The Rap Civil War of 2024

Kendrick Lamar unites the rap community against Drake

Let’s start with Kendrick Lamar’s unexpected and scathing diss aimed at Drake and J. Cole on the track Like That from Future and Metro Boomin’s album We Don’t Trust You, released March 21, 2024.

On Like That, Kendrick left no room for ambiguity, expressing his beef explicitly with the line, “First-person shooter, I hope they came with three switches… motherf*** the big three, it’s just big me.” This was a direct response to Drake and J. Cole’s 2023 track First Person Shooter, where J. Cole mused, “Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the big three like we started a league,” solidifying the notion that Kendrick, Drake, and J. Cole have been rap’s most dominant trio since the 2010s.

However, the idea of a “Big Three” in rap is a misconception. Rap has historically been led by duos: Tupac and Biggie, Jay-Z and Nas, Lil Wayne and T.I., 50 Cent and Kanye West. Kendrick, Drake, and J. Cole simply can’t fit that pattern.

J. Cole is the odd man out here. Neither a chart-topper nor a visionary, his artistic limitations become evident when compared to his peers. Kendrick is the only non-classical artist to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music, while Drake is the most commercially successful artist of this…