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.
Denne historien er fra May 20 - June 02, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra May 20 - June 02, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
