Maybe there Should be Rules in Rap Battles

Some fights are not worth having, at least not on these terms

LunaEclipse, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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By the time you read this, it will have been just about a month since J Cole shocked the world by apologizing to Kendrick Lamar. That one action ended what many believed would be the biggest battle between the three best rappers in the world. Instead, Cole, who for the better part of 5 years had been telling us that he was the “top dog,” backed away from the chance to prove it on wax. According to him, the fans “wanted blood,” and that’s not something that sat “right with his spirit.”

As I mentioned in “There’s No Nice Guys in Rap,” Cole’s apology and refusal to engage in one of the most essential pillars of hip-hop will likely damage his legacy. You can’t be a “nice guy” and a “great rapper.” We have never seen those two things co-exist. Consequently, many fans have scratched him off their list of great “lyricists.” What saved this moment was that Drake and Kendrick Lamar were dead set on facing off with each other, and that’s precisely what they did.

Once Cole backed out, things picked up quickly. Drake dropped the track "Push-Ups” and followed it up with the A.I. manufactured Taylor Made, featuring the voices of Snoop Dog and deceased rapper 2Pac. Once 2Pac’s estate forced him to take the song down, he pivoted to a barrage of social media posts, trolling Kendrick for not responding and subtly pushing rumors that Kendrick's wife cheated on him. After two weeks of radio silence, Kendrick resurfaced with the diss track “Euphoria.”

After weeks of Drizzy floating salacious rumors on social media and mocking 2pac with A.I., Euphoria was a breath of fresh air. Unlike Drake, who pre-empted every drop with “Cryptic” Instagram posts and “leaks” from his preferred influencers, Kendrick let his music do the talking, which spoke volumes. Let’s be clear: " Pushups” is not a bad song, but it stands out more because of the gossip that Drake spews than anything he said lyrically.

Euphoria, on the other hand, was an artistic show of force. The song is 6 minutes long, features three beat flips, and a barrage of witty punchlines focused exclusively on Drake. What makes the track even more impressive is that while he’s doing this, Kendrick uses five different flows, Including J Cole’s flow from  his verse on “first-person shooter.” Euphoria is a masterclass in how small shifts in tonality and pace can change the experience or meaning of a word in a song.

Two days later, Kendrick returned, taking a page from Drake's book and releasing a song with a timestamp as the title. 6:16 in LA was Kendrick taking the battle to the Canadian's home turf, Instagram, all while hinting at having a mole within Drake's camp. 6:16. As a follow-up to Euphoria, 6:16 is brilliant! He took something his opponent is known for and did it better. All while hinting that he had more to offer and warning Drake to stop mentioning his family. Unfortunately, from here, things get dark.

Drake has long been known to revel in petty drama and romantic chaos. In any lyrical battle he has ever been in, he looks for a way to mention his opponent's partner. For him, victory can be attained by using the women in their lives to humiliate them. He did it with  “Back to Back” when he faced off against Meek Mil and then tried it against Pusha T with Duppy. In that instance, mentioning another man's wife led to a scorching response from Pusha, who handed Drake his first loss.

When Family Matters came out, Drake stayed faithful to his previous behavior and not only mentioned Kendrick's wife but claimed they were separated and that one of their kids belonged to Kendrick’s manager and close friend, Dave Free. Later on in the song, he accuses Lamar of abusing his wife, then invites her to “reach out” if she needs a hand. Barely ten minutes passed before Kendrick released “Meet the Grahams,” a song that will likely go down as the most brutal diss track in rap history.

In Meet the Grahams, Kendrick doesn’t try to defend himself; that’s not the point of this song; he’s here to put the final nail in the coffin of Drake’s credibility. What follows is 6 minutes of pure toxicity. He starts off the song rapping to Drake’s son Adonis, telling the little boy that he wishes Drake's father, Dennis Graham, would have “worn a condom,” and if you think that’s bad, from there, it only gets worse, much worse. He goes on to talk about Drake’s alleged BBL and offers to be a mentor to another man's son. In the very next verse, he aims at Drake’s parents, telling them that their son is a “master manipulating, and predator, who should die.” The song ends with Kendrick rapping to Drake and his alleged unclaimed 11-year-old daughter.

Up until this point, the battle between these artists was tense. It’s clear that they do not like each other, but their decision to release tracks with this type of content says a lot more about them than what they were hoping to reveal about each other. What’s most troubling is the complete lack of consideration for how their words will impact those around them. Drake and Kendrick's children are young enough that they may miss this moment, but there will eventually be a time when they discover these songs.

When that time comes, these men will have to explain their words. Can you imagine what it would feel like to hear a song that tells you the person who raised you may not be your father? Do we think it’s ok to tell a child that their father “should die?” What kind of message are we trying to send? What kind of men are these two trying to be? Has anyone considered how Kendrick’s partner Whitney feels? Drake is claiming she is in an abusive relationship; if that’s true, is he planning on getting her help, and who is going to explain to the people who love her that this is all “manufactured” for shits and giggles? Whether it happened or not, this is her life, not content for public consumption.

The battle closed with two more tracks. An uptempo club joint called “Not Like Us” it mentions the registered sex offenders in Drake's camp while once again beating the Canadian rapper at his own game. Making a diss track that also plays well in the club.

 Drake responded with  a soulful heater called “The Heart Part 6.” We hear a Drake who is finally taking Kendrick seriously. In it, he claims to have fed Kendrick's team false info about a secret daughter, denies being a pedophile multiple times, and then makes fun of Kendrick for talking about being molested in “Mother I Sober” (He didn’t) For as long as I can remember, people claimed that there were “no rules in rap battles,” and maybe there was a time when that made sense. But I don't want to participate in the fight for rap superiority, which requires our artists to burn everything to the ground. J Cole was right; some battles just aren’t worth fighting.