Drake & Kendrick Lamar's feud gets ugly as they drop diss tracks targeting each other's families & children. Get the latest on the escalating rap battle.
The conflict of lyrical blows persists between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, escalating to an intimate level. Following the release of the latter's diss track titled "6:16 in LA" earlier today, both rappers countered with retaliatory tracks, consecutively released on Friday night (May 3). Drake presented "Family Matters," while Lamar unleashed "Meet the Grahams."
Drake initiated the exchange with "Family Matters," where the discourse took a deeply personal turn. "You mentioned my seed now deal with his dad," commences the Toronto native on his seven-minute track. "I gotta go bad, I gotta go bad."
Among the extensive barbs directed at Lamar in the track, he targets his adversary's relationship with his fiancee, Whitney Alford. "Don't even go back to your hood and plant no money trees," he declares, referencing Lamar's 2012 track "Money Trees." "Say you hate the girls I fuck but what you really mean / I been with Black and white and everything in between / You the Black messiah wifing up a mixed queen / And hit vanilla cream to help out with your self-esteem."
Boundaries are further crossed with the inclusion of their children, a topic that Lamar previously broached in his diss track "Euphoria" from the preceding week. "Why you never hold your son and tell him say cheese / We could have left the kids out of this don't blame me," he asserts. He insinuates that one of Lamar's two children, a son and a daughter, was fathered by Dave Free, a long-standing creative collaborator of Lamar.
In Lamar's "Euphoria," he mentions a Toronto Chinese eatery called New Ho King, and in the accompanying video for "Family Matters," Drake makes an appearance at the very same establishment. "Kendrick just opened his mouth / Someone go hand him a Grammy right now / Where is your Uncle at / Cause I wanna talk to the man of the house," he taunts.
He then alludes to the cease and desist order that Tupac Shakur's estate issued against him regarding his track "Taylor Made Freestyle," in which Drake employed AI to generate new vocals from the deceased rapper. On "Family Matters," Drake alleges that Lamar instigated the estate's response, prompting Drake to remove the song from social media after they threatened legal action.
"A cease and desist is for hoes / Can't listen to lies that come out of your mouth / You called the Tupac estate and begged them to sue me and take that shit down," he raps. He concludes on a somber note, referring to their children: "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’s Blacker than you"
Lamar matched the personal intensity on "Meet the Grahams," where each verse directly addresses Drake's family members, including his son Adonis, mother Sandra, father Dennis, and an apparent daughter that Drake has never publicly acknowledged. "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 starts. "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."