Breaking Down Drake’s “The Heart Part 6”

Another day, another diss track. Drake takes aim at Kendrick Lamar on “The Heart Part 6,” which comes a day after Dot’s “Not Like Us” set the streets on fire on Saturday. The song addresses many of the allegations Kendrick has made against him across all of his diss tracks, including accusations of Drake liking underaged girls, being a snitch, and having an 11-year-old daughter that no one knew about.

“The Heart Part 6” samples Aretha Franklin’s “Prove It,” which is Drake’s way of asking for proof of his crimes on the track, and the title borrows Kendrick’s longrunning “The Heart” series. Similar to how Dot ripped Drake’s timestamp song title for “6:16 in LA,” The Boy makes the sixth installment of “The Heart” his own, which also plays into his own nickname of the 6 God. The cover art also connects to a bar on the track where Drake highlights how Dave Free left a heart emoji under a picture of Kendrick’s partner Whitney and their children.

Drake says this battle “was some good exercise” on the outro, which might imply that this will be his last response to Dot. Whether it is or it isn’t, shit has already taken a very dark turn, full of heavy accusations on both sides, and there’s no going back. Here’s a detailed breakdown of all the allegations Drake responds to and accusations he doubles down on with “The Heart Part 6.”

Drake opens the track by refuting Kendricks’s claims on “Euphoria” about how he potentially cooperated with authorities over a decade ago. 

“First I was a rat, so where's the proof of the trial then? Where's the paperwork or the cabinet it's filed in/ 1090 Jake woulda took all the walls down/ The streets woulda had me hidin' out in a small town”

Drake challenges Kendrick to present proof that he’s ever snitched, which could be a reference to the time he was robbed in Toronto in 2009 (despite reports that he did cooperate with the police investigation at the time). Drake namedrops music crime blogger 1090 Jake who is known for uncovering this kind of information, saying that guys like him (and his own city) would have already held him accountable for a transgression like that. 

One of the most serious allegations that Kendrick has made about Drake is that he and his OVO crew are predators who like underage girls. Drake responds to those claims, refuting them directly before using some backward logic against Kendrick’s upbringing to defend himself. 

“This Epstein angle was the shit I expected/ TikTok videos you collected and dissectedInstead of being on some dis-direct shit/ You rather fucking grab your pen and misdirect shit”

Kendrick actually compared Drake to Harvey Weinstein (not Jeffery Epstein) on “Meet the Grahams,” but Drake is addressing the “angle” that Dot chose to take by calling him a sex offender. Drake accuses Kendrick of getting this narrative from TikTok, where there are real videos of Drake engaging inappropriately with a 17-year-old girl. Drake attempts to shame Kendrick for spreading misinformation rather than finding real dirt on him.

“My mom came over today and I was like/ ‘Mother, I-, mother I-, mother I-’/ Wait a second, that's that one record where you say you got molested/ Aw, fuck me, I just made the whole connection/ This about to get so depressing/ This is trauma from your own confessions/ This when your father leave you home alone with no protection so neglected/ That's why these pedophile raps is shit you so obsessed with, it's so excessive”

Drake brings up Kendrick’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers cut “Mother I Sober” to suggest that the reason Dot is accusing the OVO rapper of being a predator is because the Compton rapper was molested as a child. Ironically, this is a misinterpretation of the song. On “Mother I Sober,” Kendrick raps, “Family ties, they accused my cousin/ ‘Did he touch you Kendrick?’ Never lied, but no one believed me when I said ‘He didn't.’ Given the context of the entire song, Kendrick was saying that he told the truth about not being molested when his mother asked him, but because his mother had been abused in the past, the deeply rooted trauma made her think that Dot was lying. It was already flawed logic for Drake to say that Kendrick was projecting his childhood trauma onto him, but the fact that the bar was misinterpreted makes this portion of his argument even more misguided.

“I never been with no one under age but now I understand why this the angle that you really mess with/ Just for clarity, I feel disgusted/ I'm too respected/ If I was fucking young girls, I promise I'da been done arrested/ I'm way too famous for this shit you just suggested”

After making another jab about how he believes Kendrick was molested, Drake denies Dot’s allegations that he likes underage girls and continues to assert that the only reason the Compton rapper accused him of it was because he was projecting his trauma. Then he tries to defend himself with more flawed logic by saying that, similar to snitching, he would have already been arrested if the allegations were true and says he’s “way too famous” to do these things that Kendrick suggested (as if other very famous people haven’t gotten away with similar offenses for decades).

“Drake is not a name that you gon' see on no sex offender list, easy does it/ You mention an A-Minor but nigga's got a B-Sharp and tell the fans, ’Who was it?’/ You thought you left D flat, D-Major”

These bars are in direct response to “Not Like Us,” with Drake refuting the song’s cover art that shows an aerial view of his home with sex offender icons on it. He goes on flip Kendrick’s “Tryna strike a chord it's probably Aminor” line by using other music notes, telling Dot to “B[e]-sharp,” and rapping that he thought he “left D[rake] flat,” but “D[rake]-major.” (People have already pointed out that B-sharp isn’t technically a real note.) He also stretches out the last bar in a similar way to Kendrick on “Not Like Us.”

“Only fuckin' with Whitney's, not Millie Bobby Brown's, I'd never look twice at no teenager”

This is the second time that Drake has addressed rumors about his relationship with actor Millie Bobby Brown, the first being on “Another Late Night” where he rapped, “Weirdos in my comments talkin' ‘bout some Millie Bobby, look/ Bring them jokes up to the gang, we get to really flockin.’” In a 2018 interview, Brown said that the rapper was a “great role model” and that they were “great friends,” revealing, “We just texted the other day and he was like, ‘I miss you so much,’ and I was like, ‘I miss you more!” Brown was 14 at the time of the interview, which is what made people turn heads. When he brings her up here and says he’d never consider messing with a teenager, Drake makes another Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown reference by using Millie’s full name right after mentioning Kendrick’s partner.

Drake immediately shot down Kendrick’s claims on “Meet the Grahams” that he had an 11-year-old daughter, and now he’s saying that he fed the false information to Kendrick’s camp himself as a way to manipulate the beef.

“My Montreal connects stand up, now fall down/ The one's that you're gettin' your stories from, they all clowns”

Drake is claiming that he planted leakers in Montreal to feed Kendrick false information in the beef that the Compton rapper would use in “Meet the Grahams.” 

“We plotted for a week and then we fed you the information/ A daughter that's 11 years old, I bet he takes it/ We thought about giving a fake name or a destination/ But you so thirsty, you not concerned with investigation”

Drake is suggesting that it only took him a week to come up with the plan about planting false information about a daughter, and he even considered adding details like a fake name, but Kendrick took the bait and didn’t do his due diligence because he was so “thirsty” to find dirt.

“Even the picture you used, the jokes and the medication/ The Maybach glove and the drug he uses for less inflation/ Master manipulator, you bit on the speculation”

The cover art for “Meet the Grahams” is a photo of items that many believe belong to Drake, including a prescription bottle of Ozempic, jewelry receipts, and the black leather glove that Kendrick previously used for the “6:16 in LA” cover. According to DJ Akademiks these were items that came from Drake’s father’s suitcase, but Drake is now saying that he planted all of those items for Kendrick to find. In fact, he implies it was actually a joke directed at Rick Ross, who Drake trolled and said was taking weight loss drug Ozempic on “Family Matters.” Drake also flips the “master manipulator” line that Kendrick’s been using throughout his diss tracks against the Compton rapper.

Drake had already accused Kendrick of domestic violence against his longtime partner on “Family Matters,” and he doubles down on those claims here. 

“I don’t wanna fight with a woman beater, it feeds your nature/ If you still bumping on R Kelly you can thank the savior/ Said if they deleted his music then your music is going too/ A hypocrite”

Drake reasserts his claim that Kendrick has hit Whitney, while arguing that if the two rappers fought, it would feed into Dot’s supposed violent nature. Then Drake plays into Kendrick’s Mr. Morale cut “Savior” and brings up reports from 2018 about Dot standing in support of several artists, including R Kelly, when Spotify ripped his music off of their platform amidst allegations sexual violence. Drake is using this fact to call Kendrick a hypocrite for trying to take the moral high ground in this battle, but this is also not completely accurate because it was confirmed that Kendrick’s then-label head Top Dawg was the one who threatened to take his music off Spotify if R Kelly’s music was removed, not Dot himself. 

“Nigga, I see you when I see you like Fantasia/ Whitney you can hit me if you need a favor/ And when I say I hit you back its a lot safer”

Drake implies that Kendrick’s wife can “hit” him (also known as reaching out to him) whenever she wants, saying that it would be “a lot safer,” which once again plays into his domestic violence accusations against Kendrick.

Drake doubles down on his claims that Kendrick’s manager Dave Free fathered one of his children throughout “The Heart Part 6.” The cover artwork for the song is also a screenshot of an Instagram comment from Dave under a picture of Kendrick’s partner and their children.

“And why isn't Whitney denying all of the allegations? Why is she following Dave Free and not Mr. Morale? You haven't seen the kids in six months, the distance is wild/ Dave leaving heart emojis underneath pics of the child”

Drake accused Kendrick of domestic violence against his partner, Whitney Alford, and is now questioning why she hasn’t come forward and cleared up the allegations if they’re false. In reality, Whitney is an innocent bystander in all of this and likely wouldn't come forward regardless of the legitimacy of Drake’s claims. Still, he suggests that Kendrick hasn’t seen his children in half a year, and reveals that the cover art for the track is a real comment that Dave Free left under a private picture of Whitney and her children, using it as proof that Free is actually the father of one.

“Deep cuts that never healed and now they got infected/ Like if Dave really fucked your girl and got her pregnant, talk about breeding resentment/ I'm not sure how to ease the sentiment, this shit's too intimate/ I'm praying you recover from both incidents”

Drake uses a double entendre in his accusation that Dave Free fathered one of Kendrick’s children, saying that he “[bred] resentment” figuratively in their friendship, and also literally with a child, before going back to his assumption that Kendrick was molested, sarcastically wishing for him to recover from both traumatic experiences.

Drake speaks in the past tense in the outro, saying that his battle with Kendrick “was some good exercise,” which makes it sound like this could be his last diss track, even if Dot responds to it. He goes on to antagonize Dot by sarcastically saying that the Compton rapper has “10 more records to drop,” alluding to the rapid releases he’s been dropping “Euphoria” last Tuesday, and once again claims that he tricked Kendrick with the fake daughter allegations. 

He gives Kendrick credit for dropping “Not Like Us,” saying that he “would like that one, that would be some shit I could dance if [K. Dot] wasn’t tripling down on some whole other bullshit,” referring to the sex trafficking and pedophile allegations. Interestingly, Drake doesn’t address any of the predator allegations that Kendrick sent at his OVO crew in this outro or anywhere else in the song. 

Drake closes the track by saying that everything he’s been saying is “facts,” and Kendrick has been fabricating stories in his disses. After being on the defensive for the majority of “The Heart Part 6,” Drake’s tone in the outro sounds like he’s finished going back and forth with Dot until he provides hard proof for his accusations. Now the ball is back in Kendrick’s court, if he chooses to respond to this.