on X, which Drake denied in a 2019 interview with Rap Radar .

The pair have also taken different paths artistically, with Lamar earning critical acclaim, including winning a Pulitzer prize for "Damn" in 2018 and 17 Grammys . Drake is more commercially successful, with 15 songs with over a billion streams on Spotify compared to Kendrick's five.

Cole entered the beef after appearing on Drake's 'For All The Dogs'

Drake's 2023 track " First Person Shooter ," featuring Cole, is all about the two being the greatest rappers ever. Cole, who is friends with Lamar, references him in the song when talking about being the "Big 3" of the Hip Hop world.

"Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me?" Cole raps, referring to Lamar's nickname, "K-Dot," and Drake's birth name Aubrey. "We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali."

Lamar was rumored to be featured in the song too, though that never materialized.

Drake ends the song by comparing his success to that of the late Michael Jackson , who is the sixth best-selling artist of all time. In October 2023, Drake scored his 13th Billboard Hot 100 No.1, tying with Jackson.

Lamar's verse in "Like That" alludes to those lyrics, the song title "First Person Shooter," and Drake's 2023 album title, " For All the Dogs ."

"Motherfuck the big three, n****, it's just big me," Lamar raps, adding later. "Fuck sneak dissin', first-person shooter, I hope they came with three switches."

"N****, Prince outlived Mike Jack'," Lamar raps later, referencing a 2017 song, "Mask Off (Remix)," where he compares himself to Prince. Prince and Jackson also had a long-standing beef when they were alive.

Lamar ends the verse referencing Drake's latest album: "'Fore all your dogs gettin' buried /That's a K with all these nines, he gon' see Pet Sematary (Yeah)."

A week after the song dropped in March, Drake appeared to respond to Lamar during a concert in Florida as part of his "It's All A Blur Tour: Big As In What?" with Cole.

Drake officially addresses Kendrick Lamar on stage “I got my head held high, my back straight, I’m ten f**king toes down… and I know no matter what there’s not another n**ga that could ever f*ck with me on this Earth” pic.twitter.com/4xJZ1kX8uS — Grand/THE WIZRD🔮⁶𓅓 (@grandwizardcn) March 25, 2024

"A lot of people ask me how I'm feeling. I'mma let you know I'm feeling," Drake said in a video shared on X. "I got my fucking head up high, my back straight, I'm 10 fucking toes down in Florida and anywhere else I go. And I know that no matter what, it's not a n**** on this earth that could ever fuck with me in my life!"

Cole fired back at Lamar, then apologized two days later

Cole did not publicly comment on Lamar's "Like That" verse until April 5, when he released a 12-track EP, "Might Delete Later," featuring Gucci Mane, Ari Lennox, and others.

The first verse of the final track, "7 Minute Drill," appears to be a direct response to Lamar, who Cole implies is losing popularity. Rolling Stone's Andre Gee wrote that the title refers to a military drill in which officers have to explain how to respond to an enemy attack.

"He still doin' shows, but fell off like the Simpsons / Your first shit was classic, your last shit was tragic / Your second shit put n***** to sleep, but they gassed it / Your third shit was massive and that was your prime / I was trailin' right behind and I just now hit mine," Cole raps.

Fans think Cole's bar about Lamar's second album references the critically-acclaimed " To Pimp a Butterfly ," as most people don't count 2011's "Section.80" as his first. "Good Kid, M.A.A.D City," is Lamar's actual second album.

Rolling Stone's Gee and Pitchfork's Alphonse Pierre panned Cole's track for not being aggressive enough.

"He doesn't have the heart for the lying, disrespect, and animosity it requires to make an effective diss track," Pierre wrote.

Two days after the song was released, Cole apologized to Lamar during his performance at the Dreamville Festival in Raleigh, North Carolina. It came after hip-hop's loudest voices, namely Joe Budden, expected Cole to continue the beef onstage. Instead, he shocked the hip-hop world and apologized.

"I just want to come up here and publicly be like, bruh, that was the lamest, goofiest shit," Cole said in a video shared on X. "And I pray that y'all are like, forgive a n**** for the misstep and I can get back to my true path. Because I ain't gonna lie to y'all. The past two days felt terrible."

Cole said he felt conflicted because he respected Lamar but felt pressure from his peers and fans to respond.

J.Cole speaks on his response to Kendrick and says it hasn’t felt good or right with his spirit, calling his own response “corny” and telling Kendrick to return his best shot if he feels a way pic.twitter.com/jan2jctfk9 — Glock Topickz (@Glock_Topickz) April 8, 2024

Cole said his diss verse, and the discourse surrounding it, didn't "sit right with my spirit," adding that he hoped Lamar, who he describes as "one of the greatest motherfucker's to ever touch a fuckin' microphone," wasn't hurt by his words.

"If he did, my n****, I got my chin out. Take your best shot, I'ma take that shit on the chin boy, do what you do. All good. It's love," he said.

Cole was initially mocked by fans for backing down, but they have since praised him for stepping out of the situation before the beef intensified.

Representatives for Lamar and Cole did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Future and Metro Boomin stirred more trouble with 'We Still Don't Trust You'

On April 12, Future and Metro Boomin released their second collaborative album, "We Still Don't Trust You." While neither rapper directly dissed Drake, they enlisted The Weeknd and A$AP Rocky to do their bidding. Ross and Cole also appear on the album but don't diss Drake.

In the track "All To Myself," The Weeknd references declining to sign with Drake's OVO label, which has led to a frostiness between the two Canadian stars.

"They could never diss my brothers, baby / When they got leaks in they operation / I thank God that I never signed my life away / And we never do the big talk / They shooters makin TikToks / Got us laughin in the Lambo," The Weeknd rapped.

On the track "Show of Hands," Rocky references the rumor that he slept with Sophie Brussaux , the mother of Drake's child Adonis, before the "God's Plan" rapper.

"N****s in they feelings over women, what, you hurt or something? / I smash before you birthed, son, Flacko hit it first, son," Rocky rapped.

Rocky and Drake were also friends until the "Fuckin' Problems" rapper began to date Rihanna, who had an on-again-off-again relationship with Drake.

On the "For All the Dogs" track "Fear of Heights," Drake disses both stars, saying sex with Rihanna was "average" and that Rocky is now stuck with her since they have children together.

A diss track from Drake appeared online – but fans first thought it was AI-generated

On April 13, after the release of "We Still Don't Trust You," a diss track surfaced on social media that appeared to have been recorded by Drake.

At first, some fans were convinced that the song "Push Ups" was another fake AI Drake track .

Drake appeared to allude to the track being genuine when he shared an Instagram story post of a scene from "Kill Bill," where multiple enemies with swords surround Uma Thurman's character, The Bride.

Although Drake spends most of the four-minute track dissing Lamar, there are a few shots fired at The Weeknd, Ross, Cole, Future, and Metro Boomin.

Drake mocked Lamar's latest album, "Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers," his appearances on Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift's pop songs, and suggested that Lamar's former label, Top Dawg Entertainment, took 50% of profits from the "Humble" rapper's songs.

"How the fuck you big steppin with a size 7 mens on? / Your last one bricked, you really not on shit," Drake rapped. "Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty / Then we need a verse for the Swifties / Top say drop, you better drop and give him 50."

Drake also rapped that SZA, Travis Scott, and 21 Savage were bigger names in the hip-hop world than Lamar.

Later in the track, Drake references Cole's diss track and apology.

"And that fuckin' song y'all got is not starting beef with us / This shit brewin' in a pot, now I'm heating up / I don't care what Cole think, that Dot shit was weak as fuck," Drake rapped.

Later in the track, Drake raps that he gave Future his first No. 1 hit, referring to Drake's 2021 song "Way 2 Sexy," which he features on. Drake also says The Weeknd wastes his money, and Metro Boomin should "shut your ho ass up and make some drums, n****."

Taking aim at Ross, he says the 48-year-old rapper is too old to join the rap beef and owes his chart success to him. Drake also appears to reference Ross' friendship with Diddy, who was accused of sexual misconduct by four people in the last year.

"Spend that lil' check you got and stay up out my business / Worry 'bout whatever goin' on with you and…," Drake says, trailing off at the end.

Rocky was the only one spared from the track.

Ross quickly recorded and released a response, "Champagne Moments," where he calls Drake a "white boy," claims the rapper got a nose job, and stole his flow from Lil Wayne. Ross also repeats the ghostwriter allegations, and has continued to make fun of Drake's nose on social media.

On April 14, Drake shared a text message with his mother in which she asked about the nose job rumor. Drake responded in the message that Ross is just "angry and racist" and he'll "handle it," which may mean their personal feud will continue.

Drake officially released "Push Ups" and another track aimed at Lamar

On April 19, a week after the leak, Drake officially released "Push Ups" alongside a new diss track directed at Lamar called "Taylor Made Freestyle."

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In the latter track, Drake taunts Lamar to respond to "Push Ups," mocks Lamar's complex rap verses, and says the rapper is a puppet of the industry and Swift.

For the track, Drake used AI to generate the voices of the late Tupac Shakur, widely considered one of the greatest rappers of all time, and Snoop Dogg, making it sound like they rapped the first two verses.

Drake's use of Tupac may be a reference to Lamar's track "Mortal Man," from his 2015 album "To Pimp a Butterfly." At the end of the track, Lamar samples a 1994 Tupac interview to simulate a conversation between the two rappers.

Some fans criticized the use of AI in "Taylor Made Freestyle" particularly as Tupac was unable to consent.

Snoop responded to the song on April 20 in a jokey Instagram video where he reacts to people messaging him about Drake using his voice.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by snoopdogg (@snoopdogg)

"They did what? When? How? Are you sure?" he says. "I'm going back to bed. Good night."

On April 24, Billboard reported that Tupac's estate had sent a cease-and-desist letter to Drake for using his voice.

"The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac's voice and personality," the estate's lawyer Howard King said. "Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac's publicity and the estate's legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use."

Two days later, Drake removed the song from social media and streaming platforms, though copies of the song are still available online.

Lamar spelled out the things he hates about Drake in the song "Euphoria"

On April 30, Lamar released "Euphoria," a damning six-minute response to Drake.

In the track, Lamar calls Drake a "scam artist," "a master manipulator and habitual liar," mocks the Canadian rapper for imitating Black American culture, and claims that the "One Dance" artist has 20 ghostwriters. Lamar also says he is a better father than Drake.

Halfway through the track, Lamar raps: "I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress / I hate the way that you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it's gon' be direct / We hate the bitches you fuck, 'cause they confuse themself with real women."

'Fans also believe the lyrics "have you ever paid five hundred thou' like to an open case?" refer to Drake paying 532,000 New Zealand dollars in 2019 to a woman who accused him of sexual assault. Drake denied the claim at the time.

Later in the track, Lamar hits out at Drake's use of AI in "Taylor Made Freestyle."

"I'd rather do that than let a Canadian n**** make Pac turn in his grave," Lamar raps, later adding. "Am I battlin' ghost or AI?"

Lamar also implies that Drake sent a cease-and-desist letter to get "Like That," the song that reignited the beef, removed.

"Try cease and desist on the 'Like That' record? / Ho, what? You ain't like that record?" Lamar raps on the track.

In response to the song, Drake continued to taunt Lamar by posting a clip from "10 Things I Hate About You" on his Instagram story.

Lamar warned Drake about enemies in his own entourage in his latest track, "6:16 in LA"

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kendrick Lamar (@kendricklamar)

"6:16 in LA," released May 3, is a shorter track than "Euphoria" and only features one verse.

Lamar begins the verse rapping about his success before turning his attention to Drake. Instead of insulting Drake, Lamar claims that the "Push Ups" rapper's circle has been feeding him lies, leaking information about him, and hoping for his downfall.

"Have you ever thought that OVO was workin' for me? / Fake bully, I hate bullies, you must be a terrible person / Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it," Lamar raps.

Later, he continues: "A hunnid n***** that you got on salary, and twenty of 'em want you as a casualty / And one of them is actually, next to you / And two of them is practically tied to your lifestyle, just don't got the audacity to tell you."

Fans believe Lamar's lyric, "It was fun until you start to put money in the streets / Then lost money, 'cause they came back with no receipts," implies that Drake tried to pay for dirt on the "DNA" rapper.

Later in the track, Lamar also calls out Drake for "playin' dirty" in his feuds by enlisting the help of Twitter bots and celebrities like Zack Bia to stir public opinion against his enemies.

"But your reality can't hide behind Wi-Fi / Your lil' memes is losing steam, they figured you out," Lamar added.

The diss track's layers go beyond the lyrics, as fans have been analyzing the cover art, the track's title, and even the producers. "6:16" was Tupac's birthday, but it is also Father's Day, which relates to Lamar's taunts about Drake's parenting skills. "6:16 in LA" also parodies Drake's song titles, which often feature location names and timestamps.

The song is co-produced by Jack Antonoff, Swift's longtime producer and friend, which is likely aimed at Drake's Taylor Swift disses.

Meanwhile, the cover art features a black leather glove with a Maybach logo on it. The black leather glove could refer to Drake's 2020 song "Toosie Slide," where the rapper compares himself to Michael Jackson in the line "Black leather glove, no sequins."

Meanwhile, the logo could refer to Rick Ross' music label, Maybach Music Group.

Drake ramped things up in "Family Matters," which he dropped alongside a music video

On May 3, Drake released "Family Matters," a seven-and-a-half-minute response to Lamar's back-to-back diss tracks, which appears to respond to some of "Euphoria," firstly Lamar's decision to question Drake's quality as a father.

"You mentioned my seed, now deal with his dad/I gotta go bad, I gotta go bad," Drake rapped in the first few lines of the track.

Later, he takes shots at Lamar's son, Enoch: "Why you never hold your son and tell him say cheese / We could have left the kids out of this don't blame me."

"I heard that one of them little kids might be Dave Free," Drake also raps, suggesting that one of Lamar's two children he shares with his longtime partner was fathered by one of Lamar's creative partners.

Drake ramps things up toward the song's end when he makes the unfounded claim that Lamar has domestically abused a partner. "They hired a crisis management team/To clean up the fact that you beat on your queen," he raps, "The picture you painted ain't what it seems."

On the track, Drake also addresses the cease-and-desist he was sent over "Taylor Made Freestyle," rapping that Lamar "begged" the family of Shakur to take legal action and have the song taken down.

At the song's close, he brings it back to their respective children and takes one final swipe at his opponent, rapping: "Our sons should go play at the park / Two light-skinned kids, that shit would be cute / Unless you don't want to be seen with anyone that isn't Blacker than you."

Drake also dropped a music video alongside the song, which shows a red minivan, similar to that on the cover of Lamar's "good kid, m.A.A.d city" being driven across the border to Canada and destroyed. Later in the video, Drake is shown having dinner at the same Chinese restaurant Lamar rapped about in "Euphoria."

Minutes later, Lamar responded, directly addressing Drake's son and mom on "Meet the Grahams"

Lamar's "Meet the Grahams" arrived minutes after Drake's "Family Matters" dropped and saw the rapper directly address each member of Drake's family.

"Dear Adonis, I'm sorry that that man is your father, let me be honest / It takes a man to be a man, your dad is not responsive," he begins the track. "I look at him and wish your grandpa woulda wore a condom / I'm sorry that you gotta grow up and then stand behind him."

In the second verse, Lamar turns his attention to Drake's mom and dad, rapping that the pair "gave birth to a master manipulator."

"You raised a horrible fuckin' person, the nerve of you, Dennis," the track continues. "Sandra, sit down, what I'm about to say is heavy, now listen/ Mm-mm, your son's a sick man with sick thoughts."

Another verse, addressed to a "baby girl," implies that Drake has fathered a second child beyond his son that he has kept secret, while the final verse brings things back to Drake himself, where Lamar justifies taking such personal shots at his rival.

"Dear Aubrey, I know you probably thinkin' I wanted to crash your party/ But truthfully, I don't have a hatin' bone in my body/ This supposed to be a good exhibition within the game/ But you fucked up the moment you called out my family's name."

Lamar refuses to let Drake breathe and releases yet another track, "Not Like Us"

In "Not Like Us," Lamar appears to directly respond to Drake's "Family Matters" diss, referencing the track's title in the song lyrics. "The family matter, and the truth of the matter/It was God's plan to show you're the liar," Lamar raps, also giving a nod to Drake's 2018 track "God's Plan." The art for the song is an aerial view of Drake's mansion near Toronto, Variety reported.

In the first half of the track, Kenny claims that Oakland — Tupac's home city — would take issue with Drake's previous use of Pac's voice in "Taylor Made Freestyle." Lamar then says he believes a concert in Oakland would be Drake's "last stop." Lamar also says Drake is a "colonizer" and that he got his "street cred" with the help of other rappers, including Future, Lil Baby, 21 Savage, Young Thug, Quavo, and 2Chainz.

Lamar also made the unsubstantiated claim that Drake and his entourage are pedophiles.

"Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles," Lamar rapped, referring to Drake's 2021 album. "To any bitch that talk to him and they in love / Just make sure you hide your lil' sister from him."

After this track, many hip-hop fans declared Lamar the winner of the rap beef since he released a "club banger"-style song, which is typically Drake's specialty. Videos on social media have been shared of the track being played at clubs and sports stadiums over the weekend after its release.

Drake responds to Lamar's accusations in "The Heart Part 6"

On May 5, Drake released a response to "Not Like Us" and "Meet the Grahams" in the form "The Heart Part 6." The title is a reference to Lamar's "The Heart" song series. The song denies many of Lamar's claims. Drake raps that the people feeding Lamar information about him are "all clowns" and says that Lamar was purposefully given false information about him secretly fathering an 11-year-old daughter. In "Meet the Grahams" Lamar sings about a "baby girl" that he says Drake abandons. "We plotted for a week and then we fed you the information / A daughter that's 11 years old, I bet he takes it / I thought about giving a fake name and a destination / but you so thirsty you not concerned with investigation," Drake raps in his response.

Later in the verse, Drake denied the pedophile claims.

"Only fuckin' with Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns, I'd never look twice at no teenager," he rapped, referring to the rumor that Drake's friendship with "Stranger Things" star Millie Bobby Brown when she was a child was inappropriate.

He rapped later: "If I was fucking young girls, I promise I'd have been arrested / I'm way too famous for this shit you just suggested."

Metro Boomin' re-enters the feud

best verse over this gets a free beat just upload your song and hashtag #bbldrizzybeatgiveaway https://t.co/YDULmWYm0M — Metro Boomin (@MetroBoomin) May 5, 2024

Last we heard of Metro Boomin, Drake told him to "shut your ho ass up and make some drums," and that's just what he did.

On May 5, Metro Boomin posted a track on X called "BBL Drizzy BPM 150" and told his fans that the rapper who has the "best verse over this gets a free beat."

The track samples an AI-generated parody song of the same name by comedian King Willonius , and the title refers to Ross' nickname for Drake because of the "Hotline Bling" rapper's alleged cosmetic surgeries.

Hip-hop fans from around the world quickly jumped into the competition, and soon disses in multiple different languages were shared on the internet.

However, a day later, social media users shared screenshots of old X posts that they claimed were by Metro Boomin, in which the rapper appeared to joke about underage girls. Despite the posts not being verified, fans turned against the rapper, and "#MetroGroomin" started trending.

Representatives for Metro Boomin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

A security guard outside Drake's mansion is injured, and two people try to break into the home

On May 7, multiple outlets reported that there was a drive-by shooting outside Drake's mansion in Toronto.

Canadian publication CBC reported, citing Toronto police inspector Paul Krawczyk, that a security guard was shot and seriously injured outside Drake's mansion at Park Lane Circle. Krawczyk told CBC that the incident occurred shortly after 2 a.m. ET and the attack involved a vehicle but did not say it was a drive-by shooting.

CBC said, citing a police source, that the security guard was taken to the hospital for surgery after he suffered a gunshot wound to the upper chest.

On May 8, CNN reported a person tried to enter Drake's mansion a day after the shooting.

Ashley Visser, a media relations officer for the Toronto Police Department, told CNN in a statement that officers apprehended the person under Ontario's Mental Health Act. The act allows officers to take a person they believe to be suffering from a mental disorder into custody to give them medical assistance.

TMZ reported on Thursday, citing the Toronto Police Service, that a second person tried to enter Drake's property around 3:30 p.m. ET. In their report, TMZ said the person was taken to the hospital after they got into an altercation with security before cops arrived.

Neither of these incidents was linked to the rap beef by officers, but tensions are high since they all occurred after the release of "Not Like Us."

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The Game Confirms New Music From Kendrick Lamar Is On The Way

The Game knows more about new music from Kendrick Lamar than we do. He did not hesitate to let us know.

It has been 4 long years since Kendrick Lamar has dropped an album. At this point in his career, it is no surprise when it comes to K-Dot’s time lapses between albums. His previous release, DAMN, is his fourth full-length release since his Section. 80 debut in 2011. He followed that with his major-label debut, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City a year later. That would be the last time K Dot dropped projects in consecutive years.

The time lapses between projects are something that TDE has adopted with each artist. One can speculate that K Dot would have dropped a project last year, but it was not the most opportune time.

According to The Game, 2021 is the return of King Kendrick Lamar. He recently took to IG live to commend J. Cole’s rapping on The Off-Season , feeling inspired and K. Dot’s upcoming release.

“I talked to Top Dawg, says The Compton rapper. “You know, he told me Kendrick ’bout to hit ni**as with some sh*t real soon and sh*t. So, you know, who knows how real soon that it but if Kendrick is working, that sh*t is always major. “That’s my lil ni**a. Love that ni**a to death.”

He proceeds to say the entire TDE label is family. In addition to Kendrick Lamar, the roster includes SZA, Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Isaiah Rashad, Ab-Soul, Reason, SiR, and Lance Skiiiwalker.

While The Game’s message did not have a timeline, it is great to hear Kendrick is looking to make a return. Don’t hold your breathe because we don’t know “how real soon that is.”

The Game says he’s inspired to drop new music & says he heard Kendrick Lamar is dropping soon 👀 pic.twitter.com/Px6IY4RtAt — 2Cool2Blog (@2Cool2BIog) May 31, 2021

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Why is Kendrick Lamar called K. Dot? Origins of the rapper's famous moniker explored

A merican rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar, who is currently trending for his ongoing feud with longtime rival and Canadian rapper, singer, and actor Drake, is also known by his former stage name K. Dot.

When Lamar began his career in freestyling and battle rapping while in high school, he adopted the name K. Dot, which he used professionally until 2009. Under this moniker, he released various mixtapes including Konkrete Jungle Muzik .

Following that, he changed his name back to Kendrick Lamar to remove the distraction surrounding his identity, and to let people know who he is as a person and what he represents, as per his past interview with Hard Knock TV.

Kendrick Lamar's K. Dot stage name was part of his "prepping" phase

In 2003, when Kendrick Lamar Duckworth began his hip-hop career as a senior in Compton's Centennial High School, he also started using the stage name K. Dot and made a name for himself in South Central Los Angeles by freestyling, battle rapping, and creating mixtapes.

In November 2017, he explained the origins of the name, during an interview with Jinx as part of ComplexCon alongside fellow guest and former NBA star, Kobe Bryant.

"K. Dot, this was me prepping myself, as far as the lyrical ability, and being able to go in the studio and say, 'You know what, I want to be the best wordsmith, anyone who gets on this track, I have to annihilate them however that is -- whether that's through rhyme schemes, whether it's through metaphors, punchlines [or] wordplay,'" Kendrick Lamar stated back then."

The Pulitzer Prize winner further continued by explaining how he later transitioned to Kendrick Lamar and his other alias Kung-Fu Kenny. He added:

"I didn't have the actual technique of songwriting then. This is the transition where [I become] Kendrick Lamar and Kung-Fu Kenny. I look at Kung-Fu Kenny as a master of the craft now. Now I have the ability to make songs and still have the wordsmith technique, intertwine it, and have a composed mentality on how to approach music."

The Poetic Justice hitmaker mentioned that as K. Dot, he was a novice, busy learning the art of music creation, and only interacted with "people in the studio" and his "homies." However, as Kendrick Lamar or Kung-Fu Kenny, he now connects with "people around the world, universally."

In an earlier interview with Hard Knock TV in 2011, the rapper explained why he changed back to his birth name in 2009 following the release of his mixtape C4 . Around the same time, he also launched an EP with his original name.

"The name change was just me basically developing myself. When people heard the name K. Dot, they were like, ‘The kid is dope, he can rap; but who is he?' That went on for years -- just another kid in the streets who can rap good, right? So, I was like, ‘You know what? I want people to know who I am as a person and what I represent'," he noted.

He also told Variety in 2017 that his name change from K. Dot to Kendrick Lamar helped him discover his true "voice" as a musician. He also stated that he should have made the move two or three years before he did.

The PGLang founder explained that rather than rushing to get signed and be commercially successful, he should have "stuck to the script and continued to develop," and not hindered his "growth."

Notably, the multiple-time Grammy winner got his original name from singer-songwriter Eddie Kendricks, who was the co-founder of the 1960s R&B group The Temptation, as per his 2013 interview with Arsenio Hall.

In 2017, he honored his family name Duckworth in the song with the same name, which was part of the studio album DAMN .

Besides his professional monikers, Lamar is also known as 'Man Man' among his family and friends. He once told Rolling Stone during an interview that his family gave him the unusual nickname to "toughen" him up, and get him ready for the real world and the "responsibility my fans put upon me."

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Kendrick Lamar Has Already Started His Next Album Says Sounwave: ‘There’s No Breaks’

Kendrick Lamar is already working on his sixth studio album, according to one of his go-to producers.

Sounwave — who has production on 13 out of the 16 songs on Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers — recently told Complex work has already started on K. Dot’s next LP. Kendrick’s latest album dropped less than three months ago, but Sounwave says they always move straight onto the next project, which has been the way they’ve worked since 2009.

“Oh, we always start, immediately after,” he revealed. “Like, we’re starting on the next one now. That’s never going to change, all the way from the Kendrick Lamar EP. The next day, we started on Section.80. It’s just the ideas never stopped. That’s one of the main reasons I go on tour with him, is to create the next album.

“We can’t skip a beat. We have to just keep it going. There’s no breaks. There’s no such thing as a vacation when you’re doing what you love. Everything you do is what you love to do, so you’re excited.”

Sounwave — who’s also responsible for Kendrick hits such as “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” “King Kunta” and “ELEMENT.” — acknowledged their process might not always align with family life, but their love of creating music keeps them coming back.

“Your family might feel a different way about it, but it’s always like, what’s next?” he admitted. “We’re like kids in a candy shop. Personally, once I release an album like this, I don’t go back to it for a while, because I lived it so much. It’s like, it’s not for me anymore. It’s time for me to clear my head, so the best thing to do is to think about the next project.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sounwave (@sounwave)

Sounwave also spoke about Kendrick Lamar going through a lot during the making of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers in lockdown, while revealing there could have been three different albums.

“For Kendrick, I don’t know. I know he went through a lot, too,” he said. “If you want to say this, we could do three albums of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. There would be similar content, but sonically, it’d be completely different. Just because our emotions constantly keep changing—things keep happening in the world which changes this.

“Then, all of a sudden you don’t feel that way any more. So it’s constantly changing to the point where you look up and like, ‘Oh, shoot, this is a completely different album.'”

related news

Kendrick Lamar Tells 12-Year-Old Reporter How He Wants His Legacy To Be Remembered

July 28, 2022

In a separate interview with GQ also published on Tuesday (August 2), Sounwave discussed the “tough” creative process behind Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and recalled the making of “We Cry Together.”

“I just remember one day, it was probably 2019, where he just had this scratch idea of a couple arguing,” the producer said. “He didn’t have all the words down—he just had the male’s verse and then mumbles of the lady’s part.

“I come in one day and he had pitched his voice up to sound like a girl and he was literally arguing with himself. I remember my mouth just dropped—‘Do we drop it like this with just your voice?’ He was like, ‘Nah, we’ve gotta find someone who can actually nail this moment.’”

He added: “I remember Dave Free bringing the idea of [Taylour] Paige. We all lit up. ‘Let’s give it a shot!’ She came in, instantly added her two cents to it, added everything you hear now. She almost one-taked it! That was one of the songs that we knew was staying, for sure.”

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K-Pop Summer 2024 Guide: ATEEZ, IU, TXT & More Live In Concert & On Tour

Whether you want to have your Head in the Clouds, go over the moon at KCON or head Towards the Light, plan out your summer with these K-pop events and tours featuring TWICE, LE SSERAFIM, Stray Kids and more.

2024 has had a handful of memorable K-pop moments in North America so far. From boy group ONEUS's La Dolce Vita tour to TWICE 's one-night-only show at Las Vegas' Allegiant Stadium in March, the industry has kept a steady flow of entertainment for lovers of Korean music and culture. Last month, ATEEZ , LE SSERAFIM , and indie band The Rose also left their mark at Coachella Festival in California, proving that K-pop acts at major festivals are a rising trend.

With summer right around the corner, even more tours, festivals, and conventions are set to pop up across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. From mid-May to September, whether on weekdays or weekends, there will always be something to do or someone to see. Among the most-awaited events are singer IU 's first world tour and ATEEZ's massive trek in July, as well as Stray Kids , IVE , and VCHA 's performances at Chicago's Lollapalooza Festival.

To help you enjoy the most out of this busy season, GRAMMY.com assembled a list of all the K-pop concerts and events happening in the next few months below.

CIX: 0 or 1 in North America

Boy group CIX will be back in North America for their third tour this May. Named after single album 0 or 1 , the stint will cover eight cities across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, starting in Chicago, IL and wrapping it up in Los Angeles, CA. The quintet will likely perform hits like "Cinema" and "Movie Star," as well as their latest single, "Lovers or Enemies," and celebrate their upcoming fifth anniversary.

Head in the Clouds Festival

Forest Hills, New York

Following the success of last year's edition in Queens, New York, Head in the Clouds Festival returns to the big apple in 2024. In their mission to spread Asian diaspora talent, the lineup for this year enlists (G)I-DLE to headline on Saturday and singer BIBI on Sunday, along other names like ATARASHII GAKKO! and Joji. Korean acts Balming Tiger, Wave to Earth, and newcomer girl group Young Posse will also join them. HITC Festival is usually based in Los Angeles, but this year's L.A. edition has yet to be announced.

BM (KARD): After the After Party Tour

Hailing from co-ed group KARD , Korean-American singer BM will kick off his first U.S. solo tour in mid-May. After the After Party Tour was inspired by the track "ATAP (After the After Party)," off his December single album, Lowkey . BM will perform in six cities across the country, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. He also teased an EP soon, and stated that he will be "taking new music on this tour."

P1Harmony: P1ustage H : UTOP1A Tour

May 14 - Jun. 16

Boy band P1Harmony is also returning to North America with their third tour, P1ustage H: UTOP1A. Beginning in Houston, TX, on May 14, it will follow with shows in Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and more — including a prestigious performance on June 8 at New York City's Governors Ball Music Festival 2024 . The sextet released their first studio album, Killin' It , in February of this year.

Tomorrow X Together (TXT): ACT : PROMISE World Tour

May 14 - Jun. 8

A TXT tour in the U.S. has become an annual event: following 2022's ACT : LOVESICK and 2023's ACT : SWEET MIRAGE, 2024 welcomes ACT : PROMISE. Featuring 11 shows across the country, the boy group will play in Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and more. They will also perform two nights at New York's legendary Madison Square Garden before heading to the Japanese leg of the tour in July.

Wheein (MAMAMOO): Whee In The Mood [Beyond] World Tour

May 17 - Jun. 4

Powerhouse vocalists MAMAMOO hit stateside last year with their MY CON World Tour, a first for the group. Now, it's member Wheein's turn to celebrate her solo career with Whee In The Mood [Beyond] World Tour, inspired by her first LP, 2023's In The Mood . After a slew of shows in Asia and Europe, the singer will head to San Francisco, CA, for the first out of eight concerts in the U.S. Other cities include Dallas, Orlando, Los Angeles, and New York.

RIIZE: RIIZING Day Fan-Con World Tour

Los Angeles, California

SM Entertainment's freshest rookies RIIZE announced their first fan-con, RIIZING Day, to take place from May to August in various cities across the globe. After playing in Seoul, Tokyo, and Mexico City, the boyband will come to Los Angeles for a single performance at the Peacock Theater on May 20. RIIZE are expected to play their compact yet dynamic discography, including singles "Get A Guitar," "Talk Saxy," and "Impossible."

Purple Kiss: 2024 BXX Tour

June 2 - July 2

It's not even been a year since Purple Kiss toured the U.S. with their The Festa Tour in fall 2023, but they're already gearing to come back. Starting June 2 in Oceanside, CA, the 2024 BXX Tour will take the girl group to seven cities in the U.S. and nine cities in Canada, closing it off in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on July 2. This is a big chance for fans who missed their performances last year, or simply to those who want to see singles like "Zombie" and "Sweet Juice" live again.

ITZY: Born to Be World Tour

Girl group ITZY has spent the majority of 2024 bringing their second world tour, Born to Be, across Oceania, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. In June, they will finally step in North America for a 10-stop stint, including cities like Seattle, Los Angeles, Newark, Fairfax, Toronto, and more. Despite featuring only four out of five members while vocalist Lia is currently on hiatus due to health reasons, they promise to set the stages on fire with their high-energy discography.

VERIVERY: Go On Fan-meeting Tour

Starting June 14, boyband VERIVERY will kick off their Go On Fan-meeting Tour in New York at Brooklyn Steel. Then, they will head to Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Fort Worth, and finally Los Angeles for a last performance at Vermont Hollywood. The seven-member group is currently a quartet, as member Dongheon is currently enlisted in the military, and members Minchan and Hoyoung are on hiatus due to health concerns. VERIVERY's latest release was 2023's EP, Liminality .

A.C.E: 2024 REWIND_US U.S. Tour

Jun. 19 - July 18

February marked the much-anticipated comeback of boy group A.C.E with the EP My Girl: My Choice . It was their first release in three years, and to rejoice further, the quintet announced an extensive 14-date tour throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Starting June 19 in Madison, WI and closing off on July 18 in San Juan, PR, A.C.E will also perform in Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, and more.

HYO: Milwaukee Summerfest

Milwaukee, WI

HYO , also known as Hyoyeon from Girls' Generation, will be showcasing her DJ chops on June 28 at Milwaukee Summerfest. The performance will happen just months after HYO held her 2024 Spring U.S. Tour, Cherry Blossom, which spanned seven cities across the country. In the setlist, fans can expect hits like "Dessert" and "Deep," but also some innovative remixes of other artists' songs, like GALA's "Freed From Desire" and Girls' Generation's "Gee."

AB6IX: Find You Fan Concert Tour

Another boy group to embark on a North American tour this year, AB6IX will bring their Find You Fan Concert across nine stops in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Starting off in the cities of Toronto and Montreal, they will then head to New York, Mexico City, Miami, Denver, and more, before wrapping it up in Los Angeles. The tour title was inspired by their latest release, January's EP The Future is Ours: Found .

ATEEZ: Towards the Light: Will to Power 2024 World Tour

Jul. 14 - Aug. 11

Performance kings ATEEZ never stop. After the release of their EP, Golden Hour: Part. 1 on May 31, the eight-member group will head to North America for their Towards the Light: Will to Power 2024 World Tour. Kicking off on July 14 in Tacoma, Washington, the boyband will also play in the cities of Los Angeles, Arlington, Washington, D.C., Toronto, New York, and more. The tour supports ATEEZ's December 2023 LP, The World EP.Fin: Will , but hopefully the setlist will include surprises as new music comes out.

IU: HEREH World Tour

Jul. 15 - Aug. 2

One of the most important artists to come from South Korea, IU (born Lee Ji-eun) has been shaping the country's music industry since 2008 with her unique voice, sensitive songwriting, and sharp mind. Given her journey, it's almost absurd that her first world tour is only happening in 2024 — but better late than never. After stops in Asia and Europe, IU will head to the U.S. for six sold-out concerts, beginning on July 15 at Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, and concluding on August 2 at Kia Forum in Los Angeles, CA.

The Boyz: Zeneration II World Tour

Following their 2023 Zeneration Tour, which featured 24 stops across Asia, 11-member group The Boyz are now bringing its sequel worldwide. After a 3-day July stint in Seoul, South Korea, the Zeneration II tour will head to the U.S. for five shows in New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Jose. Throughout August, The Boyz will segue onto the Asian leg of the tour, wrapping it up with a few European dates in September.

KCON Los Angeles 2024

Known as the largest Korean culture and music festival in North America, KCON has a decade-long legacy of serving as a bridge for "all things Hallyu." Held at the Los Angeles Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena, the festival includes a two-night concert, fan signings, food and merch stalls, panels with professionals in the industry, and many other attractions. KCON hasn't announced its official lineup yet, but attendees can expect it to maintain the same excellence of past years.

Secret Number: The 1st U.S. Tour 2024 Unlock

Jul. 26 - Aug. 10

Girl group Secret Number debuted amidst the chaos of 2020's COVID-19 pandemic, therefore falling short of live experiences with their fans. As they enter their fourth year together, they will finally meet North American fans with their 2024 Unlock tour this summer. Kicking off on July 26 in Chicago, the sextet will then head to Minneapolis, Charlotte, Houston, Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, and Los Angeles for a final show on August 10.

Stray Kids, IVE, VCHA: Lollapalooza Chicago 2024

K-pop's presence on Lollapalooza continues to expand. This year, Stray Kids is set to headline on Friday, Aug. 2, alongside singer SZA . It's the boyband's second appearance at the festival, following their 2023 show at Lollapalooza Paris. On that same day, U.S.-based, K-pop-trained girl group VCHA, formed by JYP Entertainment in partnership with Republic Records, will also make their first performance at the festival. To close it off, Saturday will feature the captivating girl group IVE.

I.M (Monsta X): Off The Beat 2024 World Tour

Monsta X 's maknae (youngest member) I.M has been building a prolific solo career while his teammates are enlisted in the military. Accompanying his third EP, Off The Beat , the singer announced an eponymous world tour, featuring 19 stops in Asia, North America, and Europe. He will play seven dates In the U.S. and two in Canada, including New York, Boston, Toronto, and more.

ARTMS: 2024 Moonshot World Tour

Aug. 16 - Sept. 10

Formed by five LOONA members (Kim Lip, Choerry, JinSoul, HaSeul, and HeeJin), girl group ARTMS was one of 2023's most-awaited debuts. Their first studio album, Devine All Love & Live , is set to drop on May 31, and the quintet will celebrate with a string of concerts across South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. Starting August 16 in New York, the tour will cross Atlanta, Orlando, Los Angeles, and more cities before wrapping up on September 10 in Chicago.

11 Rookie K-Pop Acts To Know In 2024: NCT Wish, RIIZE, Kiss Of Life & More

Photos: KQ Entertainment; KATO SHUMPEI; Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images; Medios y Media/Getty Images; Presley Ann/Getty Images for Coachella; Lauren Kim

Leap Into AAPI Month 2024 With A Playlist Featuring Laufey, Diljit Dosanjh, & Peggy Gou

Celebrate AAPI artists this May with a genre-spanning playlist spotlighting festival headliners and up-and-coming musicians. From Korean hip-hop to Icelandic jazz-pop, listen to some of the most exciting artists from the Asian diaspora.

With spring just around the corner, it’s time to welcome AAPI Month in full blossom. From rising musical artists to inspiring community leaders, it’s essential to recognize AAPI members of the artistic world and their achievements.

While AAPI Month is a U.S. holiday, the Recording Academy takes a global approach in celebrating artists and creators from across the Asian and Asian American diaspora. This aligns with the Recording Academy's growing mission to expand its reach on a global scale and celebrate international creators outside of the U.S.  

Musicians of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander heritage have not only helped establish the music industry, but have transformed it. From Diljit Dosanjh being the first artist to play a Coachella set entirely in Punjabi to Laufey winning a GRAMMY for her jazz-inspired pop, AAPI artists continue to influence music by both honoring tradition and reshaping modern standards.

It’s thrilling to see AAPI musicians continue to take centerstage — from Atarashi Gakko! to Tiger JK ’s memorable sets at Coachella, to surprise appearances from Olivia Rodrigo , Dominic Fike , and Towa Bird. As festival season gets underway, examples of the AAPI starpower from every corner of the world abound.

As one of many ways to celebrate AAPI Month, listen to the GRAMMY.com playlist below — as a reminder to give AAPI musicians not just their May flowers, but their flowers all year-round!

Photo: MORE VISION

Chung Ha Returns: On 'EENIE MEENIE,' The K-Pop Soloist Is Ready To Step Back Into The Spotlight

Chung Ha was one of K-pop’s most promising soloists, but decided to step back from the industry. Upon her return, Chung Ha wants to tell her fans "that they have the freedom to choose."

It takes courage to become a soloist in K-pop — a scene largely dominated by girl groups and boy groups of the most varied sizes — but more than that, it takes verve. Singer, dancer, and songwriter Chung Ha, 28 years old, knows it better than anyone.

Born in Seoul, South Korea but raised in Dallas, Texas, she first rose to stardom in 2016, after  returning to her home country and participating in Mnet’s trainee competition show "Produce 101." There, Chung Ha caught the eyes of judges and viewers alike for her sharp movements and innate charisma. She placed fourth on the finale, and became a member of I.O.I — the show’s resulting temporary girl group.

While I.O.I and its 11 members found great success, when the group disbanded in early 2017, Chung Ha decided to challenge herself further. In June of that year, she released her solo debut EP, Hands On Me . 

Soon, Chung Ha became one of K-pop’s most promising (and somewhat unexpected) soloists — not only did she prove to be an exceptional dancer, but a smooth vocalist as well, full of style and star power. On stage, she commands performances with surgical precision, yet flows with breathtaking grace. She proved her versatility with a string of captivating singles, like the ice-cold "Snapping" and the bewitching "Gotta Go," which reached No.1 on Billboard’s K-pop Hot 100 chart in 2019. Her first studio album, 2021’s Querencia , blended R&B, EDM, reggaeton and even bossa nova with finesse.

But amidst all the success, Chung Ha took a break. She decided not to renew the contract with her previous label, spent more than a year on a hiatus, and even considered abandoning the music industry, as revealed on the YouTube talk show "Gabee’s Rising Star "

Luckily, Chung Ha changed her mind. She signed with MORE VISION, a label founded by singer and rapper Jay Park, and will drop the single album EENIE MEENIE on March 11. 

GRAMMY.com caught up with Chung Ha via Zoom to learn more about her comeback — and to dive into her creative process, how she sees herself, and who she wants to be.

You spent more than a year on a hiatus, and even left your previous company. What made you sign with MORE VISION for this new phase of your career?

Jay [Park] reached out to me often. When I talked to the other co-workers at the company, their vision really aligned with mine. I think that was a crucial reason.

For example, I've never toured. I want to start out in small venues, and if I do have a chance I want to make it bigger. I want to work on more collaborations and try different genres of music like [on] "EENIE MEENIE," and they're aligned with me on that.

On "Gabee’s Rising Star," you said that you wanted to study abroad during your hiatus, and that being a celebrity is "just a job." What made you want to come back to music?

I was always interested in psychology. Working in this industry, it's a little chaotic, so I tried to maintain my mental health by [attending] counseling, and then I felt like I wanted to maintain my mental health on my own.

And growing up in Texas, I always had my Mexican friends with me, but I was the only one unable to understand Spanish. I was always interested, but [the break] felt like it was the right time to embrace Spanish more. I wanted to dive into the culture and the language, but at the end of the day, it was all about me maintaining my mental health because I wanted to be in this industry. Me wanting to explore Spanish because I wanted to engage more with my fans. I just realized, Oh, it was all about music. Okay. [ Laughs. ]

Since your last comeback, in what areas do you think you have improved or evolved?

Um… I don't know. I'm gonna need to have a real [live] stage for that. I think that's the kind of question I want to ask my fans to see what gradual changes that they notice, because for me, I feel like I'm still the same. But I want to tap myself [on the back] for trying new genres and being brave about getting out of my comfort zone.

What did you have in mind when you started producing this new album? What's the story behind it?

I was really confused. I was asking people, like, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what's next for me."I feel like I've tried different genres of music and different colors of myself, like "Bicycle," "Play," "Love U," and "Roller Coaster."

I didn't know what to do, so I decided to show both sides of myself. A new [side] with MORE VISION, and the one people are always eager to see, like [on] "Stay Tonight" and "Dream Of You." Those were some of the biggest [songs] that I saw people commenting on. So, the familiar side of me and a new side of me are both in the album, and I'm pretty confident [about it].

You collaborated with Hongjoong from ATEEZ in the lead track "EENIE MEENIE," which represents that new side of yourself. How was that experience?

I have followed ATEEZ since the beginning of their career. Their performance is so mind-blowing, they have that special energy that only they can give, so I was always inspired by them.

And then, on "EENIE MEENIE" there is a rap part, so when I heard the track I was like, Oh, I am not rapping . [ Laughs .] That's just too new for me. I sing-rap in "EENIE MEENIE," but that’s about it. So, I needed a real rapper and a real captain on my side and I thought Hongjoong was a perfect fit. After I heard his verse, it was so great, more than I ever expected. He definitely gave that final touch.

The other song on your album, "I’m Ready," represents your familiar side with driving house beats and a mesmerizing atmosphere, almost like a sequel to "Stay Tonight" and "Dream of You." As for the title, what are you ready for?

I guess I'm navigating through new things, and I don't know how it's gonna come out. [People] might say it's a failure, they might say it's a success, they might say I'm brave to challenge myself, but I'm just ready to face all that. 

Even though someone might say, "Oh, I don't think it's the right fit for Chung Ha" or "I liked the old Chung Ha better," I don't think I'm afraid of getting judged, or getting rates on anything. I'm just ready to be more adventurous. Being too nervous might drag you into this anxiety space, but just being nervous in general with music and releasing new things is what makes me keep going.

I think people need that nervous feeling, being out of their comfort zone. You never know how you're going to feel, how the outcome is going to be. 

Do you remember any specific experiences where you were trying something new and it turned out better than expected?

Oh, "Stay Tonight"was one of them. When I first heard the track, I was like, U m… this is too high. I don't know if K-pop lovers will like this song , because it was more [Western] pop than K-pop. It was right after I dropped "Snapping"and "Gotta Go," so I was like, Are my fans ready for this?  

But [I thought] hey, you know what, let's just have fun. Let's just try new things. Let's vogue. [ Laughs ] I've always wanted to vogue, so I did that, and it became one of my epic pieces of performance. It didn’t go big in the charts or anything, but it became a real standout from a more artistic point of view.

EENIE MEENIE represents a new start for you, and both songs in the album talk about trusting yourself and your choices. Since you participated in the songwriting, is that what you have been experiencing lately? How do you recognize what feels right for you?

I feel like you never know what's right, but for me, I decide [something] when it keeps on popping in my head. Like, I would just be calm and see where my mind goes and what my [fandom] HAART keeps on telling me. 

If your heart moves that way, I’d rather just do it and regret, than not do it and regret. That’s how I trust my instincts, listening to what I really want.

You mentioned that you see K-pop and Western pop as one. What do you think about the global growth of K-pop, and Western artists trying K-pop, or artists collaborating?

I think it's wonderful. I mean, the only difference is the culture and the language, and how we make our music with different rules and stuff. And it's really awesome [to see] other artists trying out Korean, trying out the marketing strategy of what we have always done. But it's the same with Korean artists, they try to go abroad and then try Western music.

Trying different cultures is getting more natural than splitting what's K-pop and what’s pop. I think it's all gathering into one because music is one, and we love music.

Is it easier for you to see everything as one because you are Korean, but you lived in America for so many years?

Yes, I think it was more natural for me to try different things. It was fun to get to know things like, Oh, this is Western style music, Western marketing strategy, or Western businesses, it goes on like this, and then Korean businesses go on like this . So it's all about learning.

You mentioned in an interview with Teen Vogue that you like to portray characters in your songs, but recently you have been telling your own story in them as well. How do you find the balance between those two possibilities?

I don't initially choose what to do before I hear the music. I hear it first, and then decide, like Oh, I want to share a story of mine, because I have this experience and my current state of mind is this, but sometimes it's just Oh, this is a new character I've never tried before. I want to be her, or I want to be him, or whatever. Let me try that out, let me see what it tastes like. [ Laughs. ] When new music comes to me, whatever character, whatever story comes up first, I would go with that.

And for this album, are you a character or are you portraying your life story?

I’m portraying my life story in both songs. I had a lot of choices to make throughout the beginning of my new career [after leaving my former company], like choosing a label, choosing a new logo, choosing songs, and other things, but in the end I just like what I like to do. 

I came back to the music industry, and I really want people to embrace whatever they want to do. To tell them that they have the freedom to choose more than predetermined answers. I wanted to encourage that.

In another moment of your interview on "Gabee’s Rising Star," you said "When people think of Chung Ha, all that comes to mind is ‘Gotta Go’."Do you still believe in that?

Yes, and no. But I’m very grateful, because that song is what elevated me to the next step, and it gave me the courage to try different genres of music. But "Stay Tonight" and other pieces of music also identify me in different ways.

Who is Chung Ha, then? How would you like to be recognized?

Definitely not "Gotta Go." [ Laughs. ] I'm not that person now. I'm just a girl who loves music, and I'm just grateful and thankful, always. As much as I was diligent before, I want to keep on doing that, and I want to meet my fans more.

As Chung Ha, I want to ask my fans who they think I am, because I try to be as authentic as possible with music and my personality. Also I'm an adventurous person. Love to challenge myself. And I’m ready to go.

It Goes To 11: Meet J.Fla's "Best Friend," Her Acoustic Taylor Guitar

Photos (clockwise, from top left): Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Coachella, Paras Griffin/Getty Images, Lufre, MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE RECORDING ACADEMY, Paras Griffin/Getty Images, JOHN SHEARER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE RECORDING ACADEMY, Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Listen: GRAMMY.com's Women's History Month 2024 Playlist: Female Empowerment Anthems From Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Jennie & More

This March, the Recording Academy celebrates Women's History Month with pride and joy. Press play on this official playlist that highlights uplifting songs from Taylor Swift, Victoria Monét, Anitta and more.

From commanding stages to blasting through stereos, countless women have globally graced the music industry with their creativity. And though they've long been underrepresented , tides are changing: in just the last few years, female musicians have been smashing records left and right, conquering top song and album charts and selling sold-out massive tours .

This year, Women's History Month follows a particularly historic 66th GRAMMY Awards , which reflected the upward swing of female musicians dominating music across the board. Along with spearheading the majority of the ceremony's performances, women scored bigtime in the General Field awards — with wins including Best New Artist , Record Of The Year , Song Of The Year , and Album Of The Year .

Female empowerment anthems, in particular, took home major GRAMMY gold. Miley Cyrus ' "Flowers" took home two awards , while Victoria Monét was crowned Best New Artist thanks to the success of her album Jaguar II and its hit single "On My Mama." As those two songs alone indicate, female empowerment takes many different shapes in music — whether it's moving on from a relationship by celebrating self-love or rediscovering identity through motherhood.

The recent successes of women in music is a testament to the trailblazing artists who have made space for themselves in a male-dominated industry — from the liberating female jazz revolution of the '20s to the riot grrl movement of the '90s. Across genres and decades, the classic female empowerment anthem has strikingly metamorphosed into diverse forms of defiance, confidence and resilience.

No matter how Women's History Month is celebrated, it's about women expressing themselves, wholeheartedly and artistically, and having the arena to do so . And in the month of March and beyond, women in the music industry deserve to be recognized not only for their talent, but ambition and perseverance — whether they're working behind the stage or front-and-center behind the mic.

From Aretha Franklin 's "RESPECT" to Beyoncé 's "Run the World (Girls)," there's no shortage of female empowerment anthems to celebrate women's accomplishments in the music industry. Listen to GRAMMY.com's 2024 Women's History Month playlist on streaming services below.

9 Ways Women Dominated The 2024 GRAMMYs

Photo: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

9 Essential K-Pop/Western Collabs: From BTS And Megan Thee Stallion, To IVE And Saweetie

From Jungkook and Usher's tribute to their shared musical idol, to BLACKPINK and Selena Gomez' sugary sweet collab, K-pop and Western artists of all genres are joining forces to create killer hits.

It’s impossible to ignore the growing global popularity of K-pop. Although Korean pop has been around for decades, the genre's meteoric worldwide success over the past 10 years is reminiscent of Beatlemania and the early 2000s American boy band craze. With a steady increase year-over-year in album sales and K-pop groups touring the U.S. and Europe, interest in K-pop shows no signs of slowing down .

Initially launched in South Korea as a music subgenre with Western pop, R&B and hip-hop influences in the '90s, the K-pop industry is valued at around $10 billion .

Given the worldwide appetite for K-pop, several Western musicians are keen to partner with K-pop acts crossing over into more international markets, often with songs sung partially or entirely in English. While K-pop artists do not need Western artists to be successful — BTS sold out London’s Wembley stadium in under 90 minutes back in 2019, and BLACKPINK made Coachella history twice with performances in 2019 and 2023 — K-pop's massive fanbase and multi-genre influence make it an ideal collaboration for everyone from rappers and singers to electronic DJs.

But don’t take our word for it. Here are nine of the most iconic K-Pop/Western collaborations (not in any order; they are all great songs!).

Usher and Jungkook - "Standing Next to You (Usher Remix)" (2024)

The maknae (the youngest member of the group) of global K-pop superstars BTS and the King of R&B are both having banner years: Jungkook released his debut solo album, and Usher just performed at the Super Bowl . 

The Bangtan Boys have cited Usher as a significant influence (even singing a callback to his 2001 hit "U Got It Bad" in their No. 1 song, "Butter"), so BTS fans were delighted when the Jungkook tapped Usher for a remix of "Standing Next to You." The song marks the fourth single from his Billboard 200 chart-topping debut album, Golden . 

Both singers count Michael Jackson as a major influence. In their collaboration video, Usher and Jungkook pay tribute to the King of Pop as they slide, pop, and lock across the slick floor of an abandoned warehouse. 

John Legend and Wendy of Red Velvet - "Written in the Stars" (2018)

R&B singer/pianist John Legend was the perfect choice for an R&B ballad with Wendy, the main vocalist of K-pop quintet Red Velvet. The final song on the five-track SM Station x 0 , a digital music project, "Written in the Stars," is a beautiful, mid-tempo love song. A bit of a departure from K-pop’s typical upbeat sound, Wendy and Legend are in perfect harmony over a warm yet melancholic rhythm.

As Red Velvet’s main vocalist, Wendy was the ideal voice for this collaboration. Additionally, she split her childhood between Canada and the U.S., and has been comfortable singing in English since Red Velvet debuted in 2014. This wasn't her first collab with a Western artist: In 2017, she released an English-language version of the pop ballad " Vente Pa’Ca " with Ricky Martin . 

BLACKPINK and Selena Gomez - "Ice Cream" (2020)

A powerhouse debut single, BLACKPINK collaborated with pop royalty Selena Gomez on the massive 2020 hit "Ice Cream."

An electropop-bubblegum fusion filled with dairy double entendres, "Ice Cream" was an enormous success for both Gomez and the BLACKPINK girls. The track peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has racked up nearly 900 million YouTube views to date. 

Written by a consortium of hitmakers, including Ariana Grande and BLACKPINK’s longtime songwriter and producer Teddy Park (a former K-pop idol himself), "Ice Cream" shows that YG Entertainment’s golden foursome and Gomez were the correct partnership for this track. The pop-trap bop marked the first time a K-pop girl group broke the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and immediately solidified BLACKPINK as global superstars. 

Snoop Dogg and Monsta X - "How We Do" (2022)

West Coast rap godfather Snoop Dogg has quietly become one of the go-to Western acts for K-pop collabs, working with Psy, BTS, Girls’ Generation and 2NE1. K-pop is the Dogg Father's "guilty pleasure, " and he performed at the Mnet Asian Music Awards with Dr. Dre in 2011. Without Snoop's love of K-pop, the world might not have gotten this fun and energetic collaboration with Snoop and Monsta X, a five-member boy group under Starship Entertainment.

The song appears in The Spongebob Movie: Sponge On The Run in a dance segment where Snoop, decked out in a pink and purple Western suit, is accompanied by zombie dancers. Though we do not see the members of Monsta X, their harmonious crooning is the perfect accent to Snoop Dogg’s trademark casual West Coast flow.

BTS and Steven Aoki - "MIC Drop (Steve Aoki remix)" (2017)

No K-pop list is complete with a nod to the magnificent seven, and "MIC Drop" is one of their catchiest Western collabs to date. 

"Mic Drop" is quintessential BTS: a nod to hip-hop with a heavy bass line and fun choreography. While the original version of "MIC Drop" is excellent, the remix with EDM superstar DJ Steve Aoki and rapper Desiigner cracked the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the first of many hits for the Bulletproof Boy Scouts. 

Released at a time when BTS were just starting their ascent to chart-topping Western dominance, the track's boastful lyrics and tension-building electro-trap production offered an excellent introduction to the group that would soon become international superstars. 

JYJ, Kanye West and Malik Yusef - "Ayyy Girl" (2010)

A truly deep K-pop cut, you’d be hard-pressed to find many people who know that Kanye West collaborated with a first-generation K-pop group over 13 years ago. Released as the lead single on JYJ’s English-language album The Beginning , West’s signature bravado and wordplay are on full display over a track that sounds like the Neptunes produced it.

The song garnered attention in the U.S., but after a string of bad luck (including a severely delayed U.S. visa process and issues with their management company, SM Entertainment), JYJ could not capitalize on their American success. The group continued to see success in Korea and Japan in the early 2010s but never made a splash in the Western market again.

IVE and Saweetie - "All Night" (2024)

A reimagining of Icona Pop’s 2013 song of the same name, "All Night," sees fourth-generation K-pop girl group IVE partner with rap’s resident glamor girl Saweetie for a funky, electronic-infused pop song that’s perfect for dancing from dusk till dawn. 

"All Night" is the first English song for the Starship Entertainment-backed group. Interestingly, none of the members of IVE have individual lines in the song, choosing instead to sing the lyrics in a six-part harmony. This choice is exciting but fun, giving listeners the feeling that they are more than welcome to sing along. 

The girl group embarked on their first 24-date world tour in January 2024, with stops in the U.S., Asia, Europe and South America. Given their quest for global dominance, there’s a good chance "All Night" won’t be IVE's last English-language release.

BTS and Megan Thee Stallion - "Butter (Remix)" (2021)

BTS’ "Butter" had already spent three weeks atop the Billboard charts and was declared the "song of the summer" when the group’s label announced Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion as the guest star for the song’s remix in late August 2021. The GRAMMY-nominated septet is no stranger to collaborating with Western musicians, having worked with Halsey , Jason Derulo, and Coldplay . 

Though only slightly altered from the original (Megan’s verse was added in place of the song’s second original verse, along with several ad-libs), the remix was praised by both fans and critics alike, catapulting the song’s return back to the No. 1. Although the collaborators did not release a new music video featuring the group and the self-proclaimed "Hot Girl Coach," three members of BTS’ "dance line" (members J-Hope , Jungkook and Jimin ) released a specially choreographed dance video . Additionally, Megan was a surprise guest during BTS’ record-breaking Permission to Dance LA concert in November of the same year.

LE SSERAFIM and Niles Rodgers - "Unforgiven" (2023)

GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Nile Rodgers ' first foray into K-pop was a partnership with LE SSERAFIM , a fourth-gen girl group from the same parent company behind BTS. "Unforgiven" was released earlier this year as the lead single from the group’s debut album of the same name. 

A darker take on the familiar K-pop formula with A Western feel and look (the young quintuplet dons cowboy hats, boots and bolo ties in the song’s accompanying music video), "Unforgiven" is about rebellion and being a fierce, strong and independent risk taker. That riskiness drew Rodgers' ear. 

"It seems like a lot of the K-pop that I'm hearing lately, the…chord changes are a lot more interesting than what's been happening [in other music fields] over the last few years," he told GRAMMY.com in 2023. "I come from a jazz background, so to hear chord changes like that is really cool. They’re not afraid, which is great to me."

15 K-Pop Songs That Took 2023 By Storm: From Seventeen’s "Super (손오공)" to NewJeans' "Super Shy"

• 1 K-Pop Summer 2024 Guide: ATEEZ, IU, TXT & More Live In Concert & On Tour
• 2 Leap Into AAPI Month 2024 With A Playlist Featuring Laufey, Diljit Dosanjh, & Peggy Gou
• 3 Chung Ha Returns: On 'EENIE MEENIE,' The K-Pop Soloist Is Ready To Step Back Into The Spotlight
• 4 Listen: GRAMMY.com's Women's History Month 2024 Playlist: Female Empowerment Anthems From Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Jennie & More
• 5 9 Essential K-Pop/Western Collabs: From BTS And Megan Thee Stallion, To IVE And Saweetie

VIVIZ World Tour 2024: Dates & Locations of K-Pop Group Revealed

By Arpita Adhya

K-pop act VIVIZ announced the dates and cities of their world tour 2024 , which includes over twenty stops in the United States.

VIVIZ debuted on February 9, 2022, with three former GFRIEND members, Eunha, SinB, and Umji. The group’s re-debut as VIVIZ made GFRIEND fans sentimental, and within a week of their new start, they won the first music show trophy on MBC M’s Show Champion. Since their debut, VIVIZ has released over four extended plays and multiple singles, and now they are ready to meet their fans worldwide through live stages of V.hind: Love and Tears .

VIVIZ teases dates and U.S. locations of World Tour 2024

K-pop act VIVIZ will kickstart their 2024 world tour in Seoul on June 1 and 2 at KBS Arena. Later, the group will travel to Taipei, Hong Kong, and the United States on the following dates.

Dates and locations of the VIVIZ World Tour 2024 include:

• June 1, 2024: KBS Arena, Seoul, South Korea
• June 2, 2024: KBS Arena, Seoul, South Korea
• June 9, 2024: Taipei, Taiwan
• July 5, 2024: Hong Kong, China
• July 13, 2024: Atlanta, Georgia
• July 14, 2024: Charlotte, North Carolina
• July 16, 2024: Washington, D.C.
• July 17, 2024: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• July 19, 2024: Boston, Massachusetts
• July 20, 2024: New York City, New York
• July 22, 2024: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• July 23, 2024: Columbus, Ohio
• July 25, 2024: Detroit, Michigan
• July 27, 2024: Louisville, Kentucky
• July 28, 2024: Nashville, Tenneessee
• July 30, 2024: Indianapolis, Indiana
• July 31, 2024: Chicago, Illinois

[ #VIVIZ ] ? 2024 VIVIZ WORLD TOUR [V.hind : Love and Tears] 투어 일정 안내 ? 투어 일정 24.06 ~ 24.08 ? https://t.co/NQAKm0fk2T #비비지 #EUNHA #은하 #SINB #신비 #UMJI #엄지 #Vhind_LoveandTears pic.twitter.com/zGkSYQ2hze — VIVIZ (@VIVIZ_official) May 6, 2024

• August 2, 2024: Minneapolis, Minnesota
• August 4, 2024: Kansas City, Kansas
• August 6, 2024: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
• August 7, 2024: Dallas, Texas
• August 8, 2024: San Antonio, Texas
• August 10, 2024: Phoenix, Arizona
• August 12, 2024: Los Angeles, California
• August 14, 2024: San Jose, California

After wrapping up their United States leg of the V.hind: Love and Tears tour, VIVIZ will also participate in the 2024 Waterbomb Festival in Singapore. The group will take the main stage on August 24.

Arpita covers K-pop, K-drama and Asian Entertainment scoops for ComingSoon.Net. From in-depth coverage of Asian Entertainment gems to the latest fan obsession, she is dedicated to bring out the best of Asian pop culture to the world one story at a time.

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