“Nobody won the war,” The Roots drummer proclaimed of the ongoing beef
Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s rap beef hit an all-time low over the weekend, and The Roots drummer Questlove has had enough.
On Tuesday, May 7, the musician sneered at the “wrestling match level mudslinging” between the Grammy-winning rap stars in a candid Instagram post, blasting the two for throwing low blows in the name of hip-hop.
“Nobody won the war,” began Questlove. “This wasn’t about skill. This was a wrestling match level mudslinging and takedown by any means necessary — women & children (& actual facts) be damned.”
He didn’t mince words as he then laid into hip-hop fans who’ve egged on the ruthless back-and-forth between Lamar and Drake. “Same audience wanting blood will soon put up ‘rip’ posts like they weren’t part of the problem,” Questlove, 53, wrote. “Hip Hop truly is dead.”
The musician’s comments follow the ongoing war of words between Lamar and Drake, the latest of which resulted in six new diss tracks where the two hurled everything from family insults at each other to domestic assault allegations and pedophilia claims.
It began on Tuesday, April 30, when Lamar dropped his fiery “Euphoria” track, finally responding to Drake’s taunting bars from his “Push Ups” and AI-assisted “Taylor Made Freestyle” songs. Three days later, the Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers rapper followed up with another track titled “6:16 in LA,” a flip on Drake’s signature timestamp records, in which he goes after the For All the Dogs artist and his inner circle.
“Have you ever thought that OVO was working for me?” asks Lamar, adding, “Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it / Can’t Toosie Slide up outta this one / It’s just gon’ resurface.”
Later that evening, Drake issued his own clever response with “Family Matters,” a three-part haymaker where he takes shots at folks who’ve dissed him recently, like Rick Ross, A$AP Rocky, and The Weeknd, as well as Lamar with some scathing accusations. On the track, the rapper accuses Lamar of domestic violence against his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and claims that one of their children is not biologically his.
Regarding Lamar’s pgLang partner, Drake raps, “I heard that one of ’em little kids might be Dave Free / Don’t make it Dave Free’s.” “Because this all makes a lot of f—in’ sense to me if your GM is your BM secret BD.”
Soon after, Lamar released another diss track called “Meet the Grahams,” a menacing track that is almost seven minutes long. In it, he dedicates verses to every member of Drake’s family, including his 6-year-old son Adonis, his parents Sandi and Dennis Graham, and a supposed secret daughter (which Drake has refuted).
Things came to a head the following day when Lamar dropped again with his club-banging diss “Not Like Us,” making more allegations about Drake and underage girls and also calling him a “colonizer.”
“The family matter and the truth of the matter / It was God’s plan to show y’all the liar,” he raps.
The endless rap bombs finally concluded on Sunday, May 5, with Drake’s counter-diss “The Heart Part 6,” taking hold of Lamar’s trademark series. The Her Loss rapper spends the song shooting down Lamar’s pedophilia claims, rapping, “If I was f—ing young girls, I promise I’d have been arrested/ I’m way too famous for this s— you just suggested.”
Drake and Lamar’s rap beef initially kicked off with the latter’s scorching “Like That” verse off Metro Boomin and Future’s We Don’t Trust You album dropped in late March. In it, Lamar took aim at Drake and J. Cole’s 2023 “First Person Shooter” collaboration by proclaiming, “Motherf — the big three,” adding, “It’s just big me.”