Lupe Fiasco denies having apologized to Kendrick Lamar in a series of since-deleted 2018 posts where he outlined why he believed the Compton native was "not a top tier lyricist."
His rebuttal comes in response to a Complex piece by Trace William Cowen about rappers who have apologized to Kendrick over the years.
"Relax yo..." the 42-year-old wrote in a quote-tweet. He added in a follow-up, "I wasn't apologizing to him lol."
Lupe says he was only "sorry about the entire shindig because it was such a waste of time and energy in something that actually had nothing to do with me."
In 2018, the Chicago native spoke out about Kendrick's table-shaking "Control" verse from 2013, which he found "wack and super overhyped" for someone claiming to be the best rapper alive.
On Monday, Lupe tweeted, "Keep my name clean...I fear no rapper of any kind or on anytime. K dot solid but y'all need to chill lol."
"Maybe I should have just left it alone. Even though my impetus was the ‘Control’ verse," Lupe wrote in 2018 on Instagram. "I mean you put yourself out there like that. So, you opened yourself up to critique…I apologize for even engaging and talking about n***as careers, I’ll never do that shit again."
Fiasco has revealed that this time around, he hasn't heard Kendrick's verse on the Hot 100 chart-topping "Like That" or J. Cole's "7 Minute Drill" besides "accidental little things scrolling through Social media and seeing the samples of the lyrics typed on memes."
"Other than that I'm in the dark on the whole thing...and will remain so...next tweet," he clarified. "I don't really care. Goodnight...Eid Mubarak."
He opted to steer clear because he "had a moment of clarity that we care too much about things that don't mean anything..with all due respect."
Lupe closed out (for now) by writing, "I honestly am only doing this because I don’t want any of these overzealous people with phones to get it twisted off some misinterpreted article that it’s soft, sweet and fearful on this side and try and catch ya boy lackin IRL and get removed from consciousness over hip hop lol."
J. Cole expressed regret for responding to Kendrick's "Like That" verse during his Dreamville Festival-closing set on Sunday. He went on to call the diss track "7 Minute Drill" "the lamest shit I ever did, in my fucking life" and vowed to remove the song from streaming services.
