The ball is back in Drake’s court. After Kendrick Lamar’s back-to-back diss tracks, “Euphoria” and “6:16 in LA,” the For All the Dogs rapper has taken verbal shots at his nemesis with the new song “Family Matters.” Listen to it below.
On “Family Matters,” Drake responds to some of Lamar’s “Euphoria” lyrics. For instance, Lamar questioned Drake’s quality as a father, and Drake answers, “You mentioned my seed, now deal with his dad/I gotta go bad, I gotta go bad.” He also taunts Lamar with name-drops of some of his closest collaborators, Dave Free, Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, and Baby Keem (“K.Dot shit is only hitting hard when Baby Keem put his pen to it”).
Beyond Lamar, Drake calls out some of the other hip-hop figures who’ve taken him to task in recent weeks. He has bars for Metro Boomin (“Leland Wayne, he a fuckin’ lame, so I know he had to be an influence”), Future (“Pluto shit make me sick to my stomach/We ain’t never really been through it”), and Rick Ross (“Ross callin’ me the white boy, and the shit kinda got a ring to it/’Cause all these rappers wavin’ white flags while the whole fuckin’ club sing to it”).
Drake also addresses the legal aftermath of his “Taylor Made Freestyle.” The track, which has been removed from the Canadian musician’s social media pages, was the subject of a cease-and-desist letter from 2Pac’s estate, due to the song’s use of artificial intelligence to emulate the late California rapper’s vocals. On his new track, Drake raps, “A cease-and-desist is for hoes/Can’t listen to lies that come out of your mouth/You called the 2Pac Estate/And begged ’em to sue me and get that shit down.”
One of Drake’s most personal attacks against Lamar comes toward the song’s end when he seems to allege that the Compton artist has domestically abused a partner. “They hired a crisis management team/To clean up the fact that you beat on your queen,” he raps, “The picture you painted ain’t what it seems.” (Beyond Drake’s lines, Kendrick Lamar has not faced public accusations of domestic violence.)
“Family Matters” is Drake’s third anti-Lamar song of the spring, following “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle.” He’s been newly upset with Lamar (and Future and Metro Boomin) since the We Don’t Trust You song “Like That.”
Read the reviews of “Euphoria” and “6:16 in LA,” as well as the Alphonse Pierre breakdown “A Power Ranking of Everyone in the Drake–Kendrick Lamar–Every Rapper Ever Battle Royale.”
