Not Like Us: what Kendrick vs. Drake means for the music industry

Reflecting on the collective challenges we’re all facing has made my writing pretty heavy as of late. Going off some of those more recent pieces it would make sense that people would think I take myself super seriously. You could get the impression that I’m the stoic philosopher type who only wants to talk about the meaning of life or things like psychology and politics, you know, someone who’s real fun at parties. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a part of my personality. I have been known to get into some pretty heady conversations. Life though, is too short to only spend time on philosophical musings. That gets stale and can rob you of the joy you’re spending all this time analyzing. We need other things in our lives. One of those things for me is a love for pop culture. I think that comes through in my writing, but honestly, I probably have more conversations about it than I do about philosophy or other more serious topics. So today I want to talk about that, specifically music. 

I’ve been obsessed with music since middle school. Back then, I was the kid downloading everything I could off The Pirate Bay and filling my iPod with whatever piqued my interest. Later in high school, I religiously scoured Datpiff for the latest mixtapes and upcoming artists. For most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I had headphones in. Music was my life. While I can’t spend as much time as I used to, I still do my best to keep my finger on the pulse of the music scene. So with that background, it’s probably not surprising that my eyes and ears were glued to the Kendrick and Drake beef. Based on my writing, it’s also probably not surprising that I was on Kendrick’s side. Each album of his has helped me through different periods of my life, so they all mean a lot. Aside from the personal significance, I also believe he has a claim to being the best rapper alive and one of the greatest musical artists of all time. While Drake doesn’t hold that same status, his music has been in my life almost as long as Kendrick’s has. That history made their beef feel like a must-watch event. As entertaining as all the back and forth was, I won’t sit here and do a play-by-play of what every lyric or symbol meant. There’s a whole army of random white guys on the internet who all had their own slightly mediocre attempt at that. What’s more interesting is looking at the state of music and how this battle personified it.

Now that we’re a bit removed from this whole experience, it’s safe to say there was much more at stake here than just who the better rapper is or even who the better person is. This was a battle over authenticity and what it means to be an artist. Kendrick’s core message was that despite the popularity of Drake’s music, it’s not real art. Drake is a product of the internet, always looking for the next visual or musical style to co-opt into his image. Over the last decade, his albums have been increasingly empty but so aligned with what’s trending that they become the soundtrack for that moment. These albums are essentially memetic snapshots of whatever’s viral. Not just whatever but also whoever, he knows exactly which rising talent to attach himself to for cultural clout and relevancy. Like the blood boys from Mad Max, he relies on infusions from the youth to keep his reign going. At the moment it’s Sexxy Red and Lil Yachty. These tactics are the the epitome of the fame economy where all that matters is fame for fame's sake. There’s no intention behind the art other than creating a character that stays in the spotlight and keeps songs on the charts. 

Drake has always been an actor and Kendrick has always been about the art. His catalog is rich in details and narrative. He plays with different vocal inflections and song constructions. There’s depth and to quote Drake ”quintuple entendres”. It can be work to listen to but you can sense the intention behind his work. He’s not there for the streaming numbers or critical acclaim. Though he’s received both in his lifetime, I mean he’s the only rapper with a Pulitzer. The last album he put out had its critics but was a deeply vulnerable piece of art showcasing a man’s journey in doing the work to grow. There were flaws but they felt part of the process. In more ways than one, that album was therapy. No one’s ever said that about a Drake album. 

Yet, despite the lack of depth, Drake’s been at an all-time high in the culture. He’s a certified global popstar, inching closer to the likes of Michael Jackson every day. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I like listening to his music at the bar or the gym, but just because it’s catchy and does numbers doesn’t mean it's quality art. Society and Drake himself seem to have conflated the two though, with constant proclamations of Drake being a GOAT. That’s why I think Kendrick chose to strike now. He was tired of having Drake’s name mentioned in the same breath as his. Sure Drake can rap, but he’s not making art, he’s just making consumable content. Or like Mos Def said about Drake’s music fitting in at Target, “it feels like a lot of his music is compatible with shopping”. Drake is just a symptom of a larger problem in music and society. In a recent interview, Schoolboy Q said that rappers are just “content creators” now. There are some great young artists but I’m inclined to agree with him. I’ll even take it a step further, that’s what most musicians are now, and honestly, it’s what most people are now. Decisions aren’t made from our own artistic or personal vision but are instead based on what will raise our ranking in the attention and fame economies. 

Of course, you can point to people like Beyonce as someone who is wholly her own person, but she’s the exception that proves the rule. Everything else feels so manufactured that it feels different when someone like her, Kendrick, Taylor Swift, Childish Gambino, or anyone else in that S-tier of artistry drops. Whether you like their music or not, you have to respect the time, effort, and care they put into their releases. Listening to their interviews, you can tell it’s not about the streams or the clout. The art and artistry of it all are what matters. They want to say something while most of their peers aren’t saying anything at all. In my last piece, I briefly mentioned how music is being made for the algorithms, and that’s exactly how many artists sound. The lyrics and production are generic attempts at sounding like whatever’s popular at the moment. We all eat it up too, playing 30-second snippets on TikTok without a second thought over whether the music means anything. Sending a message to the studios that cheap non-descript music is what matters, reducing music to catchy soundbites. You can hear that dilution in most albums released today. They feel more like playlists than they do albums. There’s no cohesive vision or plan behind the music, it’s all about farming streams and gaming the algorithms. 

While that model is working, there is evidence that fans are becoming suspicious of it. You might have heard of 4Batz, if you haven’t he makes a type of high-pitched R&B sort of like a TikTok version of Brent Faiyaz. These references may not be the most accessible but bear with me. Anyway, 4Batz only had a couple of songs released before he blew up, and I mean blew up. His songs were everywhere, leading to a collaboration with, guess who, Drake. Like I said this is what Drake does, but this isn’t his story. Anyways, 4Batz blew up, and soon after everyone started crying “Industry Plant”. For those uninitiated in internet toxicity, an industry plant is someone handpicked by a studio to be the next big thing and put their resources behind to guarantee success. So 4Batz's sudden rise made everyone think he was a plant. The thing is, he wasn’t signed to a deal yet. So it wouldn’t make sense for a studio to promote him because they wouldn’t make any money, plus the bigger he got, the more lucrative any potential contract would be. So what were the armchair warriors all yelling about? They were implicitly picking up on how empty the music industry is now. It feels like artists are coming out of nowhere and aren’t doing the work necessary to be successful. All that exists is the current state of the algorithm. If your music hits the sweet spot on the algorithms it doesn’t matter how many songs you’ve made, you’re suddenly the new face of music. This makes it easy for talented young people to rise to the top quickly but fall just as fast. This is why Drake is constantly reinventing himself to stay relevant. By staying tied to the algorithm, he never leaves the spotlight. Why he can do that though is because he has the resources from building up his brand pre-algorithm. He was already an established artist long before the music industry shifted. That’s something that young artists don’t see or understand. They hop on the newest wave trying to achieve viral success but that’s not sustainable. They didn’t build a foundation for who they are and their artistic vision. To them, it’s just content but content fades. Artists can be influencers but influencers can’t be artists. It’s why we’ll see fewer generational artists in the future, it will be a world with more Lil Pumps and fewer Billie Eilishs. 

All is not lost though. Coming full circle, one of the reasons I cared about the beef between Kendrick and Drake was that Kendrick proved art has power. In a battle against one of the biggest pop stars in the world, he won. He won not by trying to make content, but by saying something. Something about Drake’s character and the inauthenticity behind his music. Drake on the other hand just tried to make empty hit pieces in line with his previous viral moments. Kendrick took advantage of that and weaponized internet culture against one of its biggest champions. After waiting for Drake to swing, he dropped a fucked up but masterful work of storytelling that captured people’s attention and stole Drake’s big moment. In the wake of that, he then unleashed a certified summer anthem with one of the most infectious beats you can imagine and some astonishing wordplay. It was a true act of artistry and strategy. You could feel the intention behind all of it. These weren’t TikTok songs, they were Kendrick songs. I think that’s what the music industry needs to be reminded of. Art still matters, and when push comes to shove, art will come out on top. 

There were some low moments in this beef, at times it was a bit toxic and sad, but that’s life. Not everyone or everything is perfect. That’s something that Kendrick preaches. What’s important is that for a few weeks, people deeply cared about music again. Thousands spent hours on Genius and YouTube trying to decipher lyrics. It was enthusiasm that’s rare to see nowadays. My friends and I felt like we were in middle school again. The night Family Matters and Meet the Grahams dropped we all huddled around the computer to watch it all unfold. We talked about those songs for days, that’s a core memory now. Moments in the monoculture don’t happen like that anymore, but this became one. That’s the power of music and pop culture when there’s intention behind it. Sure there were traits of modern viral moments and plenty of internet discourse, but virality for virality’s sake can’t create long-lasting conversations. Art though, art can bring more out of people. I never expected a conversation like this to come out of a rap beef but here we are. I don’t know what the future of music holds, but I hope that the younger generation took Kendrick’s lesson. We need more intention in art and we need people to say something.