Watching white tumblr users interact with black things is funny because they will always misapprehend things and just generally be reductivist.
So I’m seeing a lot of people going “haha Kendrick got awards for being a hater,” “Drake lost so bad lol.”
And I’m just massaging my temples at the irony of nonblack people en masse misunderstanding a song called “They not like us.”
Kendrick has a whole verse in the song breaking down the commodification of blackness and the history of colonization apropos to Black Americans. That’s what the whole Drake beef was about btw. It was about Drake’s pattern of ripping off black culture just to peddle it to the uncaring masses and make millions off of it, while the smaller artists he steals from get no recognition (money). Drake was getting called the rap goat by nonblack people, he was getting looked at as the greatest in a tradition he has no roots in. Kendrick’s distaste for Drake was years in the making. FdSignifier has some great vids from like 2020 about Drake’s rise in the rap world. There’s also Pusha T’s diss from 2018 called “The story of Adidon.” My point is, Drake is a culture vulture and the Drake v. Kdot beef was about reclaiming what Drake (and other culture vultures) stole.
Drake is also problematic for other reasons, e.g. sexually exploiting women, participating in sex trafficking, and so on.
It does a disservice to Kdot’s message to reduce this beef to an apolitical 1v1. It was never a 1v1, it was always political, it was always about the broader culture, it was always a culture war, etc.
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