Feuds
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Kevin Hart revived his Chocolate Droppa rap alter ego to make a surprise appearance as part of Kai Cenat’s AMP 2024 Freshman Cypher, which arrived Sunday (July 28). Hart grabbed the mic following Kai’s freestyle and channeled his inner-Kendrick Lamar by quoting a bar from Drake diss track “Not Like Us.”
“Sometimes you gotta pop out and show n—-s. I guess this is my pop-out,” he began. “Let’s get it!”
Move over Drake, Kendrick and J. Cole, because Chocolate Droppa has had enough of the “big 3” talk in the rap game. “All this talk about the Big 3, f–k that, them not me/ Goddamn, I’m mad/ Oh s–t, you sad/ Well, it’s time to get glad, ’cause I’m back and I’m really mad,” Hart raps.
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The comedian shows off his bilingual ability and is flanked by Cenat along with streamers JustFanum, Duke Dennis, Agent 00, ImDavisss and chrisnxtdoor while rapping on a rooftop.
Hart took the mic with him when finishing off his fiery verse and walking away for dramatic effect. “You don’t get the mic back after what I did to it. This mic gotta be burned,” he concludes. “B—h, I’ll do another freestyle right now!”
Per usual, Hart is staying busy as a multi-faceted entertainer. He’s co-hosting an Olympic Highlights show with Keenan Thompson, which is dropping multiple episodes per week recapping the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris on Peacock.
The 45-year-old also has a new movie on the way, with Borderlands set to hit theaters on Aug. 9. The film inspired by the video game of the same name pairs Hart with costars Jamie Lee Curtis, Haley Bennett, Jack Black, Cate Blanchett and Ariana Greenblatt.
As if that weren’t enough, once Borderlands is rolled out and the Olympics wrap up, Hart will get back on the road in August for his Acting My Age Tour, which will stop by Seattle, Kansas City, Portland and more.
Watch Kevin Hart’s freestyle below:
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On “thanK you aIMee,” Taylor Swift seemingly predicts that Kim Kardashian will never be able to escape reminders of their feud. “And one day, your kid comes home singing a song that only us two is gonna know is about you,” she sings on the Tortured Poets Department track.
As it turns out, that same logic applies to friends’ kids, as well. On Wednesday (July 17), the Skims founder commented on Ivanka Trump’s birthday post on Instagram for her daughter Arabella, side-stepping the fact that the new 13-year-old had a Swift-themed cake.
“Happy Birthday Arabella 🤍🩷,” Kardashian simply wrote.
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Arabella is the oldest child of the former political advisor and Jared Kushner, who also share sons Joseph and Theodore. Her heart-shaped cake matched the one Swift tears into in her “Blank Space” music video, and featured lyrics written in icing: “Boys only want love if it’s torture.”
“Best cake for my favorite Swiftie,” Trump wrote over a photo of the dessert, which featured red icing on the inside to mimic the blood that came out of the pop star’s when she stabbed it in the 2014 video.
Kardashian’s comment comes three months after the release of “thanK you aIMee,” which was the last time Swift appeared to address her beef with the reality star. “When I picture my hometown/ There’s a bronze spray-tanned statue of you/ And a plaque underneath it/ That threatens to push me down the stairs at our school,” the 14-time Grammy winner sings on the track. “I can’t forgive the way you made me feel/ Screamed, ‘F–k you, Aimee’ to the night sky.”
A few months before that, Swift called out the shapewear mogul by name in her December TIME Person of the Year interview. “You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” she reflected of their 2016 conflict, which involved Ye (formerly Kanye West) including disparaging lyrics about Swift in his song “Famous” that she claimed not to have approved, though he and his then-wife insisted she had on a call between the two artists.
“That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before,” she added at the time. “I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
Lil Wayne remained quiet for much of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake feud, but appeared to break his silence and throw his support behind the 6 God over the weekend.
The Young Money family bond between Young Angel and Young Lion is still going strong. During his performance at Zouk Nightclub in Las Vegas on Saturday night (July 13), Wayne took the intro of “The Motto” and tweaked lyrics to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” while briefly flashing his OVO owl pendant chain.
“They don’t like us,” Wayne can be heard rapping to the T-Minus instrumental while dancing on stage. It appeared to draw some confusion from the audience, as some thought he was saying, “They not like us.”
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“Not Wayne being an instigator Him and Ab Soul are trying to reignite the beef, I guess lol,” one person tweeted.
Lil Wayne is actually name-dropped on “Not Like Us” when Kendrick raps, “F—-d on Wayne girl while he was in jail, that’s connivin’/ Then get his face tatted like a b—h apologizing.”
The lyric appears to reference when Weezy was behind bars on gun charges in NYC and Drake allegedly got romantically involved with Wayne’s then-girlfriend Tammy Torres. The New Orleans rapper addressed the rumored fling in his Gone’ Til November: A Journal of Rikers Island prison journal. “I woke up still feeling f–ked up about the f–ked-up day that I had. Hell is what it was! I’m used to arguing with my girl [daily], but finding out that she f–ked Drake was the absolute worst thing I could’ve found out,” he wrote.
Thanks to a boost from the release of the official music video on July 4, Lamar’s “Not Like Us” returned to the No. 1 slot on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 chart, and the Drake diss track’s momentum doesn’t appear to be slowing. Even though the dust is settling on the Drake and Lamar feud, “Not Like Us” continues to be a force in pop-culture and churns out headlines. Serena Williams even Crip walked to the song and mocked Drake while on stage at the ESPY Awards, which Wayne attended.
As for the Weezy and Kendrick Lamar relationship, the pair of hip-hop titans teamed up in the past on Tha Carter V‘s “Mona Lisa,” and fans have requested Weezy perform the 2018 record at concerts, but Wayne revealed in June he doesn’t remember the lyrics to it. “This is the second time I’ve seen this within my last three shows. Somebody had a sign that said, ‘Mona Lisa’… If y’all real Lil Wayne fans, you know I don’t know the lyrics to my s-t,” he said on stage.
The rapper continued: “You know how hard that f–king song is, girl… You know what I mean? I don’t like to rap the words, but I’m going to learn that s–t. I’m going to learn it. I got you.”
Watch Lil Wayne tweak the lyrics to “Not Like Us” during his concert below:
Not only was Drake out a six-figure wager following Canada’s loss to Argentina on the pitch in the Copa América semi-final on Tuesday (July 9), but the winning soccer team’s X account added insult to injury while trolling Drizzy. Argentina poured salt in the wound after the 2-0 victory over Canada by quoting Kendrick Lamar’s Drake […]
Ab-Soul is always representing for Top Dawg Entertainment, but he believes redemption is possible for Drake in the wake of the fallout of the 6 God’s feud with Kendrick Lamar.
Soul, a longtime Kendrick Lamar affiliate, took to X on Tuesday morning (July 9) to get some thoughts off about Drake and the beef, which he deemed to be not a “rap battle,” but “scripture.”
While he was always riding with K. Dot and the West Coast, the TDE rapper thinks there’s a path back to the top for Drizzy thanks to his potent skillset. “If Drake is the MC I imagine he can be. Redemption is not off the table,” he wrote.
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Fans were surprised to see Soul sticking up for Drake, as a heated back-and-forth broke out in his replies while the tweet went viral.
“After the 2Pac AI verse? Nah. the moment he did that he lost the battle forever. I hear you But that settles it for me,” one person wrote.
Another said, “It’s genuinely hilarious how yall talking like he got outrapped but when yall remove this obvious bias yall have it can def be argued that he won the war of bars.”
Soul continued to clarify, “Key word ‘MC.’” He also made sure to explain he was backing Kendrick when it came to the rap war, as he didn’t want his rant taken out of context.
“But b4 my rant gets out of context. He could never Fucc wit da Gang’Nem on sum rap shyt. That was Never a question,” the 37-year-old declared. “We could still ‘potentially’ match ‘artistry’. (Removing my obvious personal/educated bias).”
Ab-Soul also hit the stage to help Lamar perform the live debut of his “6:16 in L.A.” Drake diss at the Pop Out concert on Juneteenth. In the past, they’ve connected on tracks such as “P&P 1.5,” “Illuminate” and “Ab Souls Outro.”
The consensus (including Billboard‘s) was that Kendrick Lamar was the winner in the Drake feud, and he’s continued to take a victory lap this summer. Dot delivered the “Not Like Us” video on July 4, which could give the diss track a boost on next week’s Hot 100, where it sits at No. 3.
Find Ab-Soul’s tweets about Drake and Kendrick below.
This was not a rap battle. It was scripture.— Ab-Soul (@abdashsoul) July 9, 2024
If Drake is the MC I imagine he can be. Redemption is not off the table.— Ab-Soul (@abdashsoul) July 9, 2024
But b4 my rant gets out of context. He could never Fucc wit da Gang’Nem on sum rap shyt. That was Never a question.— Ab-Soul (@abdashsoul) July 9, 2024
We could still “potentially” match “artistry”. (Removing my obvious personal/educated bias)— Ab-Soul (@abdashsoul) July 9, 2024
Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” has permeated different avenues of pop culture, and now, even libraries are feeling the impact of the Drake diss. The Los Angeles Public Library went viral over the weekend when it posted a video to TikTok and Instagram over the weekend, debating whether its owl puppet needed to say farewell […]
Joe Budden is finding new ways to wedge himself into the Drake and Kendrick Lamar feud. The rapper-turned-podcaster claims he played a role in the “takedown” of the 6 God dating back to his 2016 beef with Drake.
Budden hopped into a Twitter Spaces on Monday (June 24), where he took credit for starting to chip away at Drake with their feud before “passing the baton” to Pusha T and ultimately K. Dot earlier this year.
“It may sound narcissistic, but I don’t think any one man takes down Drake,” he said. “I think I passed the baton to Push, I think Push passed the baton to Kendrick, and the job is done now. That’s how I feel in my head and my heart.”
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Drake and Budden’s feud heated up in 2016 following the New Jersey native’s criticism of Drizzy’s Views album. The OVO boss took shots at Budden on “4PM in Calabasas,” and Budden fired away at Drake with a series of diss tracks including “Making a Murderer, Pt. 1,” “Wake” and “Afraid.”
Drizzy didn’t respond directly with a diss track, but replied by sniping at Budden on “No Shopping” with French Montana.
Two years later, Pusha T left a stain on Drake’s résumé in 2018 when claiming that Drizzy had a son named Adonis — well before Drizzy himself confirmed the news — on the scathing “The Story of Adidon” diss track, which Drake did not respond to.
The great rap war of 2024 was seemingly kicked off by K. Dot’s atomic verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That” in March, which jabbed at both Drake and J. Cole.
Drake stepped up to deliver “Push Ups,” the AI-assisted “Taylor Made Freestyle,” “Family Matters” and “The Heart Part 6,” while Kendrick unleashed “Euphoria,” “6:16 in L.A,” the diabolical “Meet the Grahams” and the Mustard-produced kill shot “Not Like Us.”
The hip-hop community declared K. Dot to be the victor against Drake, and Lamar figuratively took a victory lap at his Pop Out concert on Juneteenth. He celebrated with thousands of fans inside the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., where Kendrick performed a few of those Drake diss tracks for the first time and ran back “Not Like Us” five times in total.
Find Joe Budden’s full answer below.
Kendrick Lamar unified the West Coast with his epic Pop Out: Ken & Friends concert celebrating Juneteenth on Wednesday night (June 19), which was one for the hip-hop history books with K. Dot performing his Drake diss track “Not Like Us” five times in a row to close out the show.
After performing the live debut of his nuclear guest verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” K. Dot welcomed his mentor and iconic West Coast rapper Dr. Dre to the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., as he rose from underneath the stage for one of the biggest surprises of the night. “I see dead people,” Dre whispered as Mustard’s signature Cali bounce on “Not Like Us” blared through the speakers.
In a red hoodie with jeans and a pair of Nike Shox (an outfit some fans compared to 2Pac‘s at the 1994 Source Awards), Kendrick had the 18,000-plus in attendance and rap world watching via Amazon Music at home in the palm of his hand.
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The raucous crowd sang along to every last word of the “Not Like Us” live debut. They held the “A-minor” Drake punchline for what seemed like an eternity while Lamar basked in what he curated.
But that wasn’t all. Kendrick ran the Drake kill shot back a second time and spun the block for a third round of “Not Like Us.” The fourth edition was the most special, as K. Dot proved West Coast unity about 15 miles northwest of where the Compton native grew up, while bringing various L.A. luminaries such as NBA stars DeMar DeRozan and Russell Westbrook on stage, who essentially danced on Drake’s figurative grave.
Mustard, G Perico, Hit-Boy, Blxst, Steve Lacy, Big Boy, Westside Boogie and Lamar’s Black Hippy running mates joined the party alongside other gang members repping different sets across Los Angeles. Each took a turn dapping up Kenny on stage as he kept his breath control intact amid the distractions.
“This s–t making me emotional,” Lamar admitted while gathering the blended crew for a group photo moment that he wished could last forever “We been f—ked up since Nipsey died. We been f—ked up since Kobe [Bryant] died,” he poignantly declared. “This is unity at it’s finest.”
“Not Like Us” wasn’t the only Drake diss performed by Lamar for the first time as part of his explosive set. He kicked things off with the bristling “Euphoria,” which found him tweaking a lyric directed at the 6 God. “Give me 2Pac’s ring back and I might give you a little respect,” he spewed. Lamar also brought out Ab-Soul to perform his verse on “6:16 in L.A.” mixed into his run of greatest hits.
“Not Like Us” gave Kendrick his fourth Hot 100 leader as it debuted atop the all-genre chart on May 13 with over 70 million streams in the first week. The West Coast anthem sits at No. 6 in its sixth week on the Hot 100 while “Euphoria” holds at No. 47.
While gang violence and street politics have cut lives way too short, Kendrick Lamar united a city for one night where territory allegiances and banging sets didn’t matter in the name of hip-hop. “It ain’t got nothing to do with no back-and-forth records,” Kendrick said, dismissing his Drake feud. “It’s got everything to do with this moment right here. That’s what this s–t was about. To bring all of us together.”
Find more highlights from Kendrick’s memorable “Not Like Us” performance below.
Cardi B has always been her most authentic self since bursting onto the rap scene in 2017 with “Bodak Yellow.” She quickly was able to ingratiate herself to the Bardi Gang, and it’s a testament as to why her fans ride so hard for her.
One fan came to Cardi’s defense on X when wondering whether the continuous bashing of the rapper’s speech patterns could be deemed racist.
“At what point does making fun of cardi b’s speech patterns become racist,” they asked on Sunday (June 2).
Cardi B appreciated the sentiment and thanked the fan for defending her on Monday (June 3), while explaining that she’s not changing for anybody.
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“wwwww thanks for defending me FCK THEM I will never change the way I talk… I became famous from that just being myself! Then I started making music and became a millionaire out of it,” she wrote. “THIS IS A MULTIMILLION DOLLAR ACCENT BABBYY OKKKKRRR.”
The heartfelt exchange seemed to be in response to bars sniping Cardi B from Bia on her “Sue Meee?” diss track taking aim at The Bronx native, which arrived over the weekend.
“You should be home with your kids ’cause b—h, you speak like second grade,” she raps while jabbing Cardi’s speech.
The Cardi-Bia feud ratcheted up a few levels in the last week when Cardi put the rapper on blast in an Instagram Live and threatened to file a lawsuit against her if she keeps allegedly slandering the Grammy winner.
“You could come at me at any angle. You gonna lie on my f–kingg pussy. B—h, you lying on my f–king p—y. When you lie about my p—y, I’ma sue you and you better come with receipts,” Cardi said.
She seemed to also subliminally diss Bia with her verse on Megan Thee Stallion and GloRilla’s “Wanna Be (Remix),” which was released on Friday (May 31).
Bia didn’t waste much time when firing back with “Sue Meee?” over the weekend. In the track she accused Offset of cheating on Cardi, called out the “WAP” rapper for allegedly having ghostwriters and dissed her body.
See Cardi’s tweet thanking a fan for defending her accent below:
Awwwww thanks for defending me 🥺 FCK THEM I will never change the way I talk… I became famous from that just being myself! Then I started making music and became a millionaire out of it.. THIS IS A MULTIMILLION DOLLAR ACCENT BABBYY OKKKKRRR 💁♀️ https://t.co/jpezWMBCg0— Cardi B (@iamcardib) June 3, 2024
Slim Shady has found himself in quite a few feuds.