The beef between Drake and what continues to be a strong sect of the hip-hop community grows deeper. On Friday night (April 19), the rapper released a song on his social media entitled “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which uses AI vocals from Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg on a stopgap between diss records as he awaits Kendrick Lamar’s reply to his freshly released “Push Ups.”
On the track, an imagined Shakur speaks directly to Lamar and addresses his silence since releasing his verse on “Like That,” a diss that started off this feud last month. “Kendrick we need ya, the West Coast savior / Engraving your name in some hip-hop history,” raps an artificial Shakur. “Call him a bitch for me / Talk about him liking young girls as a gift for me.”
Drake continues by using Snoop Dogg’s computer-generated vocals to speak directly to Lamar. “World is watching this chess game, but oh you out of moves Dot / You know that the OG never fucking doubted you / But right now it seem like you posted up without a clue / Or what the fuck you ’bout to do.”
Many have conjectured that Drake rapped the Shakur and Snoop Dogg verses and used AI to manipulate how they sound. But Drake comes in with his own verse at the end of the song, stating that it’s a stopgap until he gets a response from Lamar. “The first one really only took me an hour or two / The next one is really ’bout to bring out the coward in you,” he states. On Instagram, where he posted the song, he wrote, “While we wait on you I guess.”
He also suggests that Lamar is sitting on his response track due to the overwhelming cultural moment surrounding Taylor Swift’s new album “The Tortured Poets Department,” and how everything else will be eclipsed by its existence. “But now we gotta wait a fucking week ’cause Taylor Swift is your new Top,” he states, referencing Lamar’s former record label Top Dawg Entertainment. “And if you ’bout to drop, she gotta approve / This girl really ’bout to make you act like you not in a feud.”
All of this started when Lamar contributed a surprise verse to Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” a song included on their joint album “We Don’t Trust You.” Lamar took issue with J. Cole including him in “the big three” on “First Person Shooter,” a collaboration between Cole and Drake on the latter’s 2023 album “For All the Dogs.”
In the time since, it’s been a free-for-all in the upper elechons of hip-hop, with J. Cole responding to Lamar on “7 Minute Drill,” a song included on his surprise release project “Might Delete Later.” On the track, Cole attempted to discredit Lamar’s discography, but quickly retracted and removed the song from streaming platforms.
Drake released his own diss track last weekend entitled “Push Ups.” It initially leaked as an unfinished demo, shortly followed by a studio version. He officially dropped the song on streaming services today (April 19).
