Vince Staples wants fans to look at the bigger picture when it comes to Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s ongoing feud.
The 30-year-old rapper and actor made an appearance at Long Beach, California’s inaugural “Youth Day in the LBC” on Saturday. The event featured a special town hall with Long Beach Mayor Rex Richard, 40, in conversation with Staples, where young fans were given the opportunity to ask him questions.
One fan in particular was eager to get Staples’ take on who is winning the ongoing rap war between Drizzy, 37, and K Dot, 36.
Staples explained that he’s been signed to Universal Music Group since he was 17 years old and has since noticed some major changes in the music industry that affect creatives working in the music industry.
“That record label just folded all of its independent labels and subsidiaries into each other,” Staples explained, how during his childhood there were other competing labels such as Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella Records.
“None of them exist no more. They fired all the heads of the labels and if they didn't, they turn them into glorified A&Rs. They cut off 50 percent of the people who work in all these departments, most of those people is us, people of color, that come from hip-hop and R&B and these other things, right?” he added.
He continued, “Then you got record labels opening up IPOs. You got record labels destroying their relationships with TikTok, Spotify, things that pay our artists because they want to start their own shit.”
Staples is referring to Universal Music Group’s highly-publicized spat with TikTok that had the music conglomerate removing its catalogue of music from the video-sharing app in January after failed negotiations over royalties and AI-related issues. UMG recently reinstated its offerings, featuring hit songs from artists like Drake and Billie Eilish, back to the platform on Thursday after a three-month standoff.
The rapper explained that Black artists are feeling the effects of the actions of record labels in the streaming era. Instead of focusing on the rap battles, Staples points to Taylor Swift, 34, as an example of a prominent musician fighting for artists.
“So then we getting priced out of our contracts, we getting priced out of our imprints. There are no labels, basically, that are incentivized to sign Black music and it's happening in front of our eyes,” he said. “While Taylor Swift is fighting for people to be able to have streaming money, n***as is on the internet arguing with each other about some rap shit. So that's how I feel about it, honestly.”
As noted by Billboard’s Chris Eggertsen, Swift fought for artist’s rights when she withdrew her music from Spotify in November 2014 in protest of low royalty payments from the streaming platform’s “freemium” model. The following year, Swift successfully pressured Apple Music to pay artists during a user’s three-month free trial period by threatening to withhold her then-new album 1989 from their platform.
“Personally, I think we better than that. I think we deserve better than that because we've been saying for decades that we want people to respect Black music and Black art and Black people,” Staples added. “I think for that to happen, we gotta respect ourselves and they don't make it easy for us, but we gotta try to work a little bit harder at that.”
Staples went one step further after Mayor Richardson reiterated the importance of uplifting Black artists instead of “celebrating” tearing each other down.
“Black people though because, you know, the dude that work at Dunkin Donuts is [as] important as Drake and Kendrick cuz it's an ecosystem. We all matter and I think that's our problem is that we looking too high up. We need to kind of look at each other. If we don't do that then we wasting our time,” said Staples at the 46:39 mark.
Staples still had more to say on the matter and brought his thoughts over to X (formerly known as Twitter) and wrote, “See the problem with hip hop is white people too comfortable. We need to treat y’all how y’all treat us at Trader Joe’s.”
He continued, “They be like “What you think keeway?” And then I tell them and then they be like ‘SHUT YO BITCH ASS UP N***A YOU NOT PAC’”
“Put the art first keeway,” he added.
Meanwhile, the rap war of 2024 rages on between Drake and Kendrick, who traded some scathing bars over the weekend with their latest musical offerings. On Friday night, Drizzy dropped “Family Matters” in response to K Dot’s “Euphoria.” Dot simultaneously released “Meet the Grahams” followed by “Not Like Us” on Saturday.
Metro Boomin dropped “BBL Drizzy” early Sunday morning, featuring a reworked sample of an original, Motown-style parody song by comedian King Willonius, who was likely inspired by Rick Ross’ relentless allegation that Drake had the infamous buttocks augmentation procedure.
