The Biggest Names in Hip-Hop Are Embroiled in an Epic Beef. What’s Going On?

When rapper Kendrick Lamar’s famed guest verse on “Like That“—a song on the album We Don’t Trust You from rapper Future and prominent hip-hop producer Metro Boomin—catapulted onto the charts in early April and instigated a massive fight among some of the biggest names in hip-hop, fans of the genre knew that the coming beef would be sizzling hot. But, in the time since Lamar used the hit song to call out his peers Drake and J. Cole, we have found ourselves in the throes of an all-out rap war among some of the genre’s most prominent titans. “Like That,” which has topped the Hot 100 for three weeks, has instigated a heap of drama so wayward and sprawling—complete with red-herring A.I.-formulated diss track leaks, random interjections from an A-list actress, and confusing claims about Drake and Brazilian butt lifts—that even those familiar with hip-hop might have trouble making heads or tails of it all. For all the pettiness and ridiculousness involved, the conflict has actually touched on some evergreen questions about rap culture—mainly, what constitutes it and what doesn’t—that everyone from journalists to online commenters to prominent Twitch streamers have attempted to weigh in on. If you’re lost in...