FERG has proclaimed that he belongs in the upper echelon of rappers in the game today alongside the likes of Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole.
The former A$AP Mob member makes the bold assertion on “DAROLD,” the title track from his new album which was released Friday (November 8).
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“Who the top rappers, hmm? / Kendrick, J. Cole, any list, I’m on that,” he raps over airy, ominous production from Kash Beats, Powers Pleasant, Tweek Tune and Manny Laurenko.
Elsewhere on the song, FERG namedrops a number of other rap legends while revealing his biggest influences: “I’m a bit of Busta, Common, Hova, Dark Man X, put ’em all in a bag.”
FERG isn’t the only player in the game to have thoughts on the so-called “Big Three” of Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and Drake.
At the height of the high-profile battle involving all three earlier this year, Doja Cat jokingly proposed a drastic revision to the lineup, asking her X (formerly Twitter) followers: “HOW is Pitbull not in the big 3?????????”
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When then asked who her “Big Three” is made up of, she replied: “Pitbull, Chingy, and Baby Bash.”
Taking a more serious approach, Vince Staples criticized streaming companies for seeking to capitalize on the tension between Kendrick, Drake and Cole.
“We have every songwriter that we’ve ever had in Hip Hop music complaining about their publishing splits, but we kind of don’t pay attention to that,” he said on The Joe Budden Podcast.
“But once n-ggas get mad, the whole internet is activated and we got billboards from streamers talking about, ‘Hip Hop is a sport.’ But we ain’t never seen a billboard from a streamer that said, ‘Give that n-gga his publishing back.’”
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He added: “Why are we at war with the n-gga that’s making a song and not the motherfucker who owns the whole thing? We don’t say their name at all. We quiet when they do some fuck shit.”
On his chart-topping collaboration with Future and Metro Boomin, “Like That,” Kendrick rubbished the very idea of a “Big Three,” confidently rapping: “Motherfuck the big three, n-gga, it’s just big me.”
