Like a soap opera, you skip an episode and lose track of the story. Last month, two of hip-hop’s most successful artists of recent times – Kendrick Lamar and Drake – were embroiled in a back-and-forth rap dispute that reached new levels over the weekend when Lamar released “Meet the Grahams.” and “Not Like Us” and Drake dropped “The Heart Part 6.”
The conflict may be the most recent music event of the first half of 2024, as both MCs expressed strong opinions about each other in the dissident tracks, leading to secondary discussions fueled by fan glitches, trolls, thinkpieces and social media threads . And while the initial conversations may have only slightly piqued the interest of some listeners, the stakes rose following the release of Kendrick’s “Euphoria” last Tuesday. At this point the beef became something bigger, evolving (or evolving) from standard rap to stormier waters. This includes accusations and exchanges on serious topics: racial authenticity, domestic violence, illegitimate fatherhood, morality, grooming, hypocrisy, colorism, and even colonialism.
The conflict has now matured enough to warrant broader consideration. Specifically, an examination of what this controversy tells us about the connection between hip-hop, conflict, and online culture.
No advertising campaign can create the anticipation that rap beef creates, sometimes out of nowhere. Whether we enjoy it or not, we are all waiting for the next iteration. Through Drake and Kendrick Lamar, we are reminded of how quickly public arguments can capture attention—and of the many ways in which the ecology of digital space in 2024 can influence the emergence of these conflicts.
Firstly, an artist Now control the timing and pace of publications. Unlike in the past, when popular DJs often packaged diss songs into radio sets, artists today can curate the release of these tracks and go directly to listeners via platforms like YouTube, Instagram and X/Twitter.
Second, the war on truth in the age of misinformation has now made fact-checking irrelevant; Whatever someone accuses another artist of in a song can be true or false. Whether we believe it depends primarily on whether we want to believe it, whether the message agrees with our pre-existing views. And while questionable allegations in Beef Raps have always been true, the speed at which untruths can spread these days means absurd claims can more easily take on a life of their own.
Finally, there is the specter of fake songs generated by artificial intelligence. This makes us hesitate before clicking on a link as we struggle to debate the authenticity of what we are about to hear. Saying someone employs ghostwriters used to be the most damning accusation in hip-hop. These days there are many more ways to make up a song and fewer ways to tell the difference between us and the robots. This particularly came to the forefront in April when Drake released “Taylor Made Freestyle,” a track that appeared to use an AI-generated version of Tupac Shakur’s voice. (The rapper removed the song after Shakur’s estate sent a cease-and-desist letter.)
Battle rap, whether in the form of personal confrontations or via dissident tracks, has always been one of hip-hop’s flagship sports, characterized by banter between artists, often – but not necessarily – derogatory in tone. It has its roots in “the dozens” and related relics of African American culture, which thrive on spontaneity, humor and wit (often at the expense of others). While “fight” can be conducted solely for competitive reasons, “beef” requires a certain level of personal unity between the parties. What happens in 2024, when artists like Drake and Lamar trade bar(s) via IG posts and YouTube clips and their fans debate the merits on social media, marks a new era of rap beef.
Even this summary has a certain recency bias: competitive poetry existed in parts of the world centuries before hip-hop. Still, there’s something special about the way conflict arises in hip-hop: Beef has spawned some of the most popular songs of all time and has been linked to real-world violence. It’s a topic that hip-hop ponders for a short period of time (often after the loss of a popular figure, like after the deaths of Shakur and Notorious BIG in the mid-90s) and then goes back to business as usual: swapping rappers A and B taunts, perhaps several times. Sometimes a winner is announced. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes there is violence; Sometimes there are formal peacemakings, like when Jay-Z and Nas ended their argument on stage during a show in 2005. Often there is widespread attention: rinse, rap, repeat. In the digital world, the cycle moves at the speed of a click.