Kendrick Lamar disses Drake and J Cole on new song: ‘It’s just big me’
Kendrick Lamar has taken aim at rap rivals Drake and J Cole on a new track, claiming that rather than representing the genre’s “big three” it’s just “big me”.
The song, “Like That”, appears on Future and Metro Boomin’s new collaborative album We Don’t Trust You.
Lamar is one of several stars to make a guest appearance on the record, along with The Weeknd, Travis Scott, Playboi Carti, and Rick Ross.
It is Lamar’s appearance that has made headlines though, as he directly responds to J Cole’s verse on “First Person Shooter” from Drake’s 2023 album For All The Dogs.
On that song, Cole rapped: “Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali.”
Lamar is known by his nickname K-Dot, while Aubrey is Drake’s birth name.
Many critics consider the trio to represent the most talented and commercially successful rappers of the last decade.
However, on “Like That” Lamar dismisses the idea that they’re comparable artists.
“Motherfuck the big three, n***a, it’s just big me,” he raps. “N***a, bum, What? I’m really like that/And your best work is a light pack.”
He goes on to compare their rivalry to the Eighties beef between Prince and Michael Jackson.
On “First Person Shooter”, Drake had compared his chart success to that of Michael Jackson. On “Like That”, Lamar points out: “N***a, Prince outlived Mike Jack.”
Lamar and Drake have previously traded barbs on several occasions, but this seems to be the first time he’s hit out at Cole.
Drake and Cole are currently co-headlining the “It’s All A Blur” tour together, which Lamar derisively refers to as them “clique-in’ up, but cannot be legit”.
In a two-star review of For All The Dogs, The Independent’s Nadine Smith wrote: “Instead of chilling out and settling down as he approaches his forties, Drake’s new album For All the Dogs sees him acting up more than ever, in ways that frequently reek not just of insecurity, but outright misogyny.”
She added: “When he raps that he ‘packs them into my phone like sardines’ on ‘First Person Shooter’, his outright contempt for women stares you directly in the face.”
In a five-star review of Lamar’s most recent album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, The Independent’s Ben Bryant called the record “a tender opus from the defining poet of his generation”.
