Did Drake... win?

Revisiting the Great Rap Battle of 2024. Which, was just a few days ago.

So, here’s an interesting trend I’ve been monitoring. People I know, whom – for all intents and purposes – have seemingly projected as politically Left, are feeling emboldened to declare that they were skeptical of the COVID vaccines during the pandemic. Some have gone so far as to confess that they never got the jab at all. In fact, they’re proud and even gloating about it.

This week, the New York Times published a piece about how thousands of people claim that the vax injured them. Since this is coming from the NYT and not Fox or Truth Social, liberal antivaxxers are feeling vindicated and using the article to drum up support for their position. What they’re really saying (as are the people interviewed in the editorial) is that in the past, they were afraid of speaking out against the vaccine for fear of backlash from their own community. With the passage of time, a loosening of staunch judgments, and shifting attitudes around new information, they are finally comfortable to live their truth.

Only now are we getting a more accurate read on public perception of the COVID vaccine, uncontaminated by peer pressure, virtue signaling, or obligation.

If you’ve been following my Substack, you know I often return to this theme of being slow to judgment. It first surfaced for me during the Trump presidency. I was intrigued by how reactive I became when confronted with a red hat, how quickly I wrote someone off for their presidential voting preference. But I was even more surprised by how certain I was in my assessments, even if I’d never interacted with the individual at all.

You may remember how black-and-white (no pun intended) the world felt back then. Eight years ago, from a Democrat’s perspective, a person who voted for Trump was stamped a bigot or a Nazi. A tiki torch-bearing Klansman. That may still be the case in some progressives’ eyes, but with time, the culture has fanned out a more nuanced understanding of who voted for the 45^th President and why. I’m assuming most of my readership leans left, so perhaps you’ve experienced this turn as well. Maybe you’ve maintained a healthy debate with a Republican or tolerated the fact that your kids’ soccer coach watches Tucker Carlson. It might not be as shocking anymore to find out there’s a guy at work who voted for Trump or that a lot of BIPOC constituents are on his side. Overall, American sentiment has softened (even if slightly) with regards to the DJT conversation. The New York Times writes that in 2024, American voters now “exalt in a revisionist history in which destroyers are viewed as disrupters, in which our past anxieties are downplayed.” For many, Trump isn’t so bad anymore.

The lesson of being slow to judgment resonated most for me during the crypto and NFT bull run of 2021. There was so much froth and frenzy around mass financial movement, that proponents were eager to pronounce bold truths and predictions around digital currency. When the social commotion is high, it gets harder to see outside the bubble, especially if your algorithm is skewing your confirmation bias. Then, once the bear market settled in by late 2022, the impulsive verdicts and condemnations poured in from the other side. The cynics screamed, “SCAM.” Because crypto had taken a temporary hit, the media pounced on its death. But they were wrong, as Bitcoin inched its way back up to All Time Highs in 2024. You see the same thing happening now with A.I. Although a complex phenomenon with countless tendrils, Luddites have made up their minds that Artificial Intelligence is universally evil and without redeeming qualities.

Because of the rapid pace of information, people don’t have the luxury of time to sit with an idea and let it breathe. We see something new on our feeds and feel compelled to plant a flag. With enough social pressure, we’re forced to issue a personal press release on the matter. And since we couldn’t possibly have the bandwidth for exhaustive research, we angle our stance safely within the tribe’s groupthink. Tomorrow, we move on to the next topic that begs our firm stance (this is especially unfortunate when it comes to technological advancements, since innovation requires generations of missteps to find its footing).

Over the weekend, my older son and I were wading through the Drake vs. Kendrick tracks, and he said, “Dad, you know why Kendrick’s smart? Recency bias*.” (By the way, I’d never heard this term until then. Whether he picked the word up from a TikTok is left to be determined…)

*Working in fashion for two decades, I know recency bias well. Fashion trends move so quickly, and our attention spans hold onto so little these days, that when our salespeople conduct store reports, buyers’ projections are often founded on the latest thing a customer bought – instead of a balanced, objective view of the entire season.

Drake would broadcast a diss and then Dot would immediately clamp a response down on him like a lid on a boiling pot. Not thirty minutes had passed since Drake uploaded the “Family Matters” music video before Kendrick answered with “Meet the Grahams.” The Internet handed Friday night’s spoils to Kendrick Lamar, but was Drake’s track given a fair shot? In that tight window of airtime, Kendrick’s songs had more time to marinate with audiences. The digital space also changes the dynamics of music virality. And recency bias – whichever song played last – might have had an outsized impact on listener affections.

As of today, the media and public have deemed Kendrick the unequivocal winner of the last great rap beef. But I wouldn’t be surprised if those poll results change with time. In the heat of the moment, Kendrick was lauded for being heavy handed in his approach. Today, without aggregate emotion and social mob mentality to color opinions, some listeners are stepping outside the lines and wondering whether Kendrick’s accusations of Drake’s pedophilia were egregious. Is Kendrick a bully? Did he go too far? In all wars, self-defense can be construed by the other side as oppression. And history has shown us that the people eventually turn against those who ruthlessly seize power.

The beef is currently on a ceasefire with speculation that the war is over. But on Sunday night, Drake’s bodyguard was shot in a drive-by outside of the rapper’s Toronto mansion. Two different intruders have trespassed on Drake’s property this week. If more people are hurt or if either camp suffers irreversible loss, history may not shine so brightly on Kendrick’s decision to enter, or even elevate, the battle.

Currently, there are memes joking about how Drake made fun of Kendrick’s shoe size and Kendrick overshot by dragging Drake’s family into the fray. Years from now, teenaged TikTok pundits and Akademiks disciples may collectively decide that Kendrick was rash in his replies and didn’t play by the rules of combat. Americans love to build their heroes and break them down, so Kendrick may live long enough to see himself become the villain. Just in the last 24 hours, online sleuths are questioning his credibility, claiming that Kendrick lifted some of his heaviest bars from preexisting tweets.

My son doesn’t always make the most profound remarks, but he did make one more sharp comment about the situation.

“You know, at first I thought that J.Cole was the loser of the Big 3. But, now he’s starting to look like the winner.”

He’s not alone. Initially, the core drama was shared between J.Cole, Kendrick Lamar, and Drake. But J. Cole dropped one diss against Kendrick and promptly backed out. He even rescinded the song (apparently, following the advice of Schoolboy Q). Twitter didn’t spare a minute in disparaging Cole for cowardice. The rap community ridiculed him and questioned his credibility. But his rankings in this fight may also shift as time goes on. Kendrick and Drake dragged each other’s skeletons out of the closet, but J. Cole’s integrity remains intact. While the other two were up all night, airing each other out as abusers and pedophiles, Cole enjoyed a peaceful day at the beach. We were quick to judge his abrupt and bizarre exit from the melee. On second look, he found the only way to win a rap battle: Stay out of it.

These days, wars rarely end with winners and losers. They unfurl forever. Within the coming year, Drake will drop another hit record and then Kendrick, and they’ll trade barbs or maybe go on a unification tour or team up against The Weeknd. And, like the aging COVID vaccine debate, Drake sympathizers may feel braver to voice their views (pun intended) once the clubs stop pumping “Not Like Us” through the speakers. If enough gather the courage, they could change the narrative. So, perhaps another definition of victory is in order. Or, at the least, we should pause before we call a winner in a clash that is still raw and open.

@lipstickitttyVIBES @Andre Power @olea #notlikeus

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My friend Mriga told me to revisit the diss tracks and listen to them in succession. We are both Kendrick fans, but she told me the songs might sound different one week later. And she was right. This time around, listening to both players on a level field, sans recency bias and with equal amounts of opportunity to respond to the other, Kendrick still rapped better, but Drake held fast to his hitmaking character. I don’t see myself changing my opinion on who won this round (Team Kendrick ‘til I die), but for the first time in my life, Drake grew on me.

I’ve never been a Drake fan. Drake is Internet theater while Kendrick is the streets. I don’t get how Drake stans reconcile his bad boy persona with his TV past. The entire thing frustrates me as a millennial hip-hop purist. But there are more levels to Drake now. Kendrick brought them out of him. And both artists have added another facet to their ongoing legacy, a new paragraph in their Wikipedia pages, that will shape how the world considers them and hip-hop from here on out.

We call the end of the world Judgment Day. A judgment -- a ruling or decree -- marks the final word in a drawn-out debate. But in the back channels of hip-hop disputes, decades later, we still nerd out on Biggie v. Pac, we still argue over “Ether” and “Second Round KO.” We’re reopening history books and reevaluating war victors. This thing is far from over. Don’t be misled by the 10,000 thinkpieces about Drake vs. Kendrick in the last five days (which, I’m ashamed to be contributing to). We still don’t have a winner. Thank God. Long live rap.