I should probably listen to ICEMAN and the other two albums Drake just dumped on us before writing this, but I feel the need to defend Drake in this post “Not Like Us” era, even if he doesn’t need it. Why you ask? That’s a good question, as I was an OG Drake hater back when it wasn’t cool. As a matter of fact, I was basically alone in my anti-Drake campaign back in the Take Care era where Drake could do no wrong, as I was with my Jersey Shore hatred at the same time. And my Britney Spears hatred back in 4th grade. I literally got ridiculed for not liking Drake, Jersey Shore, and Britney Spears when they were at their respective peaks. Stupid fucking world we live in. Anyways, it was frustrating to see people champion Take Care and Drake so much as if he was rap’s savior having blended R&B with rap, while he ironically featured Phonte of Little Brother on Drake’s phenomenal Room for Improvement mixtape track “Think Good Thoughts”. Phonte had already pioneered the concept of mixing rap with R&B and was objectively making higher quality music (see Little Brother and his group The Foreign Exchange).

My beef with Drake was really even simpler than that. I just thought the majority of his music really sucked. Since then, he really hasn’t convinced me otherwise when it comes to music, though I did think his If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late mixtape was a solid effort. His club banger “Tuesday” is a classic if you ask me, and some of his other pop anthems are highly replayable, so I can’t front like Drake hasn’t made some good music over the years.

Nowadays, I find the Kendrick Lamar glazing almost as cringe as the Drake “Take Care” era for several reasons. For one, beating Drake in a rap battle isn’t exactly some incredible feat. Drake’s a popstar first and a rapper second. Secondly, and most important if you ask me, Drake has done way more for Los Angeles and hip-hop culture, as Kendrick literally did nothing for LA until he dropped “Not Like Us”, then all of a sudden he had the much publicized Los Angeles pop-up concert where he supposedly brought everyone together from all sides of LA (except for Drakeo the Ruler and the Stinc Team, whose flow and lingo he boldly co-opted all over GNX). Shortly thereafter, he dropped his first ever west-coast focused album GNX 15 years into his career where he featured and helped put on a variety of unknown west coast rappers. My question is, where was that love for LA before Kendrick chose to battle Drake? Why did it take him 15 years to do something for LA?

I have to believe that Kendrick’s timing of his so called LA unification was a little suspect. Looking at his motivation, perhaps he felt he needed LA behind him to go to war with Drake. Maybe Drake is that scary to him? Maybe Drake’s supposedly intimidating goon Top5 was a real threat to Kendrick’s livelihood. I can only speculate, but if you think that Kendrick finally decided to take care of his friends in LA out of nowhere right when his beef with Drake was peaking, you’re ignoring the prior 15 years of his career where he had countless chances to put on for his city.

Unlike Kendrick, Drake has been consistently putting people on and shouting out real hip-hop luminaries forever, even in Kendrick’s home state of California. Let’s start with Drake’s club hit “The Motto”, where he shouted out the one and only Mac Dre. Mac Dre was the face of California after his untimely death in 2004, and he was all anybody listened to for at least a decade after in Cali, and is still largely argued to be the best west coast rapper of all-time, but it’s not like he was known nationally. There’s not another rapper from California I can think of that would be doper to shout out on a track that was clearly influenced by the Bay Area’s signature bounce. That moment is forever hard. Then fast forward to 2020, where Drake hopped on a track with a guy that I’d consider to be the only rapper from California that could hold a candle to Mac Dre since, Drakeo the Ruler. Everybody knows the power of a Drake feature, see Mac Miller’s classic “Here We Go“. A Mac Dre shout out and hopping on a Drakeo the Ruler track? That’s literally the absolute ultimate form of respect you can show for California’s music scene.

The irony of Drake helping Drakeo the Ruler, while Kendrick both stole Drakeo’s flow and lingo is not lost on me either… and even if we zoom out beyond California, Drake has still done way more for hip-hop. Featuring both Phonte and Elzhi on the track I mentioned above is as hip-hop as it gets. Drake also shouted out both Nickelus F and Willie The Kid on Twitter for being his favorites back when Drake was the hottest thing in music and Twitter was extremely popular. He also hopped on a few tracks with Nickelus F too.

Drake even featured Project Pat on one of his album tracks “Knife Talk”, a nod to the brilliant Three Six Mafia whose sound is still heavily sampled and perhaps the most influential when it comes to rap today.

If Kendrick ever acknowledges the Drakeo the Ruler biting or continues to unify Los Angeles for something more than himself, I might change my tune. And let’s be honest, his Drake beef follow up GNX sucks more ass than a young man on a gay cruise and/or a human centipede. Of course Kendrick won the battle and the war, but Drake is still the bigger man in my eyes, and has contributed far more to hip-hop, and this is all  when he really doesn’t have to. Kendrick’s music contribution of course outweighs Drake’s massively, but Drake is still a popstar who did more for hip-hop in California and worldwide than a guy who made a career out of being a hip-hop purist and a resident of California.

Truly happy to see that Drake bounced back from the beef though and is still dominating the airwaves with his recent 3 album release, because Kendrick shouldn’t be allowed to defeat the guy who did more for the culture than him, a man who even featured Kendrick on Take Care when Kendrick was largely unknown, and who then even took Kendrick on tour with him and put him on to the masses. Forever convinced that Kendrick is the true piece of shit behind closed doors for turning his back on Drake. And let’s be honest, Pusha T’s diss record classic “Exodus” killed Drake 10x harder than Kendrick in reality, but without the fanfare, which leads to my biggest gripe with hip-hop. The most talented lyricists are largely unknown. At least Drake has tried to put some of them on…