(July 31, 2024). Many hip-hop fans and rappers — among them the legendary Rakim and Questlove — have offered strong opinions on whether the recent Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar diss battle — of which many observers have deemed K.Dot the winner — was “good” for hip-hop.
Rakim, in a recent interview with Billboard while promoting his first new album in 15 years, stated that he believed “the battle put a lot of things in perspective — because it showed the difference between real hip-hop and mainstream hip-hop.” The legend continued, “Younger artists now know that there’s a difference. A lot of them didn’t even understand that.”
The inference was that Drake represented the mainstream while Kendrick was more of a traditionalist, a sort of good vs. evil (you decide which is which) when it comes to hip-hop.
Questlove, on the other hand, recently declared “hip-hop is truly dead” while expressing his disdain for the battle which, to him, recalled the deadly outcome of the East-v.-West rap war between Biggie and Tupac, the ‘90s two most polarized rappers who both succumbed to violent deaths in the wake of their historic beef. Quest noted that he’d never seen a battle of this magnitude that ended well.
This year’s rap beef — easily the biggest one of the 21st century — certainly has been good for Kendrick, whose streams have gone up precipitously since April and whose “Not Like Us” is not only this summer’s hip-hop anthem, but also arguably the biggest hit of the Compton rapper’s long, storied career.
It’s a song so popular yet so polarizing, that Kendrick performed it five times at a recent concert in L.A., while places more friendly to Drake have literally banned it from being played.
But has it really been good for all of hip-hop? Or is Kendrick the only rapper who’s truly benefited from the historic battle between two of this century’s biggest artists? The following indicators would seem to suggest the latter is true (but there are other data that would suggest the former may be as well).
First, the argument against the beef benefiting hip-hop as a whole.
Since Kendrick effectively ended this most recent chapter of his ongoing beef with Drake upon the release of “Not Like Us” in May, which entered the top ten concurrently with Drake’s “Family Matters,” only one other song by a rapper has moved into the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100. And that was by 51-year-old icon Eminem, whose “Houdini” debuted and peaked at No. 2 in early June.
So essentially for the past two months, only two rap songs have taken up space in the top ten — “Not Like Us” and “Houdini” — suggesting that the beef has not parlayed into major singles consumption numbers for other rappers.
On the album side, Eminem’s The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) is also the only hip-hop album since Future & Metro Boomin’s We Still Don’t Trust You in April to top the Billboard 200. Three others — by Gunna, $uicideboy$, and Megan Thee Stallion, also all veterans — have reached the top ten, but none of those sold enough or garnered enough streams to beat Taylor Swift’s recent juggernaut The Tortured Poets Department at No. 1. They didn’t even come close.
Another sign that the historic Kendrick-v-Drake battle didn’t benefit other hip-hop artists is how quickly what was initially touted as hip-hop’s next big civil war between many of rap’s A-listers became just a two-man battle between Drake — the most chart-prolific artist of the past fifteen years — and Kendrick — the most awarded rapper in that same period. In the end, that was the only battle we cared about. The rest was just noise.
J. Cole initially entered the fray but quickly — and wisely — pulled out after deleting his song “7 Minute Drill” — an attack mainly targeting Kendrick Lamar — from digital streaming platforms. The bait-and-switch almost surely cost him a No. 1 album in Might Delete Later, which settled for a No. 2 debut in April.
Other big name artists, including Rick Ross, The Game, and Metro Boomin’, released their own diss tracks — all triggered by the Drake/Kendrick beef — but with zero chart success. The Game tried to bait Ross into a response to “Freeway’s Revenge,” the scathing track the Compton rapper released in May attacking the “Biggest Boss” (who he’d taken issue with for siding with Kendrick) about his weight issues and Ozempic use, his past as a corrections officer, and his allegedly freaky bedroom fetishes. When Rozay smartly didn’t respond on wax, The Game’s track went nowhere, failing to make the Hot 100 altogether, which was the same fate that doomed the latest entries by Ross (“Champagne Moments”) and Metro (“BBL Drizzy”).
As for Drizzy, the Canadian icon has also appeared as a featured act on two high-profile — and relatively benign — singles since the takedown by Kendrick, with both of those failing to make significant waves on the Hot 100. His collaboration with Sexyy Red, “U My Everything,” only reached No. 44, while “Hot Uptown,” the new song by Camila Cabello on which Drake guested, got no higher than No. 62.
Those are extremely low peaks for Toronto’s biggest export, the most prolific artist in chart history with more than 330 Hot 100 entries since 2009. The “6 God” has had a No. 1 song every year this decade before 2024. If he goes the rest of this year without hitting the top, it’ll be a first for him since 2019 (and only the second year since 2015 without a No. 1 for Drizzy).
Another factor: It appears that hip-hop’s headlines of late — chart-related or otherwise— have been reserved for the big name veterans. No new rap acts — defined here as those charting for less than 18 months with no prior top-ten history — have reached the top ten on the album or singles charts so far in 2024. And only one rapper has achieved his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 since May 2022: Ty Dolla $ign, by way of a collaboration with Kanye West on this year’s Vultures 1 in February.
All other chart-topping albums by rappers since May 2022 — nineteen total — have been by veterans who’d hit No. 1 previously, suggesting that the industry has had a hard time breaking new MCs with the kind of ease it had just a few years ago when then-new acts like DaBaby, Pop Smoke, Lil Baby, Gunna, Roddy Rich, and Young Thug were topping the charts on the regular.
Then there’s the fact that older hip-hop is carrying a significant amount of weight for the genre these days. Roughly 75% of all hip-hop consumed in the first half of 2024, according to Luminate (Billboard’s data provider) was defined as “catalog” product — or those on the market for 18 months or longer.
All of the above would suggest that the main beneficiary of the now legendary beef between two of hip-hop’s biggest acts was one rapper: Kendrick, and not hip-hop as a whole, at least not in sales or on the charts.
But there are also indications that hip-hop was served well by the beef, one so ingrained in pop culture that it now has its own Wikipedia entry.
Hip-hop — combined with R&B (Luminate tracks them jointly)— still commands a lion’s share of streaming consumption in the U.S.
According to the data company, R&B/Hip-Hop accounted for 24.6% of this year’s music consumption at the midway point, which was nearly six percentage points more than the next highest genre — rock — which pulled in 18.7%. So the beef certainly didn’t diminish interest in hip-hop, people are still consuming it in massive amounts. It is on track to be the most consumed genre of music for the eighth consecutive year, having overtaken rock for the crown in 2017.
Hip-hop also still has the ability to generate buzz and headlines unlike most other genres. This year’s BET Awards, for example, featured many of rap’s popular stars — mostly females like Megan Thee Stallion, Sexyy Red, GloRilla, ICE Spice — who, with the exception of Megan, may not be topping the charts but are creating a large following with buzz-worthy tracks featuring sexually charged lyrics and BBL-infused imagery.
But now hip-hop’s existence seems to thrive on a diet of just those two themes: the over-sexualization of its female MCs and rehashed, decades-old rap beefs between males and females alike. Will those two themes alone be enough to sustain or even enhance hip-hop’s standing in the long term?
No one knows for sure. What constitutes “good” hip-hop may be forever questioned or even eulogized — as it has been in the past — but hip-hop doesn’t appear to be “dead” as Questlove declared in his viral reaction to the Drake/Kendrick beef.
Hip-hop will indeed be here forever. But this year’s historic beef really only moved the needle for one guy: Kendrick “Kung Fu Kenny” Lamar.
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog and on Meta’s Threads.
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