What Kendrick Lamar taught me about facing my enemies

Kendrick Lamar has spent the last couple of months airing out more than a decade of built-up tension and ill will he’s had for his rap rival, Drake. Lamar has dropped five diss records since the end of March, with three coming in rapid succession over the course of a weekend. He’s channeled all that aggression and animus into a tactical takedown of rap’s biggest star in the most embarrassing, public way possible. Lamar has had four diss records chart on the Billboard Hot 100 (three in the top 10), calling Drake a phony, a liar, a master manipulator, a man who has issues with his Blackness, a deadbeat father, a gambling addict, and someone hiding an 11-year-old daughter. Much of the rap world has crowned Lamar as the man who runs the genre and shut down his nemesis, carving up someone he’s hated for years in a public humiliation.

Through it all, I’ve vacillated between aspiring to be like Kendrick Lamar and envying him for the way he’s punished someone he feels so strongly about. I’ve dreamed about wanting to inflict this type of embarrassment and harm on people I despise, but watching the fallout from Rap’s Big Feud has made me reconsider.

Let me explain.

There are a handful of people in the world who I actively hate. 

Former friends. Former family members. People I once trusted. And people who have felt the comfort of cold silences and passive aggression for years. The thing they have in common is an acute ability to gaslight to the point that they can pretend any act of vengeance would be unprompted. But I know what they’ve done to me. And I know what they deserve. 

If you’re reading this, I’m sure you’ve been here, too. The problem with these cold wars is that the person who finally pushes the button to heat things up looks like the unprompted aggressor. So we wait. We wait for the moment the enemy slips up and reveals themselves deserving of our wrath. But when you wait too long, that desire to attack begins to eat at you. Until that anger becomes part of you.

I find myself creating fictional interactions where I’m prompted to unload on the people I despise. Where I can finally tell them — and, honestly, the world — how I feel and why these people deserve the bad things my particular wrath would bring to their lives.

“Euphoria” felt like Lamar finally exhaling something that had been sitting in his lungs for ten years, burning on its way out.

David Dennis Jr.

When I’m in the shower, I let the water wash over my face while I mouth what I’d say to my enemies if the moment came when their plausible deniability disappeared, and they did the thing that allowed me to be my most brutal self to them. 

I’ve dreamed about it. A lot. 

But I’ve also spent the last few weeks thinking about Drake’s retreat and where that leaves Kendrick Lamar. Professionally, Lamar will probably bask in his victory — there’s a rumored “Not Like Us” video dropping soon — before fading back to his life of calm in between albums. He’ll still have to weather some of the rumors from the feud, namely Drake’s allegations that Lamar abused his partner. Though, admittedly, the burden of responsibility to deny isn’t as heavy for Lamar, considering Drake is the only source of the rumor. Still, a subset of fans will always demand answers from the Compton MC. Lamar will also have to reckon with his own musical contradictions, namely his willingness to get into rumors, mud-slinging, and moralizing about the treatment of women to tear down Drake even though Lamar featured Kodak Black, who plead guilty to first-degree assault and battery of a high school girl in 2021, on his last album, Mr. Morale And The Big Steppers.

These controversies will, for the most part, blow over as Lamar has arguably become rap’s new top dog. It’ll be interesting to see how the rapper who said, “Only you like being famous,” to Drake on the diss record “Euphoria” has now become as famous as Drake and maybe as famous as any rapper has ever been, thanks to the beef that has been the pop culture story of 2024. Lamar’s next album will be as anticipated as any album in rap history. It will likely be brilliant, as he hasn’t given us any reason to expect otherwise.

These predictions are good fodder for barbershop debates and discussions about the state of hip-hop.

What I’m fascinated by is what’s on Kendrick Lamar’s heart and how he’s caring for it.

It’s clear that Lamar has had a deep disdain for Drake since their cold war started a decade ago. As the two traded subliminal jabs, Lamar’s always seemed to contain a deeper vitriol that warned that if/when he and Drake butted heads, it would be a no holds barred fight. When Drake told his rival, “Your sh– is not that inspiring,” Lamar would snarl on beats and drop lines like, “They liable to bury him, they nominated six to carry him,” alluding to Toronto, known as “the Six,” where Drake resides and the idea that he’ll one day die because of their feud.

Lamar carried on like this for years. Every project — from his albums like DAMN and signature “Heart” freestyles to the Black Panther soundtrack — had a handful of disses and warnings aimed at Drake. But it was unclear how much animosity Lamar had built up for all those years until he unleashed his first full-throated diss, “Euphoria,” a few weeks after Drake’s first direct salvo, “Push Ups” dropped. While Drake was rapping about Lamar’s shoe size and his record label earnings, Lamar was saying things like, “I hate the way that you walk, the way you talk, I hate the way that you dress,” in a song that ripped Drake for wanting to appropriate Black American culture and for his feuds with Black women. “Euphoria” felt like Lamar finally exhaling something that had been sitting in his lungs for ten years, burning on its way out.

On “Not Like Us,” the final song of Lamar’s barrage, he raps that he has five more songs recorded to diss Drake. But a few days after its historic release, Drake had seemingly removed himself from the fight. “This sh– was some good exercise,” he rapped on “The Heart Part 6,” his last song in the feud. 

I wonder how Lamar reacted to his opponent backing down and what he feels now, having only released half the songs he’s recorded to let the world know how he feels about Drake. Two of the unreleased songs are rumored to be particularly devastating, but Lamar has already said a lot about Drake — enough to nearly snuff out his superstardom or at least put some clouds in the way of his shine. But knowing he still has twice as many songs in the vault makes me wonder if Kendrick Lamar is content with his victory or if the points at the end of the final nails in the Drake coffin still poke at his flesh. Does he still write lyrics about Drake in his notebook? Is there closure?

It wasn’t until I started thinking about the aftermath of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake feud, particularly the former’s reaction to his victory, that I started thinking beyond my revenge fantasies for those I wanted to aim my own “diss records” toward. I started thinking about what would happen to me after I’ve said what I had to say. When I’ve confronted, fought, embarrassed, humiliated, or even ruined the people I feel deserve it. I don’t know if I’d stop playing out future arguments in the shower. I don’t know if I’d hold on to that hope that they’d ask for it again so I could unload any new slights or deeper cuts. I don’t know what victory would even feel like in matters of emotional violence.

I’d always thought that blasting my enemies would free me of those things I held deep inside. But when I think about Kendrick Lamar and what he’s still holding and what he may or not still be feeling about Drake, I wonder if the sweetness of his victory is accompanied by the freedom from his ill feelings. I’m not gonna lie: despite what my therapists, friends and confidants tell me, I still want to hit people with my own version of “Euphoria.” But I also know it won’t bring me the peace I thought it would. I have to release that on my own. I don’t envy Kendrick Lamar anymore. I envy those who know how to find release without dropping the bombs first. 

I have to want something more than clapbacks, disses and aggression. I have to want the same thing I want for Kendrick, Drake and everyone carrying the weight of disdain for an enemy. 

I have to want to be unburdened by the weight that bogs us down and keeps us knee-deep in mud. My freedom depends on it.