The over-the-top beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake that dominated pop culture last year is still paying dividends for at least one of its participants.
Following his viral Super Bowl performance, which centred around Kendrick’s now-signature Drake diss “Not Like Us”, the Compton emcee’s star has puffed right into the stratosphere. He now commands some of the largest crowds in music today, selling out stadiums around the world and consistently drawing in rave reviews from critics and influencers alike.
Rising profiles still tend to mean dwindling quality when it comes to stars like this. And yet Kendrick just put out one of the finest releases to date, furthering his craft as he continues to sharpen his identity and cement his status as one of the most important musicians of the 21st century.
Kendrick has mastered rap. The question of whether or not he can rhyme with the best of them is moot. He doesn’t need to prove that anymore, and so this has given room for Kendrick to experiment more with his flow and cadence, with how he stretches syllables and constantly shapes and reshapes his words as a function of the fluctuating, stretchy productions he is picking to an obvious high standard.
Live, Kendrick Lamar’s music is both sophisticated and swaggering, striking a hard-won balance between stadium-sized hip hop and achingly vulnerable, poetic moments. Some great examples of Kendrick’s quiet-storm approach for this current tour are “man at the garden” and “reincarnated,” both much less bombastic than behemoths like “TV Off” and “DNA”. And yet they were some of the standouts as Kendrick tore through the first of two Sydney shows, peeling him away from punchy pyro drops and resting him in a pocket of self-reflection.
Lamar excels during these smaller moments, where dancers are given meaningful, sharp moves to stomp across the stage as K. Dot moves with the cocksure swagger of a man who battled a giant and won. His confected, brutally personal victory over Drake may contradict Kendrick’s progressive persona, but it’s also unlocked another layer of confidence for the already self-assured rapper. He makes this look easy.
But it’s not. It can’t be. How can it be easy to juggle all those enormous moments and still put together a coherent “something for everyone” set? Those big, meaty moments of chaos like “euphoria” and “Humble” are given depth with Kendrick’s use of video packages and small skits throughout the set.
“TV Off” is performed in two parts, similar to what he used to do with “m.A.A.d City”, with the meatier, more chaotic second half returning later in the show and sending the energy sky high. It felt, appropriately, bigger than the Super Bowl.
Speaking of “m.A.A.D City,” Kendrick makes a 60s R&B version strangely work while flattening out the aggressive lyrics so he’s half rapping, half singing. These meaningful stylistic choices are a big part of Kendrick’s distinction at the apex of hip hop.
Kendrick’s very public spat with Drake helped propel his profile beyond hip hop, and you can tell he is still basing his identity a little too much on the war of words. He makes sure all three Drake disses feature prominently throughout the set, he ends on “Not Like Us”, and he even squeezes in “Poetic Justice”, which he made with Drake in 2012.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that hip hop lost its commercial dominance after the Drake-Kendrick beef caused a seismic shift in the culture. The “line in the sand” approach that many Gen Zers use to shame (or manipulate) people into disassociating from others annoyingly melted into the hip hop world once the beef became as poppy as a Taylor Swift drop. You either became “team Drake” or “team Kendrick”, which milked a lot of the collaborative spirit out of the industry and reduced this conflict to garden-variety sandpit tribalism.
But it makes sense why Kendrick emerged the victor, despite both rappers pulling childish tactics to try and weaponise cancel culture against each other. I’ve seen both of them live in the past year; Kendrick puts on a much tighter, more impactful show. His work has also shot up in quality, while Drake is struggling to recapture his hitmaking sound. The Boy Wonder chose a bad time to stagnate, while Kendrick Lamar is out here, putting on some of the most impressive shows of his career while still appealing to his core fanbase.
Having the “better” disses isn’t the point of beef. Look at what happened to Canibus’ career after he went at LL Cool J. Ja Rule’s mammoth success wasn’t enough to protect him from 50 Cent, especially once Eminem and even Busta Rhymes got involved. T.I. almost instantly ended the careers of both Shawty Lo and Lil’ Flip with his disses. It’s the resulting impact that matters. Drake had some great disses in this beef, but even that wasn’t enough to stop Kendrick from putting a notable dent in his superstar status.
But just as the losing side in a beef always stumbles in their career, especially in the years following, it’s equally important to look at what happens to the victor. Except LL Cool J, who was already the biggest name at the time, all the aforementioned victors went on to greatly expand their empires, using the beef as a springboard. Kendrick is certainly no exception.
Look at what this obvious win has helped him build.
FIVE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
