Breaking Down Everything Kendrick Said About Drake on “Meet the Grahams”

The artwork for “Meet the Grahams” is a zoomed-out photo of the cover art for “6:16 in LA,” which now reveals even more items laid out next to each other, including a bottle of Ozempic prescribed to Drake, a business card for celebrity jeweler Nadine Ghosn (who has worked with Drake), a receipt for Popular Jewelry in New York City (a store that Drake has been seen shopping at), black leather Maybach gloves from the “6:16: in LA” cover, and a shirt. 

According to DJ Akademiks, the items came from Dennis Graham's suitcase, and Kendrick somehow got a hold of it. Kendrick raps about each of these items in different ways throughout the song, saying Drake has substance and spending problems, before doubling down on claims that he uses Ozempic. 

The jewelry receipts could also be a direct response to rumors that the ring featured in Drake’s “Family Matters” video was his fiancé’s engagement ring. This might be Kendrick’s way of suggesting that Drake simply bought a copy from one of his go-to jewelers, instead of getting his hands on the real thing. Alternatively, it could also connect back to Kendrick’s line on “6:16 in LA” when he rapped, “Find the jewels like Kash Doll, I just need you to think.”

Kendrick dedicates the first verse of the song to directly addressing Drake’s son Adonis, as a way to speak to the rapper.

“Sometimes our parents make mistakes that affect us until we grown/ And you a good kid that need good leadership/ Let me be your mentor, since your daddy don't teach you shit/ Never let a man piss on your leg, son”

After offering to be the father figure that Adonis does not have, Kendrick makes references to an alleged incident in 2015 where T.I. said that his late friend urinated on Drake in the club.

“Never fall in the escort business, that's bad religion/ Please remember, you could be a bitch even if you got bitches/ Never code switch, whether right or wrong, you a Black man/ Even if it don’t benefit your goals, do some push-ups

This is where Kendrick starts to throw around heavy accusations that Drake is involved in the escort business, while continuing to take jabs at the rapper’s biracial ethnicity. Dot is satirically saying that Adonis will grow up to be a “Black man,” so he should embrace it, unlike his father, who Kendrick is insinuating only wants to be Black when it’s convenient. 

“Get some discipline, don’t cut them corners like your daddy did/ Fuck what Ozempic did/ Don't pay to play with them Brazilians, get a gym membership/ Understand, no throwin' rocks and hidin' hands, that's law/ Don't be ashamed 'bout who you wit,' that's how he treat your moms/ Don't have a kid to hide a kid to hide again, be sure/ Five percent will comprehend but ninety-five is lost”

First, Dot implies that Drake has had cosmetic surgery and uses the weight loss drug Ozempic. Then he advises Adonis not to “have a kid to hide a kid to hide again,” which is his way of alluding to later allegations that Drake has been hiding his first-born child this entire time. The five percent bar is a double entendre that references the Five-Percent Nation as a way to say that only five percent of listeners will fully understand the truth of his previous bar about Drake hiding another child.

Kendrick addresses both of Drake’s parents together in the second verse, which might be a jab in itself because the two have been separated since the rapper’s youth. Kendrick uses them as vessels to dive deeper into more serious allegations he has against Drake, including his relationships with underaged women and how he operates in the celebrity world.

“I think niggas like him should die/ Him and Weinstein should get fucked up in a cell for the rest they life/ He hates black women, hypersexualizes them, with kinks of a nympho fetish/ Grew facial hair 'cause he understood bein' a beard just fit him better/ He got sex offenders on OVO that he keep on a monthly allowance”

Kendrick makes the severe implication that Drake is similar to Harvey Weinstein, a man who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women, saying the Toronto rapper deserves the same fate in jail. Kendrick adds that Drake “hates Black women,” which is a sentiment that’s been thrown his way many times in recent years for several reasons, including the unfavorable way he’s spoken about women like Megan Thee Stallion and Rihanna in his music for seemingly no reason. 

The “sex offenders on OVO” that Kendrick is referring to could possibly be Baka Not Nice who was arrested and charged with prostituting a 22-year-old woman in 2014 (and plead guilty to assaulting her in 2015) but there’s no way to be certain.

“I been in this industry twelve years, I'ma tell y'all one lil' secret/ It's some weird shit goin' on and some of these artists be here to police it/ They be streamlinin' victims all inside of they home and callin' em Tinder/ Then leak videos of themselves to further push their agendas”

The music industry has been filled with stories of sexual misconduct, grooming, and other heinous crimes for decades, and Kendrick Lamar is implying that Drake has used his home for something deeply nefarious (like a sex trafficking ring), insinuating that the rapper’s leaked nude from February was being used as bait. These allegations come shortly after Diddy’s home was raided by the Department of Homeland Security while being investigated for sex trafficking. 

“Katt Williams said, ‘Get you the truths,’ so I'ma get mines/ The embassy 'bout to get raided, too, it's only a matter of time/ Ayy, LeBron, keep the family away, hey, Curry, keep the family away/ To anybody that embody the love for they kids, keep the family away”

Dot references Kat Williams’ viral episode on Club Shay Shay where the comedian suggested that he knew about some of the inner workings of the entertainment industry, which is Kendrick’s way of saying that he’s now going to peel back the curtain on Drake as well. Kendrick believes that Drake’s home, dubbed “The Embassy,” is going to get investigated and raided, similar to what’s happening to Diddy right now. Then Dot warns celebrities like LeBron James and Stephen Curry (who both have daughters) not to bring their children around Drake.

In one of the most salacious parts of the song, Kendrick accuses Drake of having an 11-year-old daughter that he has been hiding from the world (a claim that Drake immediately refuted on Instagram). Kendrick also uses the verse to discuss Drake’s drug addiction and double down on calling him a deadbeat dad, similar to what Pusha-T did on “Story of Adidon.”

“Should be teachin' you time tables or watchin' Frozen with you/ Or at your eleventh birthday, singin' poems with you/Instead, he be in Turks, payin' for sex and poppin' Percs”

Kendrick reveals how old Drake’s alleged daughter is, making her five years older than Adonis. If the math is accurate, she would have been born right around the time Frozen came out, since the film was released in Nov. 2013. Then Kendrick says that Drake is busy going on vacations to Turks and Caicos (a destination he often raps about on songs like “Jumbotron Shit Poppin”) and doing drugs, instead of being a present father. 

“His father prolly didn't claim him neither/ History do repeats itself, sometimes it don't need a reason/ But I would like to say it's not your fault he's hidin' another child/ Give 'em grace, this the reason I made Mr. Morale/ So our babies like you can cope later”

Once again, Kendrick suggests that Drake is an absentee dad because his own father wasn’t in his life as a child, using the same verbiage of “hiding a child” that Pusha-T did on his infamous “The Story of Adidon” diss track. Kendrick maintains his position as a therapist figure as he references his last album Mr. Morale, where he has songs like “Father Time” that directly address his own troubled upbringing with his father and how he learned to overcome his “daddy issues.”

“I'll tell you who your father is, just play this song when it rains/ Yes, he's a hitmaker, songwriter, superstar, right/ And a fuckin' deadbeat that should never say ‘More life’”

The closing bars of this verse might be an allusion to J. Cole’s track “4 Your Eyez Only,” where he leaves a message to the daughter of his slain friend. Kendrick mirrors those sentiments to Drake’s alleged child by telling her that her father is a “hitmaker, songwriter, [and] superstar.” But this is a deeply personal diss record, so Dot closes the verse by also reminding her (and him) that he’s a deadbeat, turning Drake’s album title More Life into a double entendre against him, saying that he should never use it as a catchphrase or create any more children.

Kendrick saves The Boy for last, addressing his adversary directly as he explains that all of this could have been avoided if Drake never brought up his family throughout their beef.

“Dear Aubrey, I know you probably thinkin' I wanted to crash your party/ But truthfully, I don't have a hatin' bone in my body/ This supposed to be a good exhibition within the game/ But you fucked up the moment you called out my family's name”

Kendrick opens the track by acknowledging that he stomped on Drake’s diss track “Family Matters” by dropping his response immediately, but clarifies that he didn’t have any real animosity towards him until Drake brought up his wife’s name on “Push Ups” when he rapped, “I be with some bodyguards like Whitney.” That bar sparked rumors that Kendrick’s wife had an affair with his bodyguard, in the same way that Whitney Houston did in The Bodyguard. Dot confirms that once his family was brought up, it stopped being a friendly match between the two. 

“You got gamblin' problems, drinkin' problems/ Pill-poppin' and spendin' problems, bad with money, whorehouse/ Solicitin' women problems, therapy's a lovely start”

Kendrick succinctly summarizes all of his implications from earlier in the song, calling Drake a drug addict who solicits sex from women and needs therapy. Drake’s “gambling problems” have been discussed by others before, in part because of how often he works with the betting app Stake. The jewelry receipts and pill bottles on the cover artwork also feed into Kendrick’s narrative that Drake has a spending and substance problem.

“You a body shamer, you gon' hide them baby mommas, ain't ya? You embarrassed of 'em, that's not right, that ain't how momma raised us/ Take that mask off, I wanna see what's under them achievements/ Why believe you? You never gave us nothin' to believe in”

On “When To Say When,” Drake rapped, “Baby mama fluke, but I love her for who she is,” and now Kendrick is implying that Drake has even more children with women that he’s ashamed to be around in public. Dot challenges Drake’s integrity and questions the persona he’s built up around himself, thanks to all of his awards and achievements. Then he goes into all of the things he believes Drake has lied about, including his religious beliefs, referring to Drake putting out a massive hit “God’s Plan” before more recently questioning his faith on “Wick Man.”

“You lied about your son, you lied about your daughter, huh/ You lied about them other kids that's out there hopin' that you come/ You lied about the only artist that can offer you some help/ Fuck a rap battle, this a long life battle with yourself”

Kendrick closes the track by planting even more seeds about Drake being a liar and having children that the public doesn’t know about. Then he brings the song full circle by saying that Drake lied about him and his family throughout their back-and-forth, which is what forced Dot’s hand to get extremely personal and say “fuck a rap battle.”