Hood Politics
I’m not a hip hop head, so I started listening to Kendrick Lamar when good kid m.A.A.d city came out like a lot of other people did. Most if not all of the rap I had heard up until that point glorified violence, growing up in rough neighborhoods, misogyny, selling and doing hard drugs, and everything else that came with the stereotypical hip hop aesthetic. But what’s always struck me about Kendrick’s artistry is how introspective he is. Most of his music emphasizes his mistakes and how he doesn’t want to make them again.
I don’t want to moralize over that too much though because I grew up middle class and my parents made sure I was afforded certain opportunities and privileges. I worked hard to get into good schools and get a good job and I still work hard, but you’ll never catch me saying some shit about “getting it out the mud” or tweet from my safe neighborhood about how I can’t tell the difference between gunshots and fireworks on the 4th of July.
But Lamar did grow up in a tough environment, he raps unswervingly about the regret and trauma he has, reflecting on seeing his first murder at five years old, witnessing gun and knife fights throughout his childhood, inflicting violence against others as a teenager, and losing close family and friends to violence in Compton. Lamar continually challenges listeners by asking them to walk through his life through his eyes, to think about what it actually means to be under the constant threat of violence which in turn forces you to create that threat yourself.
I like Kendrick Lamar’s work, but he isn’t perfect. The most prevalent example that always comes to my mind is when he raps “I'm so fuckin' sick and tired of the Photoshop/Show me somethin' natural like afro on Richard Pryor” on HUMBLE. before trotting out a light skinned woman with loose textured hair in the correlating music video .5 seconds later. There were also qualms from the queer community about how he handled homophobia and transphobia on ‘Auntie Diaries’ but I don’t necessarily feel equipped to speak about that here.
Lamar has repeatedly worked out his feelings and his missteps toward his relationships with black, biracial, and white women. But it looks very different when he does it with men.
You Aint Gotta Lie
I think the first time I heard the critique of Drake being phony was from Youtuber Kingsley, who pointed out that Drake did not in fact, start from the bottom, it would be more accurate to say he started from the 10th floor and worked his way up to the penthouse. But the way Drake raps, you’d never know that Jimmy from Degrassi was lucky enough to be discovered by and sign with Young Money at a time when they were snapping up any lightskin with a modicum of talent.
As time passed, it almost felt like Drake became the person that he raps about purely through osmosis. He’s spent so much time around Lil' Wayne and Birdman that he inherited their street cred; it was his birthright, he was entitled to it. But let’s be really honest, if Drake has ever been in any kind of remotely dangerous situation, it’s because he worked really, really hard to put himself there. He would not last an hour in the coconut trees Kendrick or Birdman or Wayne fell out of.
Drake’s hard pivot from loverboy for college educated girls to Patrick Bateman for blond dudes named Kyle who like to say the n-word (‘a’ when they’re with their black friends, hard ‘er’ when they’re playing Call of Duty), Asian fuckboys, and biracials with white moms was hard to watch, but it also makes a lot of sense. FD Signifier points out that a lot of Drake hate comes from the very fact that he himself is biracial and while the perception of biracial black women is overwhelmingly positive, the perception of biracial black men is often associated with a diluted version of black hypermasculinity.
Because of this, Drake was never fully accepted into a certain black male rapper echelon, something about him was always just a little bit off, even if that something was being adjudicated by misogynoir. So, Drake’s fanbase was mostly women. He marketed to them, he sang about them and to them.
To put it another, simpler way, let’s bring my fave into it: when Beyonce wanted to do an album highlighting and celebrating her womanhood and femininity, she called Drake. When she wanted to do an album about blackness and her complex relationship to black masculinity, she called Kendrick.
Also, as pop culture has reliably dictated, whatever women love and anything tangentially tied to femininity is objectively bad and wrong and stupid and should be stopped immediately. Drake knew this as well as anyone, so he set out sometime in the mid-2010s to shed that persona.
What he doesn’t seem to realize is that he’s become the women that he now disdainfully raps about. He get’s his body done, he pouts in his selfies, he whores around and irresponsibly falls into absentee parenthood, he comically over-photoshops his pictures. He is the bad bitch baby girl that he hates so much. I like what Ineye Komonibo says in her article for Refinery 29:
He knows better but just doesn’t want to be better.
There’s no denying it: Drake is a star. But he’s also kind of a supervillain using his powers and his platform to constantly attack women, the very same women that he claims to love so much.
Drake disses Kendrick for lending a feature to a Taylor Swift track but Drake is so un-self-aware, he doesn’t realize he is Taylor Swift. Why he thought simultaneously dissing women and turning into a negative stereotype of one would finally gain him the acceptance and affection of the black men he surrounded himself with would work, I have no idea. Instead, over the last month, they’ve treated him like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.
I think there’s a misconception about what Kendrick is actually saying on ‘euphoria’ which dropped on April 30th as a response to the ongoing rap beef dujour. (I’m not recapping here, you can read Hunter Harris for that!) He doesn’t hate Drake because he’s biracial, he hates Drake because he cosplays as his equal, when anyone with common sense can see that’s not the case.
Poetic Justice
Euphoria opens with a clip of dialogue played in reverse. “Everything they say about me is true!” This is a line from Sydney Lumet’s The Wiz. When Diana Ross as Dorothy leads her gang of misfits behind the gold door, she finds a drab, barren storage room, scattered with props designed to awe and intimidate her and the citizens of Emerald City. Ross walks over to a cot, cradling the Wiz, played by Richard Pryor. She starts screaming “phony!” as she pulls it back to find a gutless, spineless Pryor (I imagine this is how Megan thee Stallion felt when she wrote Hiss) begging how sorry he is for terrorizing them.
“I’m sorry…Everything they say about me is true! I’m a phony! I got no powers, I got no right to be pretending to be the Wiz. I got nothing…hocus pocus. I’m just plain old Herman Smith from Atlantic City.” Dorothy is horrified to learn he’s just a random man from New Jersey.
He snivels about his failed attempts to run for public office, how he planned to throw his campaign flyers from a hot air balloon, but was picked up by the wind and blown into Oz, where they thought he was a Wizard. He enjoyed the attention so much that he decided to stay because he needed a job.
When Dorothy resolves to expose him, he begs them “Please don’t go. I live here all alone in terror that someone will find out I’m a fraud.” He asks them to just stay and talk, even if they treat him poorly and hurl verbal abuse at him. When the misfits realize that they won’t ever get their brains, or hearts or courage, Dorothy points out that they can’t get those things from Smith, he has nothing to offer them.
It’s also not just Kendrick who sees Drake this way. In season 2 episode 7 of the surrealist satire series Atlanta, titled ‘Champagne Papi,’ we see the character Van jump through hoops to go to Drake’s mansion and meet him. The surrealist comedy sees Van wading through hoards of clout chasers, Instagram models (what Van’s friend calls a thot-a-thon), people who know people who work for Drake, and Drake’s Mexican grandfather, but no Drake.
The mansion is huge, done up with gold trimmings, champagne colored curtains draping from the walls, intricate chandeliers, marble floors and columns, expensive paintings at every turn, a cardboard cutout of Drake that people line up to take selfies with, and even an ATM. But still no Drake. Instead, there is a cardboard cutout of Drake. The women charging for pictures with the cutout match Van’s incredulity when she figures out Drake isn’t at the mansion. One of them calls her out: “You thought you were going to have a meaningful convo with Drake or some shit? You was gon come to the party, ask for a pic, and post it on the ‘gram, so here you go.” Ultimately, Drake isn’t even at the party, he’s on tour in Europe.
There seems to be one question running throughout the episode: is Drake even real? Probably not, and everyone who fell for the farce, in this case, the young women, are idiots. I personally hate this episode because Glover uses it’s B-plot to work out his weird resentment towards black women and logically reconcile his interracial relationship with his white wife1, but I needed to reference it to make my point here.
This is how Kendrick and other unambiguously black men see Drake. He’s not a legitimate challenger, he’s not a threat, he’s just some random, desperate man from Toronto. While Kendrick has faced and overcome hardship after hardship, trying his best to become a better man for it, Drake is actively trying and succeeding to become worse and worse, terrorizing everyone in the process.
I calculate you're not as calculated, I can even predict your angle
Fabricatin' stories on the family front 'cause you heard Mr. Morale
A pathetic master manipulator, I can smell the tales on you now
You'rе not a rap artist, you a scam artist with the hopes of being accеpted
Cut You Off
If you read this newsletter, you know that I love being a hater. Hating is like my own personal national pastime. If I were to get a tattoo, it would be the one they stamp the eggs with, except mines would say “Grade AA Certified Hater.” So when I got halfway through ‘euphoria’ and hear Kendrick clearly and succinctly lay out the reasons he hate’s Drake, I felt euphoria.
MLK Jr. says “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” and like, yeah sure, but that doesn’t mean hating isn’t fun! That we shouldn’t partake from time to time!
Kendrick’s hate is also different. He’s so masterful with his pen and delivery that he makes it sound like he hates Drake for objective reasons. He loves to see Drake’s success, he even likes Back to Back!2 But the life Drake raps about and portrays on Instagram isn’t real. Kendrick is saying “you ate that one little thing I’m not gon lie, but you aren’t being honest and, principle-wise, that’s what I don’t like. I also just hate you.
This ain't been about critics, not about gimmicks, not about who the greatest
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 late DMX went on the Breakfast Club in 2012 and listed off things he doesn’t like about Drake. Kendrick invokes the list on ‘euphoria’ as his own version of “You wack, you twisted, your girl's a ho. (I mean, the lines “cause you's a soft type nigga/Fake up North type nigga/Get pushed like a soft white nigga” could’ve been about Drake anyway!) He then shames Drake for hating women while competing with them, because he can only really punch down without receiving what he deems as major blowback3. He adjudicates that Drake couldn’t even contemplate being a good father if he tried because he’s so unloving and unlovable.
F*ck Your Ethnicity
In previous posts, I have said that this is the year of reveals. But what has been revealed to me is that this is also the year of gatekeeping. That’s what Kendrick is doing here; he’s past ripping Drake’s mask off for the Scooby Doo villain he is, Pusha T did that six years ago and it staggered Drake’s life and career, Megan Thee Stallion did it again at the top of this year, and since Like That, rappers have gleefully skipped into the studio to whack him and get him again. There’s nothing left for Kendrick to reveal, so now, he’s gatekeeping, but the term means something different in this context.
I have ranted and raved the world over about how tired I am of black aesthetics being used as capital and cosplay for non-black women. It took me so long to accept and love my black features and not let others’ perceptions, often stereotypes, influence the way I move through the world. What I didn’t fully realize until listening to ‘euphoria’ is that black men are tired of it too.
I even hate when you say the word "nigga," but that's just me, I guess
Some shit just cringeworthy, it ain't even gotta be deep, I guess
As the era of BBLs and lip fillers comes to a close, as we call out non-black people for labeling AAVE as “internet speak” and expose influencers for blackfishing, as we stop handing out invites to the cookout (for whatever they were worth in the first place), we don’t wanna hear you say nigga no more.
Complexion
In her video Biracials Are Fighting For Their Lives on TikTok, Jouelzy calls out multiracial creators who use their black ethnicity for clout. These are people who are raised in white communities and a good number of them pass as white. But on TikTok, their favorite pastime is snatching their biracial father or black grandfather into the frame as a shock gimmick for viewers.
They hide or disregard their blackness until they need it for social or financial capital (or both), at which point they trot it out and argue with people who aren’t afforded the same privileges that their blackness is “just as valid,” that they are an integral part of the community they don’t actually give a shit about.
Jouelzy asks the pertinent question: “If you were actually in community with Black people, would you be doing this on the internet?”
“But what we do have to remember, what makes using your black parentage or your black ancestry as a gotcha moment for social currency is that this plays into what has historically happened with the black community in America. That our cultural contributions that come from the African American community have always been commodified and now as we move into the broader African diaspora, we are also seeing a reduction or a bastardization of the broader African diaspora culture or cultural practices that are being repackaged for mass consumption.”
I remember seeing a club night being advertised around my university in northern Scotland. The theme was Bloods vs Crips and the poster was of white people dressed up in red and blue bandanas, cosplaying as “gangstaz.” This is what I find so weird about non-black people’s perception and affinity for black culture. Why is gang violence so entertaining to them? And why only when it’s layered over a black aesthetic? I can guarantee no one in America or Canada or Australia or anywhere in the world is holding a Rangers vs Celtic themed club night. Because on the one hand that would be so lame!!! On the other, in Scotland, it would cause actual violence and not just some idealized, aestheticized version of it.
Watching non-black American people use aspects of my culture, my language, my features, all passed down to me from my ancestors is cringey to watch. Watching the Kardashian-Jenner family, Miley Cyrus, Danielle Brigoli, and every other Instagram model build a fortune off a caricature version of it is disorienting to say the very least.
Again, Kendrick’s problem with Drake isn’t that he’s biracial, his problem is that he plays up the worst stereotypes of black American men for clout and money that he rarely ever gives back to the people he’s pretending to be, unless it’s for more clout and money.
There are very few people who are delusional enough to think Kendrick and Drake are the same, and Drake is a platinum member of that very exclusive club. But there’s no way Kendrick was going to let someone like that disrespect the legacy of West Coast rap.
Somebody had told me that you got a ring, on God, I'm ready to double the wage
I'd rather do that than let a Canadian nigga make Pac turn in his grave
Maybe my favorite thing Kendrick does is cosplay the cosplayer. He takes a few bars to put on that ridiculous Canadian accent (which sounds like what someone from Buckingham Palace thinks what someone from South Central LA sounds like) and uses their slang particularly “crodie” (the Crip version of “brodie,” popularized by Canadians).
Real
As Jouelzy concludes, there isn’t really a way to end the exploitation of black American culture because it’s so overexposed. Policing biracial and multiracial black people is also an unproductive slippery slope. Now, in the 21st century social media age, the question: is are you in community with the people you portray yourself as or are you just using them for social currency?
But it also doesn’t always have to be that deep, sometimes it’s enough to know the weirdos (whites, Asians, white Latinos, Canadians, Europeans, etc.) who fail in their attempts to imitate us are cringe as hell.
Back to Back
As I was literally about to press publish on this, I found out Kendrick released yet another diss track.
On 6:16 in LA, he opens by calling Drake an “off-white sunseeker” which, like, I’m sorry if I was Drake I would just jump out the window on some Tommen Baratheon shit at that point. He goes on to speculate that Drake is “a terrible person” because half his team is giddy that he’s getting his ass handed to him. Kendrick once again paints a picture of Drake as the pathetic friendless bully alone in his mansion.
He ends by advising Drake to ask himself what Mike (Jackson) would do. Kendrick is referring to both Jackson’s and Drake’s child grooming allegations, but is also asking him to look at the man in the mirror. My guess? Drake is too busy taking selfies for Insta to heed any warnings.
to who, I don’t know
it also refers to Kendrick pulling a Back to Back and releasing another diss track
I don’t like the line about “real women” because it’s too messy to just leave dangling, especially in the context of hip hop. There was a more masterful way of speaking on Drake’s grooming allegations if that’s what he was doing. After a track like Auntie Diaries I don’t think it was intended as homophobia/transphobia, but misogyny doesn’t soften the blow!