LOS ANGELES. — Kendrick Lamar has released a diss track attacking fellow rap star Drake, escalating their long-running feud.
Called Euphoria, the song is a response to weeks of taunting by Drake, who has taken pot-shots at Lamar on a series of viral diss tracks.
Over six minutes, Lamar calls Drake a “manipulator and habitual liar”, and criticises his parenting skills.
He also @ccuses the Canadian star of selling out, saying he only makes music to “pacify” fans.
And he leaves listener under no illusions about the strength of his feelings towards Drake.
“This ain’t been ‘bout critics, not about gimmicks, not about who the greatest,” he raps. “It’s always been about love and hate, now let me say I’m the biggest hater.”
“I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress.”
The rappers’ feud dates back to 2013, when Lamar was a relative newcomer.
During a performance at the BET Awards, he boasted that his skills had “tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pyjama clothes”. The line was interpreted as a reference to Drake, whose soul-baring blend of rap and R&B had changed the sound of hip-hop.
The hatred simmered for a few years, boiling over again last year, when J Cole and Drake described themselves, along with Lamar, as the “big three” of rap, on the song First Person Shooter.
The seemingly innocuous comment went unremarked for months.
It is alleged that in the middle of March, Lamar delivered a fiery verse on Like That, declaring that there was no “big three — it’s just big me”.
In April, Drake released the first of two diss tracks, titled Push Ups, in which he mocked Lamar’s height as well as his collaborations with Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift.
Later that month, Drake dropped another song, Taylor Made Freestyle, in which he taunted Lamar, calling him a coward for failing to respond.
The track controversially used AI technology to imitate the voices of Snoop Dogg and the late Tupac Shakur — one of Lamar’s heroes.
After a complaint from Shakur’s estate, Drake pulled the song off his Instagram.
Lamar’s Euphoria similarly criticises the use of AI, saying it would “make Tupac turn in his grave”.
He also asks “Am I battlin’ ghost or AI?” — a reference to the accusation that Drake has used ghostwriters in the past.
Source H-Metro
