Kendrick Lamar Takes the Gloves Off for Drake Diss 'Euphoria'

The ever-escalating feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar reached a new level of animosity on April 30, as Lamar released a six-minute, no-holds-barred attack on his Toronto rival. Titled "Euphoria," the song sees Lamar tackling everything from Drake's rumored use of ghostwriters to his pop-friendly leanings, his Canadian-ness, his authenticity, his masculinity, his purported failings as a father, his employment of AI-generated Tupac Shakur vocals, his use of appropriated accents, his abs, his hair, his various contractual obligations, the way that he walks, the way that he talks and the way that he dresses.

It's possible that the above description does not fully do justice to the sheer breadth of Lamar's grievances, so please refer to the song below for a complete accounting.

The two rappers have reportedly been less than fond of one another for years, but their beef finally exploded onto wax in late March when Lamar took some barely-veiled shots at both Drake and J. Cole on the song "Like That" from Future and Metro Boomin's album We Don't Trust You. (The squabble has since grown to encompass a wide cross-section of hip-hop names, including Rick Ross and Kanye West.) Cole issued the first response, "7 Minute Drill," then tapped out of the feud and removed the song from his latest release, later calling it "the lamest s--t I ever did in my f--king life." Drake issued a belated response with the leaked track "Push Ups," then took the dispute into uncanny valley territory with "Taylor Made Freestyle," pointedly using the synthetic vocals of Tupac Shakur, one of Lamar's heroes, only to take the song down after a cease-and-desist letter from Shakur's estate.

Evidently honoring Cole's attempts at deescalation, Lamar's "Euphoria" only mentions the North Carolina rapper once, in passing, with the Pulitzer Prize winner aiming all his venom straight at Drake. Starting on an unexpectedly meditative note, Lamar then drops a warning -- “Know you a master manipulator, and habitual liar, too / But don’t tell no lie ’bout me, and I won’t tell truths ’bout you" -- before a beat switch begins the song in earnest.

Throughout the song, Lamar runs through a sort of "greatest hits" from Drake beefs of the past. He makes repeated reference to Pusha T, whose all-out brawl with Drake made headlines in 2018 when Pusha broke the news that Drake was "hiding a child." "I got a child to raise, but I can see you don't know nothing 'bout that," Lamar raps here. He also resurfaces the allegation that Drake has employed ghostwriters, which was a key sticking point in Drake's 2015 beef with Meek Mill: "Ain't twenty-v-one, it's one-v-twenty if I gotta smack n----s that write with you," he says.

While never quite as vicious as Pusha T's "The Story of Adidon," which lead even some hip-hop beef connoisseurs to wonder if things might have gone a bit too far, "Euphoria" is rather remarkable for the sheer diversity of complaints Lamar lodges against his rival, from the serious to the trivial. (Lamar does confuse Houston megachurch preacher Joel Osteen for former child actor Haley Joel Osment in a reference to The Sixth Sense, but otherwise his cultural references check out.) "I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk / I hate the way that you dress, I hate the way that you sneak-diss," Lamar bellows, going on to imply that Drake is better suited to the pop charts: "I like Drake with the melodies, I hate Drake when he acts tough... Keep making me dance, waving my hand, and it won't be no threat."

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While lyrical battles and back-and-forth feuds are as old as hip-hop itself, it's become increasingly rare to see rappers on the level of Drake and Lamar going after one another so explicitly. The beef would have certainly come as a surprise a decade ago, when Drake had a guest feature on Lamar’s 2012 major label debut, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, following Lamar’s appearance on Drake’s Take Care a year earlier.

The two have taken wildly divergent paths since those days, when both were among rap’s hottest emerging stars. Drake spent the next decade releasing enormous amounts of music, breaking decades-old Billboard chart records and becoming one of the most ubiquitous pop stars of the current century. Lamar, on the other hand, has carved out a more esoteric trajectory, becoming the first rapper to win the Pulitzer Prize on the strength of adventurous, provocative albums like To Pimp a Butterfly. (Lamar’s last album, 2022’s Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, was arguably his least-commercial work yet, though it still debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.)