I thought Drake lost his rap battle with Kendrick Lamar upon the release of “Not Like Us.” But really, the defeat came weeks later.
I was one of 16,000 people in attendance at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, CA for Kendrick’s Ken and Friend Juneeteenth concert. I saw fans, in unison, scream how much they hated the way that Drake walked, talked, and dressed. I saw Drake contemporaries like YG, Steve Lacey, and NBA legend Russell Westbrook dance onstage as Kendrick performed “Not Like Us” six times in a row. It was surreal—not only the moment in the building, but also how viral the concert became.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The standing ovation that came after the bell rang speaks to a general Drake fatigue that’s been building up way before this fight began. This view didn’t come overnight. Uneven albums, a decrease in culturally memorable moments, and a shift in public opinion have compounded, and Kendrick took that sentiment and used it to his advantage. While Drake will live to rap another day, this L spotlights his descent from rap's peak over the last half-decade.
We are approaching two months since Drake released “The Heart Part 6,” the song where he effectively bowed out of his beef with Kendrick Lamar. Since then, Drake’s been tip-toeing his way back. He’s teased “summer vibes,” been semi-active on Instagram, and dropped a couple of “verses” that function more as memes: one on Sexyy Red’s “U My Everything” and another on Snowd4y’s “Wah Gwan Delilah” remix. This low-stakes approach is a sign that Drake is in an uncertain space. But what if the period we’re in is also a bridge into a new phase of Drake’s career.
“Far as the Drake era, man, we in the Golden Ages,” Drake rapped on “7am On Bridle Path'' from his 2021 album Certified Lover Boy. The rollout and release of Certified Lover Boy symbolized the issues that were brewing. After not dropping a studio album of completely new music in three years (2020’s Dark Lane Demo Tapes was a low-stakes mix of leaks and “some new joints”) Drake returned with CLB, an album that sold decently enough but also featured a palpable decline in quality. The perplexing cover art mixed with second-tier Drake songs—featuring cringe lines like “you're a lesbian, well me too”—capsulize an era where it felt like Drizzy was often parodying himself. (Drake himself described the album as “a combination of toxic masculinity and acceptance of truth which is inevitably heartbreaking.”) The project wasn’t well-received upon its release.
Initially polarizing reactions aren’t new when it comes to Drake albums. But for the first time, we saw a Drake album that didn't really stick the same way others have in the past. Yes, there were Billboard hits like “Way 2 Sexy” and “Girls Like Girls,” and impressive first week sales, but these were products of a streaming economy that benefits pop stars like Drake. Within a year, CLB petered out at double platinum. Not bad, until you remember his previous album, Scorpion, was certified five times platinum within the same amount of time.
The experimental Honestly, Nevermind came 10 months after and functioned as a change of pace from the stale CLB. I personally liked some of the dance joints, but the album felt more like a sidequest than anything.
Both CLB and Honestly, Nevermind had less culturally memorable moments than Drake’s previous albums provided. This was made clear to me when I went to the Madison Square Garden stop at the It’s All a Blur tour in July 2023 and saw firsthand how those albums didn’t pass the AUX cord test. While he performed several songs from Her Loss, mixed in with some classic 2012-era Drake cuts, he only did “Way 2 Sexy” off CLB and relegated his Honestly, Nevermind cuts for his water break.
Drake got back in his bag and delivered some quality music with Her Loss and an inspired deluxe version of For All The Dogs. But this proved it wasn’t just inconsistent music that has driven Drake pushback. He has, not so subtly, shifted his music to appeal to a more male-oriented audience. “This bitch lie ‘bout getting shots, but she still a stallion/She don't even get the joke but she still smiling,” he raps on “Circo Loco,'' referencing Megan Thee Stallion’s highly-publicized shooting case against Tory Lanez. Dissing Meg and trivializing her shooting soured Her Loss for many of his fans. Then he doubled-down on the antics by sending subliminal shots at Rihanna on the For All The Dogs cut “Fear of Heights” not even a year later.
And then the rap boogeyman came. One of the most effective strategies in a rap beef is to weaponize public perception against your opponent (think of Jay-Z’s “one hot album every 10 year average” line against Nas.) Kendrick used years of negative sentiments fans had about Drake in his favor. This wasn’t a Pusha-T situation; there were very few revelations with Dot’s disses. These were disses already in the ether. Fans have been calling Drake a misogynist for a while, so when Dot rapped that the Toronto rapper “hates women” on “Euphoria” or that he’s a sexual deviant on “Meet the Grahams,” people were more inclined to agree.
Almost every Kendrick line, from “We don’t want to hear you say nigga no more” to “I heard you like them young,” were memes, repackaged by Dot. (So much so fans theorized Kendrick was stealing bars from tweets.) The “you’re a colonizer” line on “Not Like Us” works because there have been years of conversations about Drake jacking slang and style. And since Drake does have an OVO member with a “weird case” and has beefed with more women rappers than men in the last couple of years. Kendrick’s “misogynist” disses hit way harder.
The biggest indicator that the fatigue is real is the fact that Drake was really trying to win. He just wasn’t effective enough. He put out quality diss records and attempted some classic meta social media tricks. They didn’t work. He couldn’t meme Kendrick into oblivion like he did with Meek Mill; social media wasn’t on his side this time. While Drake was releasing AI diss tracks, writing out Nav lyric captions, and uploading 10 Things I Hate About You clips, Dot was going for the jugular. And Kendrick’s disses were well-received because, frankly, listeners were ready to see Drake lose.
Drake’s kingdom was sieged, but the Embassy won’t crumble overnight. He will likely rise from his hookah-scented ashes like some kind of owl-Phoenix hybrid. He may eventually bounce back from this battle like he did after his loss to Pusha-T in 2018, but the Drake that came back from that loss is not the same Drake we will have now. He’s moved like the king of rap for the last few years, but now that Drake fatigue is at an all-time high, he’ll have to find new ways to engage with his audience. That might mean dialing back the braggadocious bars, or pivoting completely and sticking to the melodic bops that his rap-adjacent fans love.
Drake’s reign at the top was never meant to last forever anyway. He’s been on an unprecedented run, and like year-20 LeBron James, it’s OK to acknowledge he can’t dunk like he once did.
