Timothy Norris/Getty Images for pgLang, Amazon Music, & Free Lunch
Kendrick Lamar performs onstage during The Pop Out – Ken & Friends Presented by pgLang and Free Lunch at The Kia Forum on June 19, 2024 in Inglewood, Calif.
This past Sunday (Sept. 8), Kendrick dropped news that sent the rap community into a frenzy. Standing at the 50-yard line as he worked a football throwing machine with a huge American flag behind him, the Compton MC announced that he will be headlining next year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. He also made sure to throw a subtle shot at his 2024 rival: “You know there’s only one opportunity to win a championship,” he said before loading another football into the machine. “No round twos.”
Two weeks ago, Drake took to his finsta account, @plottttwistttttt, and posted an old video clip of NBA All-Star Rasheed Wallace telling reporters that his Detroit Pistons “will win Game Two” after dropping the first game of the 2004 NBA Eastern Conference Finals. Many believed that was Drake’s not-so-subtle way of telling fans that he’s not yet done with the battle. And despite talking heads like DJ Akademiks saying the Toronto rapper has no intention of continuing the back-and-forth, Drake alluded to a continuation on the song “No Face” (probably his best post-battle release) when he rapped lines like, “How you get lit off the n—a you hatin’ on?,” “This is the moment I know they been prayin’ on,” and “I’m just so happy that n—as who envied and held that s–t in got to finally show it/ I’m over the moon, yeah, we’ll see you boys soon.”
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Those lines don’t really hit the same post “round one,” but I get the sentiment. In boxing and pro wrestling, when the title holder loses their belt, they’re usually entitled to a rematch. He’s seemingly expressing that he doesn’t feel or want this battle for rap’s heavyweight title to be over. However, even after all that’s gone down, I’m still not sure he realizes who he’s dealing with. Lamar seems to have a darker side to him; a side he struggles to keep at bay, especially when he appears to despise his opponent so much.
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Enter last night’s loosie Lamar posted on his Instagram account. He’s not necessarily “dissing” Drake, but he’s indeed talking to him — and the rest of the mainstream rap community that promotes nonsense over substance. The song works as an exposé on the modern mainstream rap industry, and Drake serves as a symbol of both rap’s massive popularity and its devolving cultural significance in the eyes of fans familiar with the genre’s roots. To them, he has always been seen as a visitor, never to be taken too seriously. Yet, he’s proven that he’s willing to battle when tested. That coupled with his hit-making ability was able to buy him more cultural currency a little bit at a time.
That party seems to be coming to an end, though, considering Drake’s chart dominance has stalled since losing the battle. None of his recent releases have charted particularly well, at least judging by his own standards. The club just turned the lights on, and the DJ is playing “Poison.” The bar’s closing, where we going to for breakfast?
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Dot starts off his latest with the lines, “I think it’s time to watch the party die/ This s–t done got too wicked to apologize,” before saying, “Just walk that man down, that’ll do everyone a solid/ It’s love, but tough love sometimes gotta result in violence.” In his mind, he did the hip-hop world a favor by exposing Drake and his so-called selfish, dirty mackin’, colonizing ways. He also takes aim at social media pundits who have served as mouthpieces for Drake, or at least claim to, throughout this battle.
Bars like, “Influencers talked down ’cause I’m not with the basic s–t/ But they don’t hate me, they hate the man that I represent/The type of man that never d–kride ’cause I want a favor” and “The radio personality pushin’ propaganda for salary/ Let me know when they turn up as a casualty, I want agony, assault, and battery,” are directed at them. At times, Kendrick comes across as someone who believes he has a moral superiority — but on this track, you can hear him wrestling with the angel and the devil on his shoulder on the chorus, as he pleads with God to give him peace, while also keeping the lames at bay.
Many fans and critics have described Drake as Thanos, because Rap Game Sinister Six had to team up to finally knock him off his pedestal. However, Kendrick has been Thanos this entire time: The Marvel supervillain’s whole philosophy was based on destroying and rebuilding, a philosophy Lamar mentions in this new song. He talks of burning down villages to start over and said one of his friends told him he must “burn it down to build it back up.” Lamar is grappling with the rationalization of what he’s done to Drake, so far, and he sounds like he doesn’t think the job is done just yet.
“Watch the Party Die” is essentially the scene from Avengers: Endgame where Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man try to walk Thanos down, and he spits some of the greatest dialogue a villain has ever spat. He looked them in the eyes and said: “You could not live with your own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to me. I thought that by eliminating half of life, the other half would thrive. But you’ve shown me that’s impossible. And as long as there are those that remember what was, there will always be those that are unable to accept what can be. They will resist. I’m thankful, because now, I know what I must do. I will shred this universe down to its last atom and then, with the stones you collected for me, create a new one, teaming with life that knows not what it has lost, but what it has been given. A grateful universe.”
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The rap world stops when K. Dot drops. He doesn’t have to use streamers with questionable ties to the community to leak information. He simply tweets a link out or posts a song on Instagram with no title, and a picture of gnarled black Air Force One’s, and everything comes to a halt. Almost like a snap of the finger.
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