Who Loses In Rap Beef?

After bubbling under the surface for nearly a decade, the clash between Kendrick Lamar and Drake has erupted into the most impactful Hip-Hop duel in recent years.  Initiating with a direct callout from Lamar during a feature on Metro Boomin & Future’s track “Like That” on March 22, this battle is a unique product of the modern streaming era, seeing scathing diss tracks arrive in greater volume and quicker succession than any in history. Friday, May 3 alone saw Kendrick’s third response track, “Meet the Grahams” arrive a mere 25 minutes after Drake’s second, “Family Matters.” The ensuing weekend gave way to additional tracks from each artist, bringing the total to an unheard-of nine tracks of back-and-forth wordplay in roughly 6 weeks.  This is a far cry from the Hip-Hop conflicts of the 90s and early aughts, fought over months and years through mixtape responses, single b-sides, and comments made in magazine articles and radio interviews.  “Before, you’d have to wait on a Kay Slay mix tape, or you’d have to wait on somebody to come up to the radio station [with the recording], and that didn’t necessarily happen in real time,” says veteran rap artist and Sirius XM Hip-Hop...