Kendrick Lamar reportedly dissed Drake during the Compton, California rapper’s BET Hip Hop Awards cypher appearance.
“Nothing’s been the same since they dropped ‘Control’ / And tucked the sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes,” Kendrick Lamar says in his cypher verse. “Ha-ha, jokes on you / High-five, I’m bullet proof / Your shits will never penetrate / Pin the tail on the donkey, boy, you’ve been a fake.”
Reports of Kendrick Lamar dissing Drake stem from the rapper’s use of “nothing’s been the same” in the verse. The line likely refers to Drake’s album title, Nothing Was The Same.
No official word has been made regarding whether the verse was directly a diss to Drake. AllHipHop’s video teaser of the verse, which can be seen below, contains “Drake Diss” in its title. The brief video containing the above excerpt can be viewed below.
Kendrick Lamar mentioned Drake during his verse on Big Sean’s “Control.”
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“I’m usually homeboys with the same niggas I’m rhymin’ with,” Kendrick Lamar says on the song. “But this is Hip Hop and them niggas should know what time it is / That goes for Jermaine Cole, Big K.R.I.T., Wale / Pusha T, Meek Mill, A$AP Rocky, Drake / Big Sean, Jay Electron[ica], Tyler[, the Creator], Mac Miller / I got love for you all but I’m tryin’ to murder you niggas / Trying to make sure your core fans never heard of you niggas / [And that] they don’t want to hear not one more noun or verb from you niggas / What is competition? / I’m trying to raise the bar high.”
After the song was released, Drake responded to the song in an interview with Billboard.
“I didn’t really have anything to say about it,” Drake said. “It just sounded like an ambitious thought to me. That’s all it was. I know good and well that Kendrick’s not murdering me, at all, in any platform. So when that day presents itself, I guess we can revisit the topic.”
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“He didn’t come in there on some wild, ‘I’m in New York, fuck everybody,’” Drake said in September. “I almost wish he had come in there on that shit because I kind of lost a little bit of respect for the sentiment of the verse. If it’s really ‘fuck everybody’ then it needs to be ‘fuck everybody’. It can’t just be halfway.”
Drake also said he does not view Kendrick Lamar as a competitor because he’s “more about consistency.” Drake also called Lamar “the new guy” and said he didn’t think “Control” was memorable.
“He’s the new guy to love and rightfully so,” Drake said. “He’s super talented…That verse was a moment to talk about. Are you listening to it now, at this point in time? But it was real cool for a couple weeks. But if I ask you, for example, how does that verse start? Mind you, it’ll go on and Complex or Rap Radar will give it ‘Verse of the Millennium’ and all that shit or whatever…I remember somebody asked if Kendrick Lamar is my biggest competition in this generation. I think Kendrick has the utmost potential. I see Kendrick tomorrow, I’ma dap him. I didn’t feel a way about the verse. I get it. I get the moment. And I know that verse had no malice behind it because I saw him five days later at the VMAs and it was all love.
“When it comes to competition, I’m more about consistency,” Drake continued. “I’m more worried about bodies of work. I’m talking about hit records. I’m basically talking about, there’s one guy who’s up every night thinking about how to get better and how to do things bigger. That’s Kanye West. He’s always gonna be the guy that’s trying to outthink and outdo. So, for me, that’s my guy that I aspire to surpass.”
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“I’m probably like as done as the rest of the world is with that record,” Drake said. “I think it came and it went. And not to discredit it. It was a good moment, but at the end of the day it’s just like—it was one of those sort of like fleeting Twitter frenzies that like—it was cool for what it was. My thing is I like lasting power. I feel like he made a decision, you know what I’m saying? And it was a decision to make. He was like ‘Man, I’m either gonna go for this moment because I know it’s gonna be a big moment or I’m gonna take heed to the fact that I have real relationships and I’m gonna like not do that.’ Cause I’ll be real, I thought of doing that before. I thought ‘Man, it’d be crazy if I just went off on everybody.’ But it’s just kinda like, ‘Ah, where does it really get me? Then what? Then every time I rap people are gonna expect me to be confrontational and when I’m not then it’s not entertaining?’ It’s like it kinda puts you in a box a bit. I don’t know if I necessarily respect it.”
UPDATE #1: The clip of the cypher excerpt has reportedly been blocked by Viacom. The video clip was posted on allhiphop.com’s Instagram account and can be viewed below.
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(October 3)
UPDATE #2: The complete, much-discussed cypher featuring TDE can be viewed below.
RELATED:Kendrick Lamar Says He’s “Trying To Murder” Drake, J. Cole, Wale On Big Sean’s “Control”
