Kanye West has weighed in on the simmering feud between Drake, J Cole and Kendrick Lamar.
The spat has been escalating since last year, when Cole referred to the trio as “the big three”, a description that Lamar forcefully rejected.
West, a long-time adversary of Drake, has now added his two cents, on a remix of Lamar, Future and Metro Boomin’s song Like That.
“I can’t even think of a Drake line,” he said, attacking the star’s lyrics.
West also criticised Drake’s record deal with Universal Music, suggesting he’d sold the rights to his music for “little bag” (money).
“Lifetime deal? I feel bad for [you],” he said.
West’s remix was premiered on Justin Laboy’s radio show The Download – and opened with the line “Yo Dot, I got you,” a reference to Lamar’s nickname, K-Dot.
He only played a snippet of the song and, although a fuller version later leaked online, it was unclear whether that was genuine or fan-made.
West and Drake’s animosity can be traced back to a dispute over a beat in 2018 – and culminated in an infamous song by Pusha T (and produced by West), where he revealed the existence of Drake’s son Adonis.
The latest war of words started on last year’s Drake and J Cole collaboration First Person Shooter, where the “big three” claim originated.
The seemingly innocuous comment went unremarked for months. Then, 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”.
He went on to call Drake and Cole’s best verses insubstantial (“a light pack”) and claimed he was the Prince to Drake’s Michael Jackson.
Two weeks later, J Cole offered his own reply to Kendrick’s verse, in a track called 7 Minute Drill. He called the Pulitzer Prize winner’s last album, Mr Morale and The Big Steppers, “tragic” and said the star had “fallen off” his A-game.
He later apologised, appearing to back out of the feud, but Drake doubled down, with a song called Push Ups (Drop And Give Me 50).
Amidst a lot of comments about Lamar’s height, he also suggested the star was a record label puppet who’d been forced to add verses to commercial pop songs by Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift.
“Pipsqueak, pipe down, you ain’t in no Big Three,” he added.
Lamar appears to be uninterested in responding, but Drake seems determined to provoke a response.
On Friday, the Canadian star released a new track called Taylor Made Freestyle – in which he suggested Lamar was unwilling to engage in the feud because he was in cahoots with Swift, and didn’t want to overshadow (or be overshadowed) by her album release.
“If you ’bout to drop, she gotta approve/This girl really ’bout to make you act like you not in a feud,” he goaded: “Yeah, shoutout to Taylor Swift/Biggest gangster in the music game right now.”
The song also appeared to feature AI vocals from Lamar’s rap hero Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg. Their verses also tried to prompt a response from the star.
“Kendrick we need ya, the West Coast saviour/Engraving your name in some hip-hop history,” advised the AI Shakur.
“World is watching this chess game, but are you out of moves?” admonished the AI Snoop Dogg.
Of course, all of this is good for business. Both Like That and Push Ups are among the Top 40 most-played songs on Spotify.
