The Kendrick/Drake Rap Battle Is Meme Culture at Its Finest

Late Sunday evening, I logged onto Fortnite to get pleasure from all the newly added Star Wars content material, solo-queuing up for a No Construct quads match suitable away. As I waited for the battle bus to choose me up, I could hear one particular of my teammates loudly playing Canadian actor-turned-rapper Aubrey “Drake” Graham’s song, “The Heart Component six,” the most current in a series of back-and-forth diss tracks with Pulitzer Prize-winning, Compton-born rapper Kendrick Lamar.

More than the final couple of weeks, the two have engaged in a tense rap battle in which they’ve lobbed insults at each and every other’s households, their street cred, and their star energy, with Kendrick sharing a series of songs that several believed “flattened” Drake more than the weekend. The final shot fired in that salvo, “Not Like Us,” released early Sunday and accused the 37-year-old each of hiding an 11-year-old daughter and also engaging in pedophilia. Not lengthy immediately after the release of “Not Like Us,” Drake responded with “The Heart Component six,” demanding Kendrick show proof to assistance his accusations, and suggesting that Drake and his crew had planted these rumors on objective.

“I consider Drake produced a fantastic point,” a diverse player in our quad opined as “The Heart Component 6” played more than someone’s headset. “Kendrick has to prove these rumors are accurate now.”

“Well, no not definitely,” I replied. “This is not a court case, it is a rap beef.”

All 3 players loudly disagreed with me, insisting that Kendrick’s only likelihood of “winning” this battle was by displaying proof that Drake had an illegitimate daughter and/or had relations with underage ladies. They continued discussing the beef, the songs that have come out of this beef, and how each and every rapper could “win” all through the complete match, and all I could consider about was how this beef is fodder for the contemporary web and the subcultures it courts.

The rap beef, memefied

Component of the explanation Kendrick and Drake’s beef is so completely tailored to today’s web culture is simply because of how memeworthy it is. The term “meme” was initial coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene—Dawkins recommended memes have been an concept, a behavior, or a style, mimicked from individual-to-individual, that could carry and transmit symbolic which means, as effectively. Modern day web memes do not just imply a deep layer of know-how on a subject, but they also denote a person’s allegiances, their “sides.” Memes are so partisan in today’s web culture that they have been employed to assist elect President Donald Trump in 2016, and once again to spur on the January six, 2021 Capitol Riots, as detailed extensively in the 2022 book, Meme Wars.

With the Kendrick and Drake beef, someone’s allegiances can be produced crystal-clear with a singular photo. Basically posting a image of Drake’s 2010 Sprite industrial (in which the rapper sips a Sprite and is summarily split into several pieces like a deconstructed robot) implies that Kendrick tore Drake apart. On the other hand, sharing a image of Kendrick standing subsequent to a different rapper tells men and women you loudly stump for Drake, as Kendrick’s 5’5” height is the subject of a lot ridicule in the neighborhood.

Gamers have also posted their favourite memes, referencing a diverse and eclectic variety of games from Fallout to Smash Bros. Some, clearly not plugged into rap music and its relevant beefs, asked the neighborhood to assist clarify the background of this all in Final Fantasy terms, and several people obliged.

Of course, the anime neighborhood has latched onto the beef, as Drake’s and Kendrick’s hatred for one particular a different feels ripped from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Twitch streamer and cosplayer Kayla got back into her Dio cosplay to lip sync a number of lines from Kendrick’s “euphoria” track, a testament to the character’s legacy as a hater.

Even the subjects of the battle are leaning into memes. Kendrick’s “Not Like Us” album art functions a Google Maps image of Drake’s Toronto mansion, with a number of red and black icons emblazoned on the mansion. These markers resemble the ones discovered on maps that delineate exactly where registered sex offenders reside. It is a stark, shareable image that has layers of symbolism, and the web latched onto it, adding fictional names to his mansion on Google Maps like “Kendrick’s House” and renaming other nearby homes issues like “CertifiedKidLover” or “Child MOE-lester,” as reported by Gizmodo.

Drake and the web 

Interestingly, Drake appears to be losing this battle on his household turf. The rapper has notoriously courted the most perpetually on the web fans, even streaming on Kick, the rival Twitch platform backed by Tyler Faraz Niknam, Bijan Tehrani, and Ed Craven (the latter two of which personal Stake, a gambling site that has been closely linked with Kick streamers). Two of the most significant, most historically problematic Kick streamers lately came to Drake’s defense on social media, with Adin Ross (who was banned from Twitch in 2023 immediately after streaming pornography) and xQc (who signed a $one hundred million deal with Kick in 2023), posting in assistance of the Canadian rapper.

But in spite of some of gaming’s biggest personalities stumping for Drake, Kendrick appears to be winning this culture war. Kendrick’s masterful raps resulted in his diss track finding played in Bushwick clubs and Rick Ross’ Vegas pool celebration, and his seemingly preternatural capacity to predict Drake’s angles have the web flabbergasted. Producer Metro Boomin dropping a “BBL Drake” beat, which he shared on SoundCloud and encouraged unsigned artists to rap more than, promising a cost-free beat to his favourite, just dumps even extra ridicule in Drake’s lap.

Drake even attempted to entice his gaming neighborhood fans, posting a God of War III clip on Instagram as a reaction to one particular of Kendrick’s earlier disses. The clip integrated the quote, “The hands of Death could not defeat me, the sisters of Fate could not hold me, and you will not reside to see the finish of this day!” Later, he clapped back at Metro Boomin, posting a clip from Uncharted in which Nathan Drake laments his capacity to “attract the scum of the earth.” Guess he’s a Sony guy.

But even with Drake attempting to wade into gaming territory, Kendrick’s supporters seemed determined to one particular-up him, posting a scene from the Thor/Kratos fight in God of War Ragnarok whereby Thor restarts Kratos’ heart just as it appears like he’s about to die.

“With this Kendrick beef, fans do not want to see Drake post memes on IG or Twitter. The only way to respond to this level of verbal assassination is by finding in the booth,” The Verge’s Ash Parrish told me by means of Twitter DM. “And even though he has, Drake has lost the rap battle on his household turf of the web by finding memed relentlessly, as tons of rappers and content material creators *the globe more than* are posting their personal Drake disses applying producer Metro Boomin’s ‘BBL Drake’ beat.”

Aftermath’s Gita Jackson, who wrote a Tumblr post summarizing the beef that has more than ten,000 notes at the time of publication, told me by means of voice note that the Kendrick/Drake battle transcends the music sector precisely simply because of the way it leans into web culture.

It is not surprising to me that men and women definitely like this beef on the web, and particularly in fandom spaces, simply because in fandom if you are not actively speaking about the factor you are a fan of, you are fighting with other fans. Beef is a large portion of becoming in a fandom, and beef that can be collated or annotated with stuff, that’s’ even much better for fandom, so text-primarily based mediums for the most portion.

And right here, there’s so several layers to how a lot Kendrick hates Drake and the diverse types of approaches Kendrick hates Drake, that you could create ten,000 words about this and nevertheless not be performed with all the details…this has been simmering considering the fact that the ‘Control’ verse in 2012. It is been going on for more than ten years, that these two males have been each so highly effective in the rap sector and hated each and every other so powerfully.

I consider that there’s one thing about that even for men and women who are not into hip-hop—especially simply because it makes use of the medium of the web to additional all discussion. A lot of the time rap disses do not finish up becoming released officially simply because they’re applying samples that are not cleared and they’re written and recorded quite swiftly. Right here they all get dropped by means of the diverse approaches men and women are on the internet—they get dropped on Twitter, one particular of them was an Instagram reel, Drake is himself quite, quite active on Instagram, and is presently reacting to all the things in his stories.

Jackson then echoed what Parrish and other people have mentioned about Drake’s terminally on the web presence: “Drake’s profession is steeped in the web itself. That is also the venue he makes use of to victimize these young girls that he DMs on Instagram…[this beef] is for and from the web, at least on Drake’s side, and it is becoming perpetuated by the web. It appeals to the quite on the web amongst us, simply because it enables us to stake our claim like we would in a ‘ship war. We defend Kendrick simply because we’re against men and women who victimize young ladies and fucking culture vultures, or we like Drake, we’re on Drake’s side simply because we’re on his side of the fandom.”

The burden of proof, the death of beef

Then there’s this “burden of proof” situation, with some seeming to think that Kendrick can only “win” this beef if he proves there’s truth to his allegations against Drake. It smacks of one thing presently going on in the gaming sector writ massive, highlighted in a current occasion in which Nick Calandra from Second Wind was fed false information from a possible supply in an try to discredit an investigation he was functioning on.

Drake’s lines in “The Heart Component 6” demand that Kendrick generate paperwork confirming his allegations, and it is the excellent fodder for an web educated on dis- and misinformation, for a generation of men and women who fundamentally dislike and distrust mainstream media. Drake is attempting to develop his personal reality and demand that Kendrick play by his guidelines, which feels quite related to what it is like finding into any sort of argument on the web these days. Post proof of your harassment, post proof that there’s not a cabal of men and women injecting wokeness into video games, or you drop, liberals.

Even as I wrote this piece, the Drake/Kendrick beef seemed to swiftly method its personal heat death, as the de-facto leader of terminally on the web males and owner of X/Twitter, Elon Musk, weighed in. “Everyone’s speaking about this battle!” he replied to a post from Drake-aligned DJ Akademiks. Later, he sent a crying laughing emoji reply to a different post discussing the beef. It is only a matter of time prior to he suggests the two duke it out in an X space—oh wait, the Elon Musk/AOC parody account already did that.

This story initially appeared on Kotaku.