11.
What started with the verse heard ‘round the world has spiraled into hip-hop's most epic rap battle.
Kendrick Lamar’s verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That” dropped on March 22, and it’s been pure chaos ever since, with Dot and Drake trading blows for the last month and a half. This battle has been a long time coming and has taken wild twists and turns along the way, from Drake responding and trolling Kendrick (and half the rap game) with “Push Ups” to Dot accepting that challenge and dropping four diss tracks in one week. Jokes have been fired, shoe sizes have been questioned, and some dark allegations have been traded.
This battle has already been cemented as one of the most exciting and impactful rap beefs of all time. With plenty of songs to wade through, here’s our ranking of the best diss tracks from both Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Since Drake fired at several rappers on his diss tracks, his songs are being graded based on his specific bars for Kendrick.
10. Drake, “Taylor Made Freestyle”
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Most memorable line: “Kendrick, we need ya, the West Coast savior” (Tupac voice)
Artificial intelligence became even more entangled in the rap war than it already was when Drake used AI voice augmentation technology to make himself sound like Tupac and Snoop Dogg in the first two verses of his “Taylor Made Freestyle.” The thought behind the tactic was…different, rapping through two West Coast icons to try and bait Kendrick into responding to him.
Drake made AI Pac and Snoop sound disappointed in Dot’s silence before adding his own verse that implied Kendrick was forced to dodge Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department release date, reminding us all that he’s good at twisting internet narratives in his favor. The actual concept of using artificial intelligence in a song, on the other hand, is very wack, especially considering we’re at a moment in history where hundreds of Drake’s peers just signed a petition to protect music from the dangers of the technology. Plus the bars themselves aren’t great, and the Tupac estate threatening to sue Drake effectively shuts the whole track down.
9. Drake, “Buried Alive Interlude” Pt. 2
8. Drake, “The Heart Part 6”
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Most memorable line: “You haven't seen the kids in six months, the distance is wild/ Dave leavin' heart emojis underneath pics of the child”
As soon as a rapper starts explaining themself in a beef, they’re in trouble, and Drake spends the majority of “The Heart Part 6” on defense, trying to counter Kendrick’s onslaught. Dot caught Drake in a Catch-22, if he didn’t respond to the Compton rapper’s accusations that he was a child predator then he would look crazy, but if he did acknowledge them he would still…look crazy.
Unfortunately, Drake opts to do the latter, but does not explain himself well on the track. He misinterprets the Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers song “Mother I Sober” by claiming Kendrick was molested by a family member. He then uses that misinterpretation to explain why Kendrick accused Drake of being a predator. Not only is that logic backward and wrong in general, but it was a decisive misstep that makes “The Heart Part 6” one of the weakest diss tracks in this war.
7. Kendrick Lamar, “6:16 in LA”
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Most memorable line: “A hundred niggas that you got on salary/ And twenty of 'em want you as a casualty/ And one of them is actually next to you/ And two of them is practically tired of your lifestyle/ Just don't got the audacity to tell you”
What makes “6:16 in LA” so good is how layered it is. Kendrick has taken a different thematic approach to each diss track he’s dropped so far, and here he hijacks Drake’s timestamp series of songs and fills the record with the very “quintuple entendres” that the rapper was asking for on “Taylor Made Freestyle.”
From the track’s title having several potential meanings—6/16 is Tupac’s birthday, Father’s Day, when the series Euphoria premiered, and when OJ Simpson’s murder case began—to the cryptic cover art and lush Al Green sample that features guitar credits from Drake’s father’s cousin, everything about “6:16 in LA'' feels meticulously calculated. And then there’s the lyrics. Kendrick taps into Drake’s trust issues and implies that he has a leak in his camp and that some of his close friends hate him. He does all of this while rapping at a high level. “6:16 in LA” feels like a diss from forgotten times after the war took a dark turn with “Family Matters” and “Meet the Grahams,” but it still stands as an elite track.
6. Kendrick Lamar, “Meet the Grahams”
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Most memorable line: “Fuck a rap battle, he should die so all of these women can live with a purpose”
The gloves came off and the war went to a dark place when Kendrick challenged “Family Matters” with “Meet the Grahams” within an hour after the former dropped. Up until this point, it was still a “friendly fade” but “Meet the Grahams” takes things into dark waters as Dot uses each member of Drake’s immediate family to address him and accuse the rapper of having a substance abuse problem, being a sexual predator, and of abandoning an 11-year-old daughter. Drake immediately refuted these allegations and claimed he planted this information for Kendrick to use on “The Heart Part 6,” but the damage from the song had already been done.
The song has little to no replay value, and Kendrick sounds like Jigsaw as he talk-raps through all of these serious allegations. It works well as a diss track, but it also uses hypothetical victims as props and calls into question why Kendrick had been holding all of this information until now. Ultimately, “Meet the Grahams” will be remembered as the song that marked the point of no return in this war.
5. Drake, “Push Ups”
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Most memorable line: “Metro shut yo hoe ass up and make some drums, nigga”
“Push Ups” is a masterclass in multitasking, a song where he efficiently takes shots at Kendrick Lamar, Future, Metro Boomin, Rick Ross, The Weeknd, and even Ja Morant with four minutes of straight bars on a beat that sounds like it could have soundtracked the Halloween franchise.
Taking on half the rap game in one song is a daunting task, but Drake makes it look easy as he dedicates a few bars to everybody, shooting back at Kendrick, Future, Rick Ross, and The Weeknd, while delivering one of the funniest one-liners in rap this year with, “Metro, shut yo hoe ass up and make some drums, nigga.” “Push Ups” surfaced in a fumbled rollout that caused everyone to question the validity of a low-quality leak that sounded like it could have been AI, but the song itself is very strong and was a great counterpunch.
4. Drake, “Family Matters”
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Most memorable line: “Kendrick just opened his mouth, someone go hand him a Grammy right now”
Despite being snuffed out by the shock value of “Meet the Grahams,” “Family Matters” is a good diss song because of its range in sound and the different flows Drake exhibits. In reality, it would have probably served him better to split the track into two separate songs so he could focus solely on Kendrick (ASAP Rocky probably gets the most creative disses). But Drake still manages to lob some decent jabs and heavy accusations Kendrick’s way—the main one being that the Compton rapper has been physically violent toward his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and that his creative partner Dave Free fathered one of his children. The song is well put together, and has a layered music video that features Drake crushing the same model Mini-van that was featured on the cover of good kid, m.A.A.d city. Drake still held his own yet again despite having to shoot at half the rap game.
3. Kendrick Lamar, “Euphoria”
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Most memorable line: “I even hate when you say the word ‘nigga,’ but that's just me, I guess/ Some shit just cringeworthy, it ain't even gotta be deep, I guess”
The best diss tracks pick apart opponents in unique ways that will haunt them. But they only withstand the test of time if they have one secret ingredient—pure hater energy. And Kendrick harnesses that on “Euphoria.” Not only is the track filled with easter eggs—like Dot reversing Richard Pryor’s dialogue from The Wiz when he’s being exposed as a fraud or the title being named after the sexualized high school drama Euphoria, which Drake executive produces—it also meticulously picks apart The Boy's massive persona. Kendrick takes jabs at everything from Drake’s relationship with his Blackness to various ghostwriter allegations. And “Euphoria” doesn’t rely on salacious information to get at the rapper, but leans fully into the fact that Kendrick just doesn’t like the guy. Sometimes it pays to be “the biggest hater.”
2. Future & Metro Boomin f/ Kendrick Lamar, “Like That”
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Most memorable line: “Motherfuck the Big 3, nigga/ It’s just big me”
Kendrick managed to trigger an entire rap war off his first hand, and it’s still one of his best cards drawn. With one explosive verse, Kendrick finally put an end to all of the pump-faking he and Drake had been engaging in since he last pushed the red button on “Control” more than a decade ago.
What’s most impressive about “Like That,” though, is how effective Kendrick is in so few bars. He wastes no time refuting the Big three label, shits on Drake’s affinity for Michael Jackson with a clever bar about Prince, and makes it clear that he wants all the smoke. Metro Boomin, finding a way to say “fuck you” to Drake through the production, also helps make the case for “Like That,” a song that sat at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks. Drake has long been praised for his ability to diss rivals on hit songs that they have to hear in the club, so you know he was seething after someone did it to him.
1. Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us”
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Most memorable line: “Tryna strike a chord and it's probably A-minor”
Dot might have won this battle with this track because he beat Drake at his own game; he linked up with DJ Mustard and made a club-friendly diss track where he still took haymakers at his opponent. The song became inescapable less than 48 hours after its release, with clubs and even NBA on TNT playing the track. OVO stans like Akademiks had to yield to its electricity, and even Drake himself admitted that he would have liked dancing to the song if it didn’t have such serious allegations attached to it.
The lyrics that Kendrick has crowds screaming are very questionable (“Certified Lover Boy, Certified pedophiles”?) but “Not Like Us’” has a contagious hook and West Coast bounce that make it too good to only play once. Time will tell if this track marked the end conclusion of the rap war between the two titans, but “Not Like Us” has already proven itself to be the stone that stunned Goliath.
