Disses aren’t strictly an integral part of hip hop culture, but they sure come up with some frequency—especially in the music. Ever since hip hop came around in 1973, rap battles big and small have been regular events, sometimes even ending in tragedy. Unlike the Korean hip hop scene, where the end result is usually fairly tame, it’s not unusual for disrespectful rap in the United States to escalate into serious violence. This has led to very mixed views on diss tracks. Some see dissing as contributing positively to the evolution of the subculture, but others are leerier and show concern over the kind of violence it can lead to. Still others see it as nothing more than simple entertainment. If you take a look at the history of hip hop, none of these viewpoints are without merit: While it’s true that conflicts between rappers have given birth to undeniable classics, it’s also equally true that some major talents have been taken from the world all too soon in the name of such feuds.

And so, here we are, faced with another round of sparring that encapsulates hip hop’s most polarizing activity. Today we look at a clash between two of the most well-known and influential rappers out there: Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Like most rappers who have beef, they started out on good terms. Back in 2011 and 2012, they performed on the same stage together and had nice things to say about each other. It seemed like a friendship was forming, but in 2013, things took a sudden shift when the world heard Lamar’s verse in Big Sean’s single “Control.”

It all started with Lamar positioning himself among history’s greatest rappers: “I heard the barbershops be in great debates all the time / ’Bout who’s the best MC: Kendrick, Jigga, and Nas / Eminem, André 3000, the rest of y’all.” He goes on to address several other famous rappers by name and intimidate them with, “I got love for you all, but I’m tryna murder you n****s / Tryna make sure your core fans never heard of you n****s.” And among the list of stars he’s coming for is Drake.

Although Drake claimed in an interview with Billboard that year that Lamar’s verse didn’t really bother him, something off-putting developed between the two soon afterwards. Drake talked about how hip hop is a competitive field by nature, but he nonetheless indirectly expressed rumblings of discontent when interviewed. It felt like a diss track was right around the corner—all that had to happen first was for someone to take things a step too far. But then Lamar thanked Drake during an awards ceremony, and a photo of them together made the rounds, and by 2016, fans and the media alike felt the flames of tension they had been watching so closely had gone out, speculating it had only ever been a difference of opinion about “who’s the best MC.”

But they all read the situation wrong, and the beef between the two hip hop stars was far from over. Then, earlier this year, their feud took a turn for the worse, and once again it was Lamar fanning the flames. But the circumstances were a bit more complicated this time. He didn’t even have Drake in his sights at first, but rather J. Cole. Drake dropped a single titled “First Person Shooter” last October featuring J. Cole, who named himself, along with Drake and Lamar, the “big three” in the rap world. But something about this rubbed Lamar the wrong way, and he made it clear in March in his verse on “Like That,” a joint single by Future and Metro Boomin. Lamar turned the tables on Cole, referencing his and Drake’s song by name and then proclaiming, “M****rf**k the big three, nigga, it’s just big me.” Whereas Cole took an amicable approach to the debate over the “big three,” Lamar was quick to shoot that down and launched a scathing offensive.

Cole fired back at Lamar with a diss track of his own, “7 Minute Drill,” on April 5. He apparently had a change of heart, though, as he walked his words back just two days later, saying he only made the track because “the world wanna see blood” and felt pressured to retaliate. With Cole backing down, it looked as though the hip hop scuffle was cooling down, too, but then, on April 13, more gas was thrown on the fire when Drake’s own diss track targeting Lamar, “Push Ups,” leaked online. The song, which seemed to have been intentionally leaked, came with extremely crude lyrics. He mocked Lamar by calling him short and chastised him for working with mainstream pop singers like Taylor Swift and Maroon 5. He then dropped yet another diss track, “Taylor Made Freestyle,” just six days later, before Lamar could even respond, criticizing his opponent for remaining silent. The title is a reference to Taylor Swift, and another swipe at Lamar, who Drake accuses in the song of not firing back sooner so as not to overlap with the release of Swift’s album The Tortured Poets Department. He provokes Lamar further on the issue, going as far as to suggest Lamar would need Swift’s permission before dropping his own diss track.

But “Freestyle” had an issue: Drake used AI-generated voices of 2Pac and Snoop Dogg on the track to make it sound like they were egging Lamar on to retaliate with a track of his own. This plan to have virtual copies of two hip hop legends—who Lamar respects deeply—try and rattle the rapper backfired, with the 2Pac estate particularly up in arms, calling it “a flagrant violation” and “blatant abuse of the legacy of” the late hip hop artist, and demanding that Drake take the track down within 24 hours or else face legal repercussions. In the end, Drake took the song down, but he remained on top. After all, he was the one launching all these attacks that were going unanswered.

But Lamar shook things up on April 30 when he finally released the six-minute-long diss track “euphoria.” Named after the HBO series on which Drake serves as a producer, the track shows Lamar was waiting for just the right moment to strike with full force. He attacks Drake for everything from being multiracial to his parenting and rumors surrounding plastic surgery, and calls his rap skills and even his authenticity into question, calling him “a scam artist.” The intense hip hop brawl kept fans and the media on the edge of their seats.

At this point, Drake flinched, and Lamar released a second diss track on May 3, this one titled “6:16 in LA.” Even the title got people talking as it seemed to mock Drake’s habit of using times and place names in his song titles. Lamar may have also intended for the title to have multiple meanings: June 16 is 2Pac’s birthday—again, one of Lamar’s personal heroes—as well as the date the first episode of Euphoria aired. The track was also produced in part by Jack Antonoff, who famously works in close tandem with Taylor Swift, leading people to suspect he was deliberately chosen as to be an indirect response to Drake’s repeated name-dropping of the singer-songwriter. The song, first posted to Instagram, includes lyrics that suggest Lamar has a double agent working inside Drake’s OVO label, leaving those who were following the feud hungry for more.

Before the day was even over, Drake had already hit back with a new, nearly eight-minute song called “Family Matters.” In this track filled with accusations of cheating and abuse, Drake asserts that his rap rival assaulted his own fiancée and that their child was actually fathered by Lamar’s manager. Drake’s choice of lyrics was blunt and risky. Though rap battles always churn up attacks, mockery, and hidden secrets, they prove particularly controversial when family, and especially children, are caught in the crossfire. “Family Matters” signified that they had just about crossed the point of no return in their ongoing feud.

Lamar was livid now. Within hours of “Family Matters” coming out, he ushered in his latest rebuttal, “meet the grahams.” Lamar, too, took no-holds-barred shots at Drake’s family, first by pitying his son for having Drake as a father, then painting the rapper as an irresponsible parent, a narcissist, a misogynist, and a sex offender, and accused him of using ghost writers. He capped it all off by hinting that Drake secretly has a daughter as well, and while Drake denied the allegation in an Instagram story, people had already lost interest in the facts and were now swept away by Lamar’s powerhouse rapping, tour-de-force writing, and the sheer scandalousness of what he had so audaciously put into words.

Now riding unstoppable momentum, Lamar next released “Not Like Us,” his third diss in a span of 24 hours. Even the cover art was provocative, featuring a shot of Drake’s Toronto mansion blanketed in little red location pins like those that might indicate where sex offenders reside. Lamar really goes for the jugular on this track, directly branding Drake a “certified pedophile.” He also chides Drake for disrespectfully resurrecting 2Pac with AI in “Taylor Made Freestyle.” The highlight, though, comes in the final verse. After previously taking more veiled jabs at Drake’s racial and cultural identity, this time he makes it official and moves in for the kill with the line, “You not a colleague, you a f**kin’ colonizer”—what was no doubt the most brutal smackdown of the entire fight between them. Here, Lamar uses the term “colonizer” to make certain suggestions about Drake’s relationship with hip hop culture and the Black community, implying that the multiracial Drake can’t fully understand the Black experience and the hardships that accompany it, yet still benefits from laying claims to the culture.

On May 5, Drake shot back with “The Heart Part 6,” named in reference to Lamar’s long-running series of similarly titled tracks. In this diss track, Drake claims the rumor about him secretly having a daughter is something Drake’s own team fed Lamar as bait. But the song was no match against the double whammy of “meet the grahams” and “Not Like Us.”The public’s response to “The Heart Part 6” was lukewarm. It became clear that the tides were turning. The flood of diss tracks released in such rapid succession proved massively popular on the Billboard chart and across streaming platforms—especially “Not Like Us,” which toppled the old record of 6.5 million daily streams on Spotify in the US for a hip hop song. It’s also just a fantastic track on artistic merit alone, poised to become one of hip hop’s most revered diss tracks in the tradition of songs from the 1990s like “Hit ’Em Up” by 2Pac and the 2000s like “Ether” by Nas.

What a whirlwind of a time it was, with two of rap’s biggest stars exchanging seemingly endless blows, and invigorated fans taking sides across social media and forums online. Considering the quality of the tracks and the media frenzy they stirred up, it’s fair to say the fight rivaled such historic beefs as 2Pac vs. Biggie and Nas vs. Jay-Z. Drake and Lamar’s rhymes were just as brutal and razor-sharp, the aura surrounding the feud intensely bitter.
Still, as Pitchfork journalist Alphonse Pierre wrote in a May column, it was also “the most miserable spectacle in rap history.” The rappers aired dirty, dubious laundry in public—touchy and downright foul accusations laid out for all to see. The fact that the combatants would stoop to dragging each other’s children into the fray is downright appalling. And that’s what makes treating this elaborate rap battle as mere entertainment a stretch. There might be what you’d call a clear victor, but the scars they’re left with make you wonder if it was worth it.
All’s quiet on the front for the time being. Drake deleted every one of his posts on Instagram related to the war, including where he most recently promoted “The Heart Part 6.” Maybe he just wants to rid himself of all the negative energy surrounding him. Kendrick Lamar, too, has stopped putting out any new responses. Whether this is truly the end of their beef or a mere brief moment of peace, no one can say for sure. Whatever comes next, it was one dramatic, chaotic month that’ll go down in the hip hop history books.