War of Attrition

In the Kendrick-vs.-Drake battle, no one wins.

- CRAIG JENKINS

FIVE WEEKS AFTER Kendrick Lamar's verse on the abrasive Future track "Like That," provocations seemed to corner Drake into using his typical methods against detractors: striking faster than opponents can anticipate and forcing them into embarrassing moves. The long-standing cold war between the two rap heavyweights came to a boil when each issued rapid-response diss tracks challenging the other's character. Drake's "Family Matters" and "The Heart Part 6" and Lamar's "meet the grahams" and "Not Like Us" were calculated acts of reputational damage whose density and discursiveness bore a closer resemblance to social media dustups than slower-simmering rap beefs past.

It was a public-relations coup getting Drake to infuse his gooey vocal samples, watery synths, and enveloping reverb with point-by-point rejections of grim accusations. In the miserable "The Heart Part 6," which cuts into Lamar's same-named song series, Drake denies accusations of pedophilia while cracking wise about molestation and calamitously misreading "Mother I Sober," a track about Lamar's mother's trauma. Drake insinuated that the self-professed Mr. Morale was not living up to the righteous ire of Lamar's back catalogue: ""The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice'/We get that you like to put gin in your juice/We get that you think that you Bishop in Juice/When you put your hands on your girl, is it self-defense 'cause she bigger than you?" Blowing up a potential victim's story for chart tallies doesn't scan as concern for her well-being. Lamar's "meet the grahams" purports to reveal a daughter Drake has been hiding, while "Matters" and "Heart" insist that pgLang cofounder Dave Free is secretly the father of one of Lamar's children. Fact-checks are in order, though fans' minds are already made up: If you stan Drake, Kendrick rehashed ten years of Twitter banter; if you keep a ranking of "Heart" parts, you celebrated an indiscriminate trouncing.