I’m probably turning off a lot of Rap and Hip-Hop fans when I ask this, but I have to ask; where are we going with these Rap beefs? I, like every other Hip-Hop fan, was tuned in to the recent beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. The difference between me and most fans that I’ve heard from, read, or seen is that I was left disappointed. I give them both a lot of credit for stepping away from the subliminals that had gone back and forth, and finally going directly at each other with so much at stake. When you\u2019re at their level, and go at someone who\u2019s up there with you, you both have a lot to lose; but is this where we are now with these things? Before the Drake-Kendrick one-on-one got started, I was actually a little disappointed with J. Cole for backing out, but now I\u2019m so glad he did.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don’t get me wrong, I was here for it. In the beginning I’m thinking, two of the biggest artists ever are about to engage in verbal combat to see who\u2019s best. What fan of the music wouldn\u2019t want to witness that? Rap needs this. It\u2019s like Jay-Z and Nas all over again; a clash of the titans. Get your popcorn ready \u2018cuz this is going to be good. Two of the best are about to duke it out, and we\u2019re about to see who comes out on top…right? Not quite. Instead of two of the best that we\u2019ve had going at each other for ooohs and aaahs to see who\u2019s the best in the squared circle of words, we got two of the best lowering themselves to the level of seeing who could unearth or dish the most salacious accusations and insults at the other. At least they didn\u2019t go as far as celebrating or bragging about the deaths of friends or associates of each other like some have in Rap beefs recently, but I was expecting sport; I was expecting a real battle for Rap superiority from these two. I was not expecting accusations of pedophilia, domestic abuse, sexual assault, cheating, secret kids, sex offender associations; or even, for all intents and purposes, race shaming.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d feel inauthentic if I didn\u2019t acknowledge that I do feel that Kendrick won the battle. His plan was well thought out, and he executed it to near perfection.\u00a0It\u2019s difficult to argue that he isn\u2019t a phenomenal\u00a0talent, and he did utilize that extraordinary talent to overshadow everything Drake did in response, which ultimately basically drowned out any volume coming from Drake\u2019s side of the argument. It was surgical execution. I must admit that it was hard to not be impressed by that part. Kendrick calculated the whole thing masterfully, but Kendrick Lamar is a Pulitzer Prize winner who\u2019s contributed some of the greatest art ever produced to the world, Black culture, and the culture of Hip-Hop. Forgive me for being disappointed by some of the choices he made in going at Drake. I expected better; I expected more. I know that the gloves come off when it\u2019s time to battle, but it\u2019s almost like he\u2019d forgotten who he was all these years; the person he\u2019d portrayed himself to be to all of us.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That goes for Drake as well. From the outset, I knew that winning or consistently competing in a battle with Kendrick would be a tall task for Drake. That\u2019s not a knock against Drake either, I believe that would be the case for anyone. Very few rappers are even in the realm of being able to contend with Kendrick, and Drake is in that realm of contention, to his credit. I believe Drake knew this though. He knew that he would have to come with something more than skill with words and went past a verbal joust with Kendrick; he started bringing up women and kids. No matter what type of artist Drake is, or what persona he projects to the public, a grown man knows what to expect when you bring bystanders into a beef that are family; especially someone\u2019s significant other or their kids. You can\u2019t go that far into a man\u2019s personal life and not expect a nuclear reaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, on one hand, you can\u2019t blame Kendrick. Once that line is crossed, no holds are barred. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s what he was thinking, or at least what he\u2019d claim <\/em>he was thinking. I\u2019m not so sure Kendrick was ever really responding in this beef though. For the most part, I think he had it all planned out. The songs all came out in too rapid of a succession in my opinion for the content of it all to have been reactionary or come up with in the moment. Nevertheless, he was able to achieve the desired result. He was proclaimed the winner by most, and barring some pending turn of events that could swing public opinion back in the opposite direction, he will always be able to say he won his battle against one of the few artists fans can justifiably put on his level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, though, as I said before, I’d have to give them both credit. Not only for being supremely talented, which they both are, and not only for actually engaging each other with so much at stake, but for knowing that this is where we are as fans. I guess I underestimated how much the permeation of the worst parts of social media, tabloid exploitation, and reality TV have affected us as people, the culture and the music. I do sometimes wonder, however, if Drake or Kendrick Lamar ever look back at how things played out with any level of remorse or regret. Do they have any concerns or regrets about their choices or actions and how far things were taken? And for us fans I wonder, where are our limits? Is anything too far? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m probably turning off a lot of Rap and Hip-Hop fans when I ask this, but I have to ask; where are we going with these Rap beefs? I, like every other Hip-Hop fan, was tuned in to the recent beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. The difference between me and most fans that I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-blog","category-music"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":452,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apatchworkofthought.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}