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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/ToErrDivine on 2024-08-02 05:24:54+00:00.
Hi, everyone, welcome back. Previous posts can be found here, here, here and here.
Act Eight: The Calm Before The Pop-Out
After the musical explosion that took place over the course of April 30 to May 5, the feud sat in an uneasy place somewhere between ‘done’ and ‘not done’. Sure, Kendrick had obviously won with ‘meet the grahams’ and ‘Not Like Us’, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t release anything else, after all. Given how the songs had been dropping one after the other, for the first few days after ‘The Heart Part 6’, people were constantly anticipating new tracks. And by ‘anticipating’, I mean ‘Can we come out from under the bed now, or are you suddenly going to tell us that Drake fucks horses’.
But as more and more time passed, people started to relax. Aside from ‘U My Everything’ coming out on May 24- and that was barely a blip on anyone’s radar- it seemed obvious that the feud was done. Yes, Drake had got the final word, but Kendrick had won; nobody disputed that except the hardcore Drake fans- and Drake deleting the IG post where he announced ‘The Heart Part 6’ seemed to confirm that. And the dust subsided, everyone took deep breaths, nothing happened for over a month, and a lot of people started wondering ‘So… wait, that’s it? No, no, no, that’s it?’
See, the thing about rap feuds is that they don’t generally get this extreme. Before you say anything, I’m not talking about the results- even aside from Biggie and Tupac, I mentioned before that Florida rapper Foolio was shot dead on June 23, 2024, and take a look at his feud to see how bloody that got. My point is, to the best of my knowledge, you didn’t generally see rappers accusing each other of stuff like child molestation. Most of the time you got stuff like ‘All your songs suck’ and ‘You’re the worst member of your crew and everyone else in it hates you’. (Unless at least one of the people involved happens to be female, in which case you then tend to see stuff like ‘You’re a slut’ and/or ‘You wouldn’t sleep with me’. *cough*the Roxanne Wars*cough*) If this had solely been a battle of bars where the worst that happened was that Drake called Kendrick a midget and Kendrick called Drake a pussy, nobody would have minded. We’d all have enjoyed it and then moved on.
But that isn’t what happened. Instead, we got Kendrick and Drake making serious allegations of very grave crimes. Kendrick called Drake a pedophile and child molester! Drake called Kendrick a domestic abuser! They both tried to do serious damage to the other guy’s family! Kendrick addressed every member of Drake’s immediate family and told them that Drake is a nonce and has another hidden child! Drake said that Kendrick’s fiancée cheated on him with his best friend and that Kendrick’s son isn’t his!
Most fans don’t want to support artists and creators who did shitty things. And here we are, with two rappers who’ve made grave accusations about the other having done really shitty things, but with no real proof on either side. What were we supposed to do, just shrug and go ‘Well, that was crazy, lmao’ and forget about it? Go back to listening to their music like nothing had happened?
You know what, I’m going to quote Todd in the Shadows on this one.
“Like, these things used to end with people dying, but... I don't know, this all leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Like, if either of these things are true, it changes my relationship with both of their music. And if nothing happens, then what the fuck was the point? What right does Drake have to lie on Kendrick's wife and/or out her as a victim when she didn't ask to be outed? What right do either of them have to act like they care about domestic abuse or sex crimes when they both worked with confirmed abusers?!”
*points to the third disclaimer again*
As time kept passing, it seemed like that was exactly what was going to happen: nothing. There was no truce called. Neither of them made any public statements about the feud. Neither of them made any public denials of the allegations against them. Neither of them released any evidence to support their claims. Nobody got arrested. The Embassy did not get raided. None of their family members made any public statements. Nobody came forward and alleged that Drake or Kendrick had abused them.
It left a lot of people, myself included, wondering what we were supposed to do now. After all, nothing had really changed for Kendrick, he’d just keep releasing albums and doing his thing. He isn’t a public person anyway- we have one photo of Kendrick that was taken throughout the entire feud, and it’s just a photo of him in the studio recording ‘meet the grahams’, it’s not like a public appearance or anything. But while Drake may have lost the battle, it doesn’t mean that he lost everything. Even if he takes a break from music for a while to let the furore die down, I’m prepared to bet that upon his return, whatever he releases will still be a success. And I’m also prepared to bet that if his next release turns out to be really good, people will be all too happy to forget about the allegations.
At the end of the day, Drake is still Drake. He’s a multi-millionaire with eight albums that have all been critical successes. He’s still got a hardcore fanbase who’ll keep listening to his music no matter what. Sure, he’s taken a huge hit to his reputation, but this is Drake, the guy who’s been fighting an uphill battle from the beginning, the guy who started out in the worst possible position- being a biracial Canadian former child actor from the suburbs - and managed to make it to the top of the American rap industry. If anyone can recover from this, it’s Drake, especially since he specialises in making music that’s mainstream and radio/club-friendly.
And unfortunately, as a lot of fans and victims learned after Me Too and Speaking Out, someone who’s been accused of sexual assault/harassment/etc can survive the allegations being thrown at them simply by keeping their head down for a while and then continuing on like nothing’s happened, no matter how credible the accusations are, or how clear the evidence is. (I speak from personal experience.) Sure, the fans can constantly talk about and bring up the allegations, but that’s all they can do- if the people with the power to actually do something about it decide that they’re going to keep someone who’s named as an abuser around, the fans are SOL unless they decide on something like a boycott, and even that can fail.
So, as time kept passing, it looked like the fans were going to have to just shrug and bear it. Even if fans had organised boycotts of Drake’s music or something along those lines, I don’t know how much that would have done. Drake is one of the founders and owners of OVO, and even if fans persuaded their distributors- Sony Music for OVO in general, and Republic Records for Drake specifically- to cut ties with them, are you really going to tell me that multi-millionaire Drake couldn’t come up with an alternative? And at the same time, this still all came down to a whole lot of accusations and not a lot of evidence that would hold up in court. At the end of the day, it looked like the feud was well and truly done, and the fans were left with very little.
And then June 19 rolled around.
(For my fellow non-Americans: Juneteenth- June 19- is a United States holiday that celebrates the end of slavery in the US. Quick explanation: Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all slaves in the Confederate states were now free, on January 1, 1863; however, it took a while before it could actually be enforced in all of the Confederate states. June 19, 1865 was the date that Major General Gordon Granger ordered that the Emancipation Proclamation would be enforced in Texas, as the Civil War was finally drawing to an end. (For the record, this was not actually the total end of slavery in the US- for one, there were still slaves in states that had never seceded from the Union, and they weren’t freed until December 1865.) This will become very important later.)
On June 5, the concert was announced via an Instagram post, which told fans that it would be called ‘The Pop-Out: Ken & Friends’, that it would be held at the Kia Forum on June 19, and not much else. Fans immediately noted that the title seemed to indicate that Kendrick wasn’t letting up on the anti-Drake sentiment, as it’s ...
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