Kendrick, Drake and Rap vs. Women
My latest piece for Vanity Fair is out.
As promised, I weighed in on rap’s biggest beef (maybe ever?) and how women are at the center of it.
“Just when it seemed the talk about the Kendrick Lamar-vs.-Drake beef had finally simmered down following the concert last month that some (me) considered the latter’s funeral, a video for Lamar’s massive hit “Not Like Us” dropped on July Fourth. The Compton native used Independence Day to remind Drake that he isn’t an American, just as Lamar had leveraged his Juneteenth “Ken and Friends” concert in Inglewood to drive home his argument that his opponent isn’t Black in the way that most of his hip-hop peers are.
In one scene from the video, Lamar and his fiancée, Whitney Alford, dance with their small children. The camera makes it look like you’re peering in on the family during a private moment at home, a direct response to Drake allegedly putting money in the street to get dirt on his opponent, something Lamar claimed on “6:16 in LA.” This moment of familial unity flies in the face of Drake’s contention on “Family Matters” that Lamar might not be the father of one of his children and that he abuses Alford.
In 1991, the pioneering hip-hop journalist dream hampton published her first editorial for The Source magazine, then rap’s monthly Bible. In it, she reflects on domestic violence in light of news that Public Enemy rapper Flavor Flav had been arrested for assaulting the mother of his children and that Dr. Dre had brutally assaulted hip-hop journalist Dee Barnes. “It infuriates me that witnesses reported that Dr. Dre’s bodyguard held the crowd back as Dee received multiple blows to her womanhood,” hampton wrote. “I find it intolerable when brothers ask ‘so what did Dee do?’ I will be outraged to learn that Dr. Dre is not underneath the jail when this is published.” (Barnes reportedly filed charges and reached a settlement with Dre, who pleaded no contest. Flavor Flav pleaded guilty to assault and spent 30 days in jail.)
Dr. Dre attacked Barnes, the host of the weekly hip-hop series Pump It Up!, at a Hollywood nightclub after an interview with Ice Cube was featured on her show. Cube had recently departed NWA and was on the outs with Dre and the group’s other members. Dre felt the move disrespected NWA, whom Barnes had interviewed and had a friendly relationship with in the past. In a 2019 interview with Wendy Williams, Barnes claimed that Dre grabbed her by the hair and “slammed” her into a brick wall. She says he then followed her into a bathroom where he continued to assault her, but she chose not to describe what was done to her once the two were out of public view. (In the HBO documentary The Defiant Ones, Dre calls the violent incident “a major blemish on who I am as a man.”)
To my great disappointment, Dre was one of the “friends” Kendrick brought out at the Juneteenth show, performing two of his own hits before doing the “I see dead people” intro to “Not Like Us,” the song that has solidified Drake’s defeat. The irony of Kendrick calling out Drake for mistreating and disrespecting women and then bringing out a known abuser was not lost on me. It was a very on-brand moment for hip-hop.
There may not be other (known) stories of women being physically assaulted over hip-hop beef, but historically, they have been treated as pawns in feuds between influential rappers….”