With the recent release of Drake’s long-awaited response track to fellow hip-hop greats Metro Boomin, Future and Kendrick Lamar, “Push Ups (Drop & Give Me Fifty),” the five-time Grammy award-winner’s diss track is now rooted in even longer-winded and more tumultuous rivalries.
“A lot of rap music surrounding the beef is very targeted and energized compared to the past few years of rap,” long time hip-hop fan and senior Vedant Tiwari said. “‘Push Ups’ is the first time Drake’s really dropped a diss track on someone in quite a while. He did take disses at other people on his last album, but none of it seemed as antagonizing.”
With that said, here is all you need to understand the beef.
Released on March 22, Metro Boomin and Future’s joint studio album, “We Don’t Trust You,” was filled with stealthy blows to Drake’s reputation. Verses like “You went against the gang, you read what I’m saying” from the track “Out of My Hands” allude to Drake’s historical Instagram jabs at fellow rappers, while Future’s “I don’t need another fake friend, dog” in the title track is a direct response to Drake’s sneak-dissing in “What Would Pluto Do” from “For All The Dogs.”
However, the primary point of contention lies in Lamar’s part on “Like That,” the most popular track on “We Don’t Trust You.” Notable verses include “Don’t pull no coffin out of your mouth, I’m way too paranoid for a threat,” cautioning Drake of a potential response, and “Say, it’s a lot of goofies with a check,” mocking Drake’s supposedly underserved media verification checkmark.
While the origins of Drake’s beef with Future and Metro remain unclear, there is online speculation that the trio’s 2015 mixtape “What a Time to Be Alive” was expected to have a sequel, “What a Time to Be Alive 2.” However, as Metro was allegedly talking behind Drake’s back during this time, and also because Metro executive-produced “What a Time to Be Alive,” Drake instead committed to the album “Her Loss” with 21 Savage in 2022. Understandably, Future may have felt betrayed by this decision.
As for Drake’s rivalry with Lamar, Drake and fellow rapper J. Cole established the idea of the big three hip-hop greats of the current generation — K-Dot (Kendrick Lamar), Aubrey (Drake) and J. Cole in “First Person Shooter” — a song released as part of “For All The Dogs” in 2023. Lamar explicitly rejected the label on “Like That,” rapping “it’s just big me.” Whether these lines are a product of Lamar’s egotism or not, many fans can attest to Lamar’s unparalleled artistry, being the first rapper to win the Pulitzer Prize for “capturing the complexity of modern African-American life,” according to History.
“Drake is seen as less of a rapper, and is definitely taken less seriously as one compared to Kendrick,” Tiwari said. “I’d say there probably is consensus to Kendrick being the best rapper of the 2010s, and maybe Drake takes offense to that because he is more successful as an artist, but still isn’t considered to be on the same level as Kendrick.”
Still, as Drake himself spits in “Push Ups,” the current beef may as well be a “twenty-v-one.” From brewing feuds with Rick Ross to A$AP Rocky and the Weeknd (both of which were featured in “We Still Don’t Trust You,” released on April 12), it appears the entire industry is against Drake. Interestingly enough, the current scene is reminiscent of 90s hip-hop culture, where the desire to be the “GOAT” and put others down drove the genre’s excitement, according to The Kennedy Center.
Regardless of all this controversy, the beef between Drake and his industry peers still stands largely inconsequential, serving only to drive up fandom feuds and song plays. But in reality, who really knows? The next response to “Push Ups” may very well be the next defining event of the American music industry.
