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God knows I don’t want to pick sides in the bitter rivalry between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. The rappers’ feud has been going on for way too long (11 years!) for the casual observer to be able to adjudicate. I’m also mindful that even though rappers, like Aslan, seem to work to some deeper laws than those handed down by humans, I am still a regular mortal and as such covered by the rules of defamation.
But here is the situation as it stands: on Saturday, Lamar released his fourth diss track (a record in which mean things are said) about Drake – his third in 48 hours. The accusations in Not Like Us are many and wild – “Oof, he’s sailing a little close to the wind,” you might think about lines such as: “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young / You better not ever go to cell block one.” Has he really thought about the legal ramifications? Because it sounds a tiny bit like he’s calling Drake a … oh, here it is, in the next verse: “Certified lover boy [a reference to Drake’s 2021 album, Certified Lover Boy]? / Certified paedophiles.”
Unsurprisingly, Drake has denied this, but he hasn’t exactly kept his counsel, accusing Lamar of domestic abuse and infidelity. Lamar alleges poor parenting on Drake’s part, and the existence of an unacknowledged daughter. “You lied about your son, you lied about your daughter, huh / You lied about them other kids that’s out there hopin’ that you come,” he says on Meet the Grahams; he also claims addictions to gambling, alcohol, drugs, sex and spending. On Push Ups, in March, Drake called Lamar a pipsqueak (he’s quite slight) and alluded to his US seven shoe size (which is a UK six and a half. Sorry, once you get into the weeds, these details seem important).
Like I say, it could be dangerous for me to speculate about how many children Drake has, though of course it is theoretically possible to bottom out the size of Lamar’s feet. So let’s just cover my own arse and say that it’s all jesting hyperbole.
That position is strengthened if you compare it with the level of discourse in UK politics – or, if you prefer, blue-red beefing. (Everyone speculates like mad over Boris Johnson and how many unacknowledged children he might have, but that’s just called being a sentient voter.)
“Addicted to spending” is a classic charge levelled from right to left. Want a welfare state? Mad, obsessive spendaholics. Too cautious to get rid of the two-child benefit cap, even though child poverty statistics are the worst researchers have seen in modern times? They’re still spendaholics; they’re just secret, high-functioning spendaholics.
Abusing women and children, meanwhile, has become an absolutely standard – if still surprising, to me – accusation, again right to left, on any matter related to gender and identity. Support trans rights? You’re a groomer. You dare to think that “universal” toilets are actually not a big deal, and certainly nothing to legislate against, given that that’s what we all have in our houses and on trains? Ah well, then, you must be an inveterate misogynist.
The actual content of so much political argument is so overblown that it’s often hard to know how to respond. Should you address it on its own terms and say: “I’m actually not a groomer of any sort – indeed, not abusing children is one of my core values”? Or release a diss track of your own, speculating on the size of Suella Braverman’s feet?
It would definitely make the election more bearable, and no less sophisticated, to conduct it as a Sunak/Starmer rap battle.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
