Euphoria is the latest in the hip-hop heavyweights’ fight via songs, which has now drawn in some of the biggest names in rap
Kendrick Lamar has released a new diss track against Drake titled Euphoria – the latest in a long-running feud between the two hip-hop heavyweights which was reignited earlier this year and has since ballooned into a “civil war” among rap’s upper echelons.
The song, which shares a name with the HBO series on which Drake serves as executive producer, was released on Lamar’s YouTube channel on Tuesday.
Over six minutes, Lamar calls Drake a “master manipulator and habitual liar” before attacking his parenting abilities, his biracial identity and his Canadian background.
“I got a son to raise, but I can see you don’t know nothin’ bout that,” Lamar raps on the track.
Elsewhere, he raps “how many more Black features ‘til you finally feel that you’re Black enough?” and accuses Drake – who is the most-streamed male artist of all time on Spotify – of selling out by merely making “music that pacify ‘em”.
The pair’s feud dates back as early as 2013, when Lamar – who had just broken out at the time – appeared on the Big Sean track Control to assert his dominance over his fellow rappers. Later that year, he took aim at Drake, referring to him as a “sensitive rapper” in a performance at the BET awards.
In March this year, the feud ignited again when Lamar made a guest appearance on Future and Metro Boomin’s Billboard-topping hit Like That.
Lamar’s verse responds to a 2023 song called First Person Shooter by Drake and J Cole where the two artists called themselves, along with Lamar, the “big three” of hip-hop.
“Motherfuck the big three,” Lamar raps on Like That. “It’s just big me.”
In April, Drake released the first of two diss tracks. Titled Push Ups, the song mocks Lamar’s shorter stature as well as his mainstream collaborations with Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift.
Later that month, Drake dropped another diss, Taylor Made Freestyle, which incorporated AI technology to imitate the voices of Snoop Dogg and the late Tupac Shakur criticising Lamar.
Released on Instagram, the song quickly drew ire, including from Shakur’s estate, which sent a cease and desist letter calling the track “a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time”. Drake complied, removing the song from his social media accounts.
Euphoria namechecks the incident. “Am I battlin’ ghost or AI?” Lamar raps – referring to both Taylor Made Freestyle, as well as accusations of ghostwriting made against Drake over the years.
The squabble has drawn in many rap peers over the past two months, including the Weeknd and Kanye West, who have recently released their own tracks referencing the feud. Others such as Rick Ross and Metro Boomin have responded to Euphoria on social media.
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kendrick lamar euphoria
Kendrick Did Everything He Needed to on ‘Euphoria’
The Compton rhymer’s response to Drake is the scathing clapback fans anticipated
The Compton rhymer’s response to Drake is the scathing clapback fans anticipated
I’VE SPENT THE past month theorizing that the root of Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s dysfunction is how philosophically different they seem to be. Their actions speak loudly for two sects of hip-hop in antithetical opposition. While Drake’s three weeks of post-“Push Ups” digital mischief entertained his fanbase and, for some, upped the pressure on Kendrick, the West Coast rhymer’s fans put on an unbothered front, surmising that Drake was anxiously awaiting a potent clapback. True enough, Kendrick opened his diss track “Euphoria” by echoing his fans’ sentiment that “Them superpowers gettin’ neutralized, I can only watch in silence, the famous actor we once