Kendrick Lamar’s Never-Ending Battles
Update: 2024-11-28
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The Los Angeles rapper returns with his (surprise) sixth album, itching to escape his Drake drama, but still benefiting from it. Guest: Joe Coscarelli. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything
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00:00:00
What does beauty have to do with sports, or advanced technology, or the economy?
00:00:06
I am Isabella Rosillini, and in each episode of "This Is Not A Beauty Podcast," I uncover stories that explain beauty's fascinating and often hidden role in modern life.
00:00:20
Listen to "This Is Not A Beauty Podcast" now on your favorite podcast platform, brought to you by L'Oreal Group.
00:00:31
Welcome to the New York Times' podcast, you are holding space with the lyrics of "Wacked Out Neuros," and feeling power in that of music news and criticism.
00:00:44
I'm John Caremonica, pop music critic of "The New York Times."
00:00:47
I'm Joe Coscarelli, pop music reporter at "The New York Times."
00:01:01
Joe, I, for once, was going to have a relatively uneventful professional weekend.
00:01:12
And I hate to be one of those guys that's like, "Oh, no, it's about me.
00:01:15
It's about me."
00:01:16
I was traveling, did not have my computer, and Mr.
00:01:19
Morale Kendrick Lamar said, "You know what?
00:01:22
Time to get to work, buddy.
00:01:24
Get to work.
00:01:25
This is labor.
00:01:26
Do labor over the weekend."
00:01:28
So on my trip, I wrote a review of Kendrick Lamar's G and X's 6th album, "Question Mark."
00:01:37
We'll get to that big gear for Kendrick, obviously, the Drinking Kendrick beef.
00:01:42
Kendrick Lamar seemed to have gone a little bit quiet after he was announced as the Superbowl headliner for next year, but apparently he'd been cooking, or at least had been cooking in recent weeks.
00:01:52
If you read some of the stories about how some of these songs came together in their finality, a lot's happened even in the three days.
00:02:01
We're recording this Monday evening, even in the three days since the album came out.
00:02:07
You have various forms of Drake response, even though I don't know how much actual Drake there is.
00:02:15
I mean, there's implicit Drake, but it's not quite pointed on this album.
00:02:21
People really mad at that production.
00:02:24
Yeah, okay.
00:02:25
All right, I see.
00:02:26
I see you tilting your head in that way.
00:02:28
Okay, sure.
00:02:29
You're really going to tell me that there's not stuff about Drake on this album?
00:02:33
There is stuff about Drake, but it's not like, as I said in my piece, it's not like to meet the grams, you know what I mean?
00:02:39
But what is, like, there is zero other musical competition.
00:02:43
Yeah, but there is an entire verse written in the voice of John Lee Hooker.
00:02:47
So it's like, he does do deep description.
00:02:51
It's not like he's not doing description on this album.
00:02:54
I'm just saying.
00:02:55
Right.
00:02:56
Right.
00:02:57
It does feel like a tiny bit of a retreat from that particular energy of March through June.
00:03:06
Let's say I disagree, but we'll get to it.
00:03:09
Okay.
00:03:10
Great.
00:03:11
Anyway, G and X, it is to my ear, a bit of a grabback.
00:03:17
You have posse cuts with young LA rappers.
00:03:21
You've got mariachi singing that doesn't exactly thread through as much as it seems, even though it appears on a bunch of places, doesn't exactly create like a coherent through line.
00:03:32
You have two songs to my ears that explicitly reference other, not like early, not songs.
00:03:39
You have an electro record, which is great.
00:03:43
I like that record a lot.
00:03:46
To me, what this album feels like is, how do we clean up all of the mess of the last six months?
00:03:55
How do we like tie off, like, what do you do?
00:03:59
Do you like tie off the, what, what, like a sutra?
00:04:03
No, no.
00:04:04
Like, we were tying off the arm when, sort of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever that is.
00:04:08
Right.
00:04:09
Someone email us.
00:04:10
Oh, by the way, speak of me.
00:04:11
No, but speak of email.
00:04:12
Turn a kid.
00:04:13
Turn a kid.
00:04:14
Turn a kid.
00:04:15
Yeah.
00:04:16
I should know that as a, as a Zach Bryan fan, especially, I should know that, as sidebar about email, to architects emailed us after last week's episode to talk about architecture.
00:04:28
I'd love, when we do a mail bag episode, I will read from those, they're very long.
00:04:33
Oh, about architecture in the time of Trump.
00:04:35
Yes.
00:04:36
Yes.
00:04:37
Like, we, we put out a call and we were, we were in.
00:04:40
I blacked that out, but okay.
00:04:42
You said some wild stuff last week.
00:04:44
Just FYI.
00:04:45
Do you absolutely satisfy every week?
00:04:49
No.
00:04:51
You said some wild stuff last week, but the people responded.
00:04:56
So we will get into it on mail bag episode.
00:05:00
Um, anyway, to me, this album or collection of songs or playlist or what, or mixtape or whatever people want to call it, feels to me like, how do we sort of like tie off?
00:05:10
How do we turn a kid off?
00:05:11
Everything that was happening.
00:05:13
How do we like throw a few concept songs in there just to remind people of the throughlines of Kendrick's albums, but it doesn't feel like a macro narrative,
00:05:23
which is what Kendrick's later albums like not like section 80 necessarily, but like certainly from good kid mad city forward.
00:05:31
Um, there is historically a coherent narrative through line, uh, maybe damn, not exactly, but there's a coherent narrative through line and often,
00:05:42
uh, coherent musical language that speaks across the songs, I would, I would contend that on this album, the musical language might be more coherent than the any narrative through lines.
00:05:54
Um, first time I listened to it, I'm happy, always happy to hear Kendrick rapping well, uh, rapping well.
00:06:00
Second time I was like, why are these songs in this order?
00:06:03
Why are they next to each other unclear?
00:06:06
So, so that's what I wrote, read it in the New York Times, Joe, you've been shaking your head vigorously up and down and left and right in Kendrickian disgust with my take.
00:06:21
Um, no, no, I don't, I don't disagree with your, your macro take, but I, I, I, Quibble, uh, I want to squabble, squabble, some of the squabble track too.
00:06:33
So go ahead, squabble on king.
00:06:35
I think the through line here is Los Angeles.
00:06:41
I think that that sure goes for every form of music here from, you know, freestyle or electro to the Mariachi singer that Kendrick apparently scouted when she sang,
00:06:54
uh, head of one of the world series games, which wasn't that long ago.
00:06:57
I think you're right about the immediacy, the recency of a lot of this music.
00:07:03
And I sort of think there's two halves to this album.
00:07:07
It's 12 songs, it's like 45 minutes.
00:07:09
Great.
00:07:10
Awesome.
00:07:11
You know, yeah.
00:07:12
Honestly, for all y'all 30 song art, like, please think of me on a weekend, trying it.
00:07:19
Will he add a second disc to this?
00:07:21
Will he double back like a deluxe maybe, but maybe not.
00:07:25
I will say for all the speculation and I want to get to the flavor of the immediate Easter egging of everything, which we've covered a lot on pop cast, but, you know, immediately upon this album being released,
00:07:37
everyone was like, it's not an album.
00:07:39
It's not the album.
00:07:40
There's another album.
00:07:41
There's a second album.
00:07:42
Oh, there's two cars in the teaser video.
00:07:44
Oh, there's a song in the teaser video that's not on the album, et cetera, et cetera, that's Taylor Swift Creative Agency.com.
00:07:52
Yeah.
00:07:53
A chaotic, I will say, in the official press release from Team Kendrick Lamar and PG Lying, it was called a new album, not a playlist, not a mixtape,
00:08:03
not a project.
00:08:04
Just an interesting semantic choice.
00:08:06
Although can we just sidebar and say that is there any chance that that is because of contractual obligations between PG Lying and Interscope?
00:08:15
I was going to save this later for later when we talked about the Easter eggs and everything, but we did see this recently with the release of a little oozievert album.
00:08:26
And immediately when the fans were disappointed, they were like, no, no, no.
00:08:30
It's not actually a bad album by little oozievert.
00:08:34
It's a, it's a blonde endless Frank Ocean scam.
00:08:38
And then little oozievert liked a tweet to that effect or an Instagram comment.
00:08:43
Sure.
00:08:44
Now it's been confirmed as things are people are, here's the thing, people are worried about how journalism going to work in the 21st century.
00:08:53
How's it going to work in the 2020s and the 2030s?
00:08:56
Everybody who stressed, I say, don't worry, little oozievert is liking tweets.
00:09:01
As long as he, sorry, I got to take that back.
00:09:05
As long as they're liking tweets, we'll have news and truth and truth and question.
00:09:14
So anyway, I don't think that Kendrick put out GNX to get out of any sort of contractual obligations.
00:09:21
But I don't know.
00:09:22
His CFO, you never know.
00:09:24
Yeah.
00:09:25
Right.
00:09:26
Yes.
00:09:27
I do think that this album is basically half recent stuff.
00:09:32
The first song, Wacked Out Murals, is very later period Jay-Z in which it addresses every tabloid headline from the last X amount of months,
00:09:43
you know, you get Snoop Dogg, you get Lil Wayne, the Super Bowl, Nas, you know, illusions to Jay Cole and letting Nas down, but letting Lil Wayne down.
00:09:55
Yeah.
00:09:56
I was just saying, you know, who didn't let Nas, you beat me too, you know, you didn't let Nas now Kendrick one more.
00:10:01
And I think it's basically like the pop out the album, right?
00:10:05
We had this big L.A.
00:10:07
Unity concert on Juneteenth, which was the victory lap for the Drake beef.
00:10:16
And I think that I'd say basically half of the album, Wacked Out Murals, Squabble Up, Hay Now, TV Off, Peekaboo, GNX, the title track.
00:10:25
And then Dodger Blue, maybe somewhere in between, like those are the flexing songs, those are the Draco the Roller.
00:10:33
Songs?
00:10:34
I mean, at least half of, half of that half, oh man.
00:10:38
I want to get to that also because it's complicated.
00:10:41
Yeah.
00:10:42
I mean, it's complicated, but there's a lot going on here in terms of the, L.A., the recent L.A.
00:10:48
lineage of Gengser Eppers.
00:10:50
And then there's the album tracks, the high concept, the sort of timeless Kendrick Lamar ones, the ones that don't sound like they were recorded in the last two to three months.
00:11:00
I mean, this affectionately, all of the songs you're about to mention all sound like the last song on like any other, it's like the last song on the,
00:11:10
even like masterpiece third record or whatever.
00:11:13
It's like nine minutes.
00:11:14
You know, it's like thematically through L.A., it's a cover is a bunch like every Kendrick song that people are like, man, no one does it like Kendrick.
00:11:22
Every Kendrick song like that is that song.
00:11:25
Is hip-hop.
00:11:26
Yeah.
00:11:27
Yeah.
00:11:28
Real hip-hop.
00:11:29
Did you used to love her, Joe?
00:11:33
So yes, we were starting from the back.
00:11:35
That's Gloria, the album closing track in which Kendrick Lamar wraps up being in love with his pen, aka his bitch, the hard part six, the sixth in his series of origin story tracks,
00:11:50
Kanye Story telling tracks it reincarnated in which he wraps both as God and Billy Holiday.
00:11:58
Is it not John Lee Hooker in the middle?
00:12:02
Wouldn't that be the first?
00:12:04
Wouldn't that be the first?
00:12:05
I thought, yes.
00:12:06
Yes, right.
00:12:07
Yes, like right after the first like four lines or another, yes, but not the not the heroine verse.
00:12:13
No, no, not that first.
00:12:14
I think the hero, I picture the body of Billy Holiday with the voice of Kendrick Lamar for the second verse.
00:12:22
The third verse is Kendrick Lamar wrapping as Kendrick Lamar and as God.
00:12:27
Yes.
00:12:28
And John Lee Hooker and Billy Holiday streams went up this weekend.
00:12:33
Not as much as Tupac or not, I was going to say not as much as Lefty Gunplay.
00:12:40
Not as much as Draco The Ruler.
00:12:42
Yeah, Mickey Restonpiece.
00:12:45
Reincarnated.
00:12:46
We're going to get back to it.
00:12:47
Man at the Garden.
00:12:48
That's one mic.
00:12:49
Key and X, do you want to play a title track?
00:12:53
Let's play Man at the Garden.
00:12:54
Let's go in on the on the nozzaness.
00:12:57
Before we do talk about the nozzaness, one thing I do want to say, you talked about Los Angeles.
00:13:01
And I think it's interesting that there is this Los Angeles through line.
00:13:05
I also forgive me because I, one of the things that I did do this weekend is I went back to my college radio station and a song that I used to play a lot.
00:13:14
I mentioned in this review because it came up for me when I was listening to this album and that is KD's freshest MC in the world.
00:13:23
Pedro, I would be so excited.
00:13:25
You could just drop 15 seconds of freshest MC in the world because I think it'll soothe the room before we start talking about people who are wrecked by anxiety such as nozzaness and get tricklemore.
00:13:38
Yes.
00:13:39
Nozz.
00:13:40
Remember, nozzaness.
00:13:41
I can't be kept down, making niggas step down, recognize eyes open wide as I move inside.
00:13:47
The center.
00:13:48
Been into the game since '84.
00:13:51
Hi, it's Melissa Clark from New York Times Cooking and I'm in the kitchen with some of our team.
00:13:58
I want to know what everyone's making for Thanksgiving this year from our recipes.
00:14:00
Nikita Richardson, what are you going to make?
00:14:02
I'm making potatoes, the cheesy, hassle-back potato gratin, featuring layers upon layers of thinly cut potatoes, a five star recipe, which is very easy, but it's a real showstopper.
00:14:14
Genevieve Kyle, what about you?
00:14:15
Absolutely going to make miso gravy, smothered green beans.
00:14:18
You cook the green beans in the gravy that has this deep savoury, mommie flavor from just a little bit of miso.
00:14:24
Sounds fantastic.
00:14:25
Von Reeland.
00:14:26
Give us your take.
00:14:27
I've tried every single one of Genevieve's pies for this year and let me tell you that caramel apple pie.
00:14:32
It's so delicious.
00:14:33
It's like a candy bar.
00:14:34
I had a bite.
00:14:35
It's got this short red light crust, so you don't have to roll out pie dough.
00:14:39
So no turkey?
00:14:40
Well, I think I might do a turkey pie.
00:14:42
You're a dry-brined one, Melissa.
00:14:43
Keep that simple.
00:14:44
Yeah.
00:14:45
That's the best.
00:14:46
Well, there you have it, folks.
00:14:47
What kind of Thanksgiving you're cooking, you can find the recipes you need at nytcooking.com/thanksgiving.
00:14:56
To me, this song, and specifically the climax of this song, first of all, it's no one-mike.
00:15:03
Of course not.
00:15:04
What is?
00:15:05
Nor does it even really match the feeling?
00:15:10
I get it structurally as a song, but does it earn its one-mikeness?
00:15:18
No, I don't believe it.
00:15:19
It felt hasty to me.
00:15:21
It's like a hasty take on it.
00:15:23
And I think really, it's coded in a way like the first four or five seconds, like with that kind of hollow, like that stuff.
00:15:35
That's in immediate DNA level trigger for someone like me, who grew up one of these records.
00:15:42
And then because you have that in mind, you're waiting for the roar at the end.
00:15:47
You know the roar is coming.
00:15:49
I agree with you completely.
00:15:51
The roar is nowhere near the original.
00:15:56
It's nowhere near the original.
00:15:57
But I think him essentially remaking it in concept is he's trying to place him, locate himself historically where Nas was in that moment.
00:16:06
You look at where Nas was, this is '02, coming off of like, you know, these kind of like late '90s party records and so on and so forth.
00:16:15
And people were like, oh, Nas fell off.
00:16:17
What?
00:16:18
Nas isn't.
00:16:19
That's not ill-matic, Nas.
00:16:20
I mean, if I'm not mistaken, one mic is literally on still-matic.
00:16:24
You know, and it's just like, you know, I'm back.
00:16:27
I know I was in the wild.
00:16:28
I know I made only back.
00:16:31
I'm sorry about that.
00:16:32
I didn't mean to do it.
00:16:33
Y'all made me do it.
00:16:34
Now I didn't do it.
00:16:35
And now every record since then has basically just been still-matic, Mark 12th.
00:16:41
Everything.
00:16:43
As a wise man once said, is it Uchiwali or is it one mic?
00:16:47
The answer was, it's one mic, which is unfortunate.
00:16:54
But I do think the roar of this song, the final climax, the last lyrics, I think are the mission statement for both G and X, the album,
00:17:04
for the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef.
00:17:07
And ultimately, I think for the battle that Kendrick is waging across his career.
00:17:15
So, I mean, we can play it.
00:17:17
Basically, it's a part where he says, "Flip a coin, do you want the shameless me or the famous me?"
00:17:22
And then the lines that follow, "Look at the famous me, how annoying does it anger me to know the names to speak, or the origins of the game I breathe, that's the same to me, it's important.
00:17:33
I deserve it, because it's mine."
00:17:34
Tell me why you think you deserve the greatest of all time.
00:17:38
How annoying does it anger me to know that lambs can speak on the origins of the game I breathe that's insane to me?
00:17:48
That I think is Kendrick Lamar once again becoming comfortable with the role of Savior and Prophet.
00:17:59
I think for many, many, many years we've had this duality of Kendrick Lamar.
00:18:05
He loves both sides.
00:18:07
He loves.
00:18:08
I'm here to be a truth teller.
00:18:10
I'm here to carry God's message.
00:18:13
I'm here to purify music and hip-hop, but also I'm imperfect and I'm not your Savior.
00:18:22
I'm not...
00:18:23
Don't look to me for that.
00:18:24
Don't look to me.
00:18:25
I shouldn't be on this pedestal.
00:18:26
Like, that casting off of responsibility, that makes sense when the issues at hand are police brutality,
00:18:36
poverty, you know, black on black crime.
00:18:39
I don't think that Kendrick Lamar sees himself exactly as a revolutionary.
00:18:44
I think in a lot of ways, and we've talked about this, he's not a radical.
00:18:48
He's quite conservative, especially in his religion, which I think is...
00:18:54
Sometimes in the way he wraps about women.
00:18:56
And I think Mr.
00:18:57
Moral was really the final straw in this sort of recalibration where he was saying, you know, the baggage that comes with all right being the song that it became and where it was used.
00:19:10
And all of that, everything from basically Trevon Martin up through 2016, I think was really tough on Kendrick.
00:19:20
And he didn't want that, he didn't want that responsibility.
00:19:24
And Moral, which is now about his own spiritual journey, his depression, you know, even going back to, I think, like the climax of Pimpa Butterfly, like mortal man where he's having a conversation with Tupac.
00:19:37
And he's basically saying, like, am I Nelson Mandela or am I not Nelson Mandela?
00:19:42
I think all of that is like the animating tension of Kendrick's career.
00:19:48
But I think the burden that he does know he can carry and does want to carry is that of hip hop lineage.
00:19:54
He wants to take out the people he sees as fakes and lambs defiling hip hop.
00:19:59
He's comfortable being a savior in the mode of Nas, if not in the mode of Nelson Mandela.
00:20:04
You know what I mean?
00:20:05
That's interesting.
00:20:06
I read it similarly, but maybe I'll just slightly off to the side, which is I...
00:20:16
There was one interview with Kendrick, I don't even know if you may remember where this was from.
00:20:22
I can't remember.
00:20:23
But someone asked him kind of like where he was going, like, you know, like, okay, you've got time off.
00:20:27
Like, where are you?
00:20:28
What do you do?
00:20:29
And he was like, I'm riding bikes by the beach or something on those lines, something like that.
00:20:35
I can't remember exactly where that was from.
00:20:37
And I think in reaction to what you just described of like all the pressure that was put on him in the mid 20 times.
00:20:44
I genuinely think that's where he wants to be and where that place is spiritually or geospatially,
00:20:54
wherever that is, what that allows him to do is make music that is not in discourse with contemporary hip hop.
00:21:04
One of the things that's so strange about the initial Kendrick Selvo that starts this whole thing off, back in March, is it's on a future in Metro Booman song?
00:21:15
Like what's he doing on this song?
00:21:18
What's he, like, what are you doing, well, why are you on there to make a statement?
00:21:23
No, of course, but it's like, I didn't even know you knew what to look like.
00:21:26
Yeah, literally.
00:21:27
Like, he's in your phone, like, future, Pluto's in your phone.
00:21:31
I mean, I love it if he is, but, um, well, we know, and we know Kendrick loves Kodak.
00:21:35
So it's not that there aren't certain strings contemporary.
00:21:37
Yeah.
00:21:38
I mean, Kendrick has a song with gunplay.
00:21:39
Nevermind.
00:21:40
Lefty gunplay.
00:21:41
Um, and so, but I think, and I tried to touch on this in the beginning of my piece, like, I do think that that resent,
00:21:52
that savior thing for hip hop, that Kendrick is mindful of.
00:21:58
I also think it's a little bit like, damn, like, it's like the dance, like the odd damn meme with the guy like, well, here we go, yeah,
00:22:08
here we go again, it's that.
00:22:10
And I think you hear the tension and the disappointment in his voice and, and one thing that Kendrick has always done so well is he has a panoply of voices.
00:22:23
He has a panoply of rhythms and patterns and he always has a panoply of voices.
00:22:26
Like you say, he wraps two, almost like he's wrapping two himself in different characters, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively.
00:22:33
He's embodying figures from his past, speaking to him and he's speaking back to those figures and then he's speaking to somebody else all in his own unique,
00:22:44
complicated way.
00:22:46
The Drake beef is very much like, I like, I wish to be like, there's another interview with someone after I think, but to people of fly, what maybe it was Terrace Martin who,
00:22:58
and I think it was our friend Justin Charity, who did the interview back in the day and you're like, he was like, what's studio like, what are you doing?
00:23:03
He was just like, eating vegetables, listening to jazz, eating vegetables.
00:23:08
That's what Kendrick wants to be doing.
00:23:09
He doesn't want to be thinking about Drake, you know, I just don't think he actually wants to do that.
00:23:15
And that's part of why this album feels a little bit like chaotic to me because I'm like, it's not a whole hog like, I'm here to annihilate this guy, even though he's been doing that intermittently throughout the year.
00:23:30
And it's not a, I've totally moved on.
00:23:32
And so whether it's an album or Mixed Up Whatever, to me, what it does feel like is a bit of a placeholder in between a series of events that like knocked him off his rhythm.
00:23:43
And then there's something that may be more rhythmically consistent on the backside of this.
00:23:50
At some point.
00:23:51
Yeah, see, I see it less as it knocking it off his rhythm and then clarifying his intent and his motivation.
00:24:00
I think, I think the Drake beef for him, what I hear on this album is that it was clarifying for him and that he realized why hip-hop needs him.
00:24:12
And it's because in his words, because he needs, somebody needs to weed out the people who are not doing justice to the lineage, the, the lambs talking about the origins of the game that he breathes.
00:24:25
He thinks that it is his birthright.
00:24:27
In fact, that, I mean, you hear it from reincarnated, that's, that's literally, it's his birthright to carry this torch.
00:24:35
And he feels like those who had been carrying it in the meantime, maybe closer to the center.
00:24:40
We're doing it incorrectly.
00:24:42
But I think you sort of overstate his aversion to main, the mainstream or his aversion to the present day.
00:24:52
And I think that he's always been really canny, both subject wise and sound wise about his use of guests.
00:24:59
And I think in a lot of ways, the guests are the devil on his shoulder and they represent the things that he can't say or that he, the, the ways that he can't sound.
00:25:10
And you have that a lot on here, you know, you have some pretty straightforward gangster rap verses.
00:25:16
Yeah, we're all talking.
00:25:17
Yeah, that he, that he would never do.
00:25:19
And obviously Kodak filled that role on Mr.
00:25:22
Morrell.
00:25:23
And I think his, his obsession with redemption is another thing that I think stems from his Christianity that doesn't get talked about a bunch.
00:25:32
And it's his obsession with people who are maybe seen as impure, you know, you, I mean, Kodak, you go down the list.
00:25:40
Remember Kendrick was reportedly exerting pressure when Spotify was deemphasizing Archelyan XXX centession and said, no, no, no,
00:25:51
this is important.
00:25:52
These are important artists free speech, blah, blah, blah.
00:25:55
Was he saying, which is a side bar?
00:25:56
Was he saying that both Archelyan X or was it just, it was the, the, the, the policy was, it was affecting both of them.
00:26:04
The policy was what was Kendrick specifically.
00:26:06
Well, he never spoke, he never spoke about it.
00:26:09
Right.
00:26:10
It was.
00:26:11
So it's hard.
00:26:12
It's hard to say.
00:26:13
Sure.
00:26:14
But raw thoughts.
00:26:15
Again, Kodak Black, Dr.
00:26:17
Dre, Nas, all of whom have been credibly accused of abuse against women, which, you know, complicated when you start to think about the claims made against Drake throughout throughout the beef.
00:26:30
But I think that Kendrick's, and vice versa, and vice versa, of course.
00:26:36
And I think Kendrick's obsession with, you know, can, can these people still be a important to the culture, be important to me?
00:26:45
And can they maybe sound a way that I'm not comfortable sounding?
00:26:48
You know, you see this also in his appreciation for Absoul and SchoolboyQ, you know, like the like, it's not what I do, but I, but I need it.
00:26:57
And I think that, you know, that you hear that on this album a lot.
00:27:03
And I think you hear it specifically going back to that conversation with God that he has on the third verse of reincarnated where, you know, Kendrick says, I'm trying to piece up the LA gangs and God saying,
00:27:16
but you love war.
00:27:17
And he's saying, I do and I don't, you know, and I think that that, I think Drake gave him clarity of purpose.
00:27:25
And, you know, he said, and like he says on the title track, you know, he says, I'm tripping and I love it.
00:27:29
So I think he's realized how to reconcile those two sides of him.
00:27:33
Now do those two sides of him work cohesively in the 12 tracks of this album.
00:27:39
I don't know.
00:27:40
I don't love listening to the ponderous songs.
00:27:45
I like listening to the, I'm going to clip walk on your grave songs like those are or whatever you want to say on the other side for equal opportunity,
00:27:57
you know, pop out handshakes.
00:27:59
And I think that that, I think there is a, there is a backbone here.
00:28:02
There is a, there is a through line.
00:28:04
I just don't know if it clicks.
00:28:07
Do you, let's talk a little bit about, because I think we also are not totally in alignment about the degree to which Drake is a target of stuff on this.
00:28:19
I think there's a difference between him as an animating force and him as a specific target.
00:28:25
How much are you hearing pure direct Drake targeting on this album?
00:28:33
I didn't write down every line, but I would say there's an illusion to Drake on every song.
00:28:42
You don't, you don't think so?
00:28:43
Yeah, I would say most.
00:28:45
I would say most.
00:28:46
And I, I also did not write a complete list.
00:28:49
But yes, most, but I, aligned that I had written that I did not end up putting in the piece was like, there's something about these songs that's like,
00:29:01
didn't I take care of this guy?
00:29:02
Like isn't it like, like I still got to do this?
00:29:07
And that exhaust, like that kind of like, I have a bar for you, but like I don't have 50 bars for you.
00:29:15
But I have like a shot, I have a shot here and a shot there, that's, that's maybe why it feels a little on the whole softer to me is it's not, it's not relentless.
00:29:26
It's not like, if anything, if Drake were to feel a way about this, right?
00:29:32
It's in knowing that here we are eight months later and Kendra Lamar put an album out that still is mad and still indignant about the whole thing.
00:29:44
It's under his skin.
00:29:45
It also apparently under Drake skin, which we'll get to, but it's it's still under his skin.
00:29:53
And you know, one thing about Kendrick is, in the same way that I think you're right that he grew fatigued with the savior mantle, that was, that was sort of like placed upon him in the mid 20's,
00:30:04
I'm not convinced he wants to be the guy who took down Drake for the rest of his life and the rest of his career.
00:30:10
I don't think he wants that to be achievement number one.
00:30:15
This man made to pimple butterfly.
00:30:17
This is like, it's not like that's as, as fascinating as this beef has been and the, as unexpected, the turns that it took has been,
00:30:28
it is, to me, there's nowhere near the artistic achievement of actual great Kendrick Lamar music.
00:30:36
And I think Kendrick kind of just wants to go back and make actual great Kendrick Lamar music.
00:30:41
I agree, and I think he wanted to note the victory again in permanent form, you know, the pop out streamed on Amazon or whatever it was,
00:30:51
like I'm sure it's available in bits and pieces, but it's not, it's, it's not immortalized like these songs are.
00:30:59
And I think there's different tiers of Drake lines on this.
00:31:02
There's specifics.
00:31:03
There's, he tried to put Bitcoin in my hood to dig up dirt about me and that could have gone really wrong.
00:31:09
There's those lines and then and there's, you know, I strangled a goat like that's pretty explicit.
00:31:15
Yeah, that's obvious.
00:31:16
Yeah.
00:31:17
And then there's like the vaguer sort of like you and everyone else who steps to me as a goofy and like there's, there's a lot of those.
00:31:25
Look, I don't always want to bring it back to Drake, but in this case, I think he did it in a very Drake way and the album that this reminds me of the most given its drop in the timeline here,
00:31:39
close to one of the bigger beefs in hip hop history is scorpion.
00:31:44
It's really, when you go back to scorpion, Drake's album immediately after the push of T beef, you can hear scorpion 1.0 and then you can hear the four, five,
00:31:54
six, seven, eight records.
00:31:57
That's a double album.
00:31:58
It's too long.
00:31:59
You can hear the eight records that were made post story of Adidas and you can hear both the specific lines for push and Kanye and you can hear the sort of like vaguer ones.
00:32:11
And it is disorienting because it's an album that Drake had obviously been working on for a really long time and then he had to cram all these current events in.
00:32:21
And I hear that here, you know, again, and I think a song like, man, the garden, a song like, reincarnated, a song like Gloria, the closing track.
00:32:32
It's Kendrick Lamar saying like, it's like one for the devil on my shoulder, one for the angel on my shoulder instead of one for one for them and one for me.
00:32:41
You know, he's saying like, I'm going to, I'm going to celebrate my win.
00:32:47
But I'm also going to use that to give you some vegetables along the way.
00:32:53
Should we listen to a little bit of Gloria?
00:32:55
Let's let's check out some of Gloria.
00:32:57
It might be the last time I ever listened to it.
00:33:21
Hey, it's John Chase.
00:33:23
And Mario Ijara.
00:33:24
From Wire Cutter, the product recommendation service from the New York Times, Mari, it is gift giving time.
00:33:30
What's like something fun that my dad is going to enjoy?
00:33:32
We have these custom Funko pops on our gifts for dad's list.
00:33:36
You can custom make a little bobble head toy and the likeness of your dad.
00:33:42
This is so hysterical.
00:33:43
I had never seen these before.
00:33:44
They're amazing.
00:33:45
For all of Wire Cutters gift ideas and recommendations, head to nytimes.com/holidayguide.
00:33:51
Sorry, I don't want to hear music like this.
00:33:56
You like this song?
00:33:58
Yeah, in 1994.
00:33:59
All right.
00:34:00
I don't want to say I can remember where I was when I had the real estate.
00:34:06
You know, it's like you're like, oh, talking about a hip hop.
00:34:09
What?
00:34:10
Yeah.
00:34:11
Shout out to Common.
00:34:12
I don't remember exactly where I was.
00:34:14
I was probably, maybe I was at the college or maybe it was in my dorm room or my, I don't remember.
00:34:19
It's like, maybe there are some kids out there who are having their minds blown as we, as we speak, you know, raised on a steady diet of percussent future wraps and nets been yelping and they have no idea.
00:34:36
And then Kendrick's like, you want to see how far I can extend to this metaphor?
00:34:39
Yes.
00:34:40
And like, they were like, I didn't know rap could do this.
00:34:43
Like, like, this is actually like the paradox or the funny thing about probably if you are a fan who's like under 25 or under 20 or under 25,
00:34:53
it's like, who's making records like this literally, who in the popular, who in the popular side of loop a fiesta.
00:35:03
That is not correct.
00:35:05
I said popular side.
00:35:07
Okay.
00:35:08
All right.
00:35:09
I said popular side of contemporary hip hop.
00:35:10
Who's making records like this?
00:35:11
J.
00:35:12
Electronic.
00:35:12
Oh, Killer Mike, Grammy winner, Grammy winner, Killer Mike.
00:35:19
Yeah.
00:35:20
No, not.
00:35:21
I can't recall Killer Mike's last metaphor that went on for five minutes.
00:35:26
You know, actually, he's making records like this, it's a young boy, it's a little bit more direct.
00:35:34
Yeah, yeah.
00:35:35
It's a little more direct.
00:35:36
Yeah, yeah.
00:35:37
Like, nevertheless, you know, if you're looking for long form metaphor, you know, they're some, they're in there somewhere.
00:35:43
The point is, for all the fans of my age, who are like, oh, thank God, a return to form, a return to real rap after all these like,
00:35:53
you know, auto tuned psyched out, auto tuned psyched out that maybe there's a whole generation of young fans who are like, damn, I literally didn't know this that came up could do this.
00:36:04
I mean, I do think that's part of the reason why Kendrick Lamar is the poet laureate of hip hop.
00:36:10
Although it's a prize winner, he's like, he, they're, like, people love when this guy does this stuff.
00:36:17
Like, this is what all these albums are like, again, I'm talking about mortal man.
00:36:20
I feel like we don't talk enough about the fact that Kendrick made an entire album and then an entire song in conversation with Tupac about yes,
00:36:31
and Mandela inspired by going to his cell, which he alludes to here, going, what about going to Africa and in 2014 and hard part six, I believe,
00:36:42
and like, it is the duality of Kendrick Lamar that he can make humble and he can make mortal man.
00:36:49
He can make squabble up and he can make man at the garden.
00:36:52
And I think he's not held at that level, the level that he is currently held if he doesn't do both.
00:37:00
And I think it bridges generations as well, although I don't know how many young people are listening to GNX other than in bits and pieces.
00:37:10
I do want to go back to our text exchange yesterday because you said something, or maybe we're on the phone, but you said something essentially you were like, this is like listening to an M&M record.
00:37:22
M&M may actually be the rapper who young fans listen to who is the closest to this.
00:37:30
And then when we were going back and forth, I realized that reincarnated is a Lin-Man Well Miranda song.
00:37:36
Right.
00:37:37
You know who wraps like M&M, Lin-Man Well Miranda.
00:37:43
When they finally get together and make a movie, it's going to go dummy.
00:37:48
It's going to go dummy.
00:37:50
Wicked all got nothing on the Lin-Man Well Miranda and M&M press store.
00:37:56
Cynthia and Ariana could never ever don't, don't, don't do it.
00:38:02
I'm speaking it into existence.
00:38:05
Lin, if you are listening, M if you are listening, when you guys both hit your sixties, it's a guaranteed.
00:38:12
We're talking, we're talking, you might touch a billy office.
00:38:16
Okay.
00:38:17
Can I specify that when I say it's like listening to M&M, I said later period M&M and I mean it more in the voices and the admonishment and the tisk tisking.
00:38:30
It's still the hardest part of Kendrick for me is some of the delivery, like his insistence on, you know what it is, you really hear it and walked out murals.
00:38:40
It's his insistence on the imperative mood when he's like telling you how to be.
00:38:47
He's giving you the rules over and over and over again and he's, he's poking his finger in your face while he's telling you that.
00:38:53
You know, and it's so oppressive to me often, he weren't alive for brand newbie and I'm like, this is not, you know,
00:39:04
and that's why when I hear something like, hey now or TV off or peekaboo and he is falling back a little bit, he's, you know, he's, he's leaning.
00:39:14
He's loose.
00:39:15
He's putting boogers on his chain, you know, I'm just like, okay, like I can, I know he has this in him but he won't do it without also telling you how things should be.
00:39:27
And that I find to be exhausting over the span of an album, especially an album with such big swing, pendulum swings of mood as this one.
00:39:37
But again, to go back to something I said a few minutes ago, that is his art.
00:39:42
Yes.
00:39:43
All this other stuff.
00:39:44
The loose, the loose smack talk, that's it, it's inconvenient.
00:39:49
It's not on his calendar.
00:39:51
It literally like when he put his calendar together, he didn't set aside any days for loose smack talk.
00:39:57
And now he like wakes up every day is like, well, I gotta have a bar for Drake today.
00:40:02
I, I only want to have a bar for Drake.
00:40:04
I want to like eat vegetables and ride my bike.
00:40:06
Like I can't, like why, why do I got to deal with this?
00:40:09
This guy.
00:40:10
Do you want to talk about this guy?
00:40:12
Do you think he's exhausted by not like us?
00:40:15
And if so, then why did he double down and make TV off, which to me is actually a better song.
00:40:21
It's not a better moment, of course.
00:40:22
It's not the one that will live on in the zeitgeist, but on a purely musical level, I would much rather listen to TV off, which is the sister song to not like us than to not like us.
00:40:32
But this goes back to the thing you said at the beginning about Los Angeles being the through line.
00:40:35
He is connecting himself to Los Angeles history in the 1980s of the 1990s of the 2000s of the 2010s and also a four months ago.
00:40:46
It is that an acknowledgement, it is as it is as much a reference to an idea of Los Angeles supremacy as to an like him re-versioning his own thing.
00:40:59
It's basically he's historicized that moment and he's revisiting a historicized moment.
00:41:05
Him sampling are mustard sampling, like the same live performance in a different way for this song.
00:41:11
It's also Jack in Soundwave, like it's a bunch of producers on that track.
00:41:19
To me it's not any different than sampling the Tupac record.
00:41:23
The Tupac record is very specific associations and not like us has very specific associations.
00:41:31
Kendrick is basically saying it's the same thing.
00:41:36
I'm referencing a historical moment, it just so happens, it's mine, but I'm referencing it as history.
00:41:43
Do you think it also helps create him an off-ramp for the Super Bowl where he doesn't have to call Drake a pedophile during the Super Bowl and he can basically play the hook of not like us into a debut of TV off,
00:41:58
which has the vibe, has the DNA, but without the specificity allowing him again as we've alluded to like pivot out of the Drake thing into a new era.
00:42:12
I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but I think maybe the slightly broader question is the Super Bowl is in two and a half months.
00:42:20
There's a lot of runway between now and then.
00:42:23
A lot of things can happen.
00:42:24
To what degree do you think the Super Bowl, whether it's not like us specifically those lyrics or broader to what degree is the Drake Kendrick beef going to get resolved or hammered home,
00:42:38
hammered down on the Super Bowl half-time show stage?
00:42:42
So we're revisiting a question that we asked immediately after it was announced that Kendrick will be acclaim when we did the thought experiment, floated the idea that maybe they would incandescently piece it up.
00:42:56
But he has now ruled out both of them, I mean, implicitly both of them, you have said no.
00:43:04
Yeah, I don't see this getting better anytime soon, if not ever, and we've been dancing around it.
00:43:14
I mean, you want to talk about what happened in the hour before we started recording.
00:43:18
Okay, so what does that mean, a fragile upper, no chat,
00:43:28
no, no, no, no, no, fragility?
00:43:36
Okay, well, I actually would like to talk about what happened yesterday, which is Drake made an appearance on a superstar Canadian live streamers stream,
00:43:50
this is Canadian, this got no disrespect to this Canadian live streamer, my knowledge of the live stream ecosystem stops at the northern border,
00:44:01
I guess my bad no longer no, no, no, no, no, we're jammed right in the conversation.
00:44:06
Um, so Drake is on there laughing at a Metro Boomin song and being like, I like this song, calling Steve Lacey a fragile up,
00:44:16
which is literally unbelievable, if that was freestyled as like a refer incredible, I mean, the man knows how to make a catchy turn of phrase.
00:44:27
Almond title of the year, album title of the year, that even in album, fragile up, like popcast, colon, fragile ups is going to be like our ninth season,
00:44:38
it's just going to be all first of all, all our opposite fragile, it's worth saying, uh, all of them, but popcast fragile ups, that's our recurring series, we're going to sell to like, who will or something.
00:44:49
Um, so that's yesterday, it's Drake being like, I cut my braids off, we're back, we're tight, I'm brushing it off, like these guys don't even trouble me,
00:45:01
it's not a big thing.
00:45:03
And I thought, okay, you know, like, interesting, not, you know, like, you didn't see that much of him ultimately, but if that's what he's rolling with, that's what he's wrong with.
00:45:13
And then today, an hour before we recorded, um, Drake drops a lawsuit against UMG, suggesting that they artificially boosted the popularity of not like us with bots,
00:45:28
like bot streamed it.
00:45:30
Among, among other things, I will say, uh, not a lawsuit exactly.
00:45:35
Oh, I'm sorry, I never, never thought I'd say the words verified petition for rule 202 depositions on popcast, uh, yes, but it's basically both in Texas and in New York.
00:45:57
All my verified petition for depositions for rule 202 conference live in Texas is what you're saying, you know, guess, uh, Bexar County, uh, that's,
00:46:07
he's requesting the depositions of I Heart Media, which I guess is based in San Antonio technically, uh, and also Drake identifies himself, um, which I guess you knew a few been paying really close attention,
00:46:18
but as a resident of Texas, uh, here for these purposes, uh, as well as UMG and then separately against UMG and Spotify basically saying,
00:46:30
I may sue you.
00:46:31
Let's do some depositions.
00:46:34
Okay.
00:46:35
In the meantime.
00:46:36
Okay.
00:46:37
I mean, all right, just like straight up, the single worst PR move that any rapper has ever made.
00:46:44
I, I mean, I want to be honest, yeah, I, I, I was speechless.
00:46:50
I'm just so rarely shocked by anything anymore, and I just like could not wrap like what's the four D chess here?
00:46:57
He's trying to get off and you, I'm, she's trying to get out of his deal.
00:47:00
Sure.
00:47:01
Yeah.
00:47:02
Okay.
00:47:03
We saw that with the gigs putting all this free music out, but there's got to be other ways to get out of your deal besides being like the guy I was beefing with,
00:47:13
he's super popular song.
00:47:16
That was number one.
00:47:17
The book.
00:47:18
And, and also created a little legitimate entry into the cultural zeitgeist.
00:47:24
You, you artificially inflated it like right nine months later or eight months later, like, I don't, I just truly on God.
00:47:33
Don't get it.
00:47:34
I'm open to the idea that four D chess is being played here, but why would you sacrifice?
00:47:42
I, I don't even play jazz.
00:47:43
What are you sacrificing?
00:47:44
Like a bishop?
00:47:45
Why would you sacrifice this bishop?
00:47:46
Look, what, how do you get to the king?
00:47:49
I don't get it.
00:47:50
It's a head scratcher.
00:47:54
In your long, estimable history of reporting on the legal shenanigans of the rich and famous in the music business, how does this rank on verify petitions for depositions,
00:48:06
for rule two.
00:48:07
I mean, it's just totally bunkers.
00:48:10
And it's totally bunkers as a PR move because if nothing else, the battle that Drake has lost this year is the PR battle, which is a battle that he has,
00:48:21
yes, which is the battle that he has traditionally been pretty good at.
00:48:27
And this is just like, I mean, look, I don't like, I don't think it's crazy to say that like you and I have often this year given Drake more credit than a lot of people,
00:48:39
both musically and strategically, and said like, well, maybe he was doing this or like, maybe he's not getting credit for this or like, like, I can't believe you.
00:48:47
You had to rinse us in the industry.
00:48:50
I'm just ridiculous.
00:48:51
I need to be honest with you and with myself, like maybe he's further gone strategically than we ever could have imagined.
00:49:06
And I don't think you can underestimate what it is like to be called a pedophile over and over again by the whole world for eight months, like, I can't put myself in that position nor would I ever want to even imagine,
00:49:23
like, but I just don't know what's going on here other than any, yeah, like you've run it, you've run all the plays in your head.
00:49:32
Have any of the plays that you've run in your head straight forward, like I'm sure there's like a second and a third and a fourth filing for verified conference or whatever, like I'm sure there's a whole bunch of stuff already written by the lawyers.
00:49:45
If you took it at purely face value, purely face value, not strategic value, purely face value, is it meritorious in any way?
00:49:57
So just I've, I've, I've glanced at the filings before we started this podcast.
00:50:02
Essentially what he is saying is that not that the song was never popular or not that Kendrick was doing something wrong, but that they basically,
00:50:13
they greased the runway.
00:50:15
They gave the song via bots and paid promotion and whitelisting the creator videos and taking a smaller percentage from Spotify and radio payola.
00:50:28
They basically put it on a rocket ship and it went from there.
00:50:32
Is it part of that to the side of the body?
00:50:35
Is any of that illegal?
00:50:36
Well, payola is illegal.
00:50:38
Yeah.
00:50:39
I mean, they cite, you know, there are legal precedents cited here.
00:50:41
I mean, the thing, if it is meritorious, if it is real in any way, what he's doing is burning down the modern music business because I think it's a safe bet that every major label artist from Drake on down participated,
00:51:00
you know, was, was done in a similar way.
00:51:04
Like the idea of independent radio promoters, like paying creators.
00:51:09
It's a very strange strategic move to point to someone and be like, you put your thumb on scale for that person, potentially knowing that there is discoverable legal evidence that thumbs were put on the scale,
00:51:25
potentially for you.
00:51:27
And that's everybody else in history.
00:51:29
Yeah, sure.
00:51:30
But is that but that's like, is that the actual play here?
00:51:35
Is the play like y'all going to play dirty?
00:51:38
Well, I'm taking, I'm going to like, I'm going to burn down the whole industry.
00:51:43
You know, I'm going to take my ball and nobody else is going to play anything resembling this game ever again.
00:51:49
Do you think those Tate McCray streams are real?
00:51:51
I'll show you, buddy.
00:51:53
I'll show you.
00:51:54
I mean, it's total, it's totally bonkers.
00:51:58
There is a really interesting line here that says that basically wouldn't, wouldn't Drake threaten to sue UMG for this.
00:52:07
They were like, no, no, no, you should be suing Kendrick Lamar, Mr.
00:52:11
Duckworth.
00:52:12
And if you sue us, we will sue him that this wasn't happening on the label level, but at the artist level, I'm just like, like how,
00:52:22
how messy, like what kind of, you know, kind of standoff or what does that tell me is the implication being that if such a thing were to have happened,
00:52:35
it did not come from the hallowed halls of UMG.
00:52:38
That's, that seems to be what they're implying here, but again, I'm just like to, to what end?
00:52:45
Okay.
00:52:46
So 30 million.
00:52:47
Right.
00:52:48
So 30 million of the, however many billions of streams of not like us were bots on day one, two and three, just accept that as true.
00:52:59
Like so what, like what are, what are, like what are we talking about here?
00:53:04
You can't undo the influence of the song.
00:53:06
You can't undo the vibe shift certainly can't undo it with a verified petition for conference under rule 202, like that's, like that's not going to do it.
00:53:15
I love you're a slight tweak of whatever this lead is every time you, I'm just every time you say it.
00:53:21
In a moment, I like, yeah, yeah, that's like, but that's not possible.
00:53:28
You can't undo the vibe shift, right?
00:53:31
So the 40 Chess's Drake wants out of a deal or of music.
00:53:37
He just wants to do like live streaming and, and what's his betting plot?
00:53:41
He is like, and betting on the sports.
00:53:43
Yeah.
00:53:44
Not sponsored.
00:53:45
Yeah.
00:53:46
Not sponsored.
00:53:47
No.
00:53:48
But he wants like bet on steak and like live for you.
00:53:51
I just like, we've said it from this track one, the only way through, put your head down, take a little break,
00:54:01
put out good music.
00:54:02
All anyone wants for you.
00:54:06
I don't want to say it, but it's because he's making it really easy to compare to our last week on podcasts,
00:54:17
so we discussed political strategy where it was all courtrooms and streamers.
00:54:28
And somehow that candidate who ran a very nontraditional campaign and everyone was like, what is this guy doing?
00:54:35
He's totally lost his mind.
00:54:38
You see where I'm going with this?
00:54:39
I do.
00:54:40
Well, it's funny.
00:54:41
He became president again.
00:54:42
Yes.
00:54:43
Like, I don't know.
00:54:45
I will say this.
00:54:46
So Drake's relationship with straight like Drake is obviously doesn't do very much conventional press.
00:54:53
Not in a long time.
00:54:55
You know, like occasionally will like tangle with like a like an alley, it will say, you know, like an older hip hop journal, you know, it'll do like a little bit of public tangling.
00:55:05
He'll like comment on a post somewhere or like deep in an IG somewhere.
00:55:11
I have thought a lot about Drake's embrace of the streaming generation.
00:55:17
And I think you are correct that the most obvious analog is what Trump did in the last few months.
00:55:25
You have to think about Drake specifically, but but people who seek fans more broadly are seeking to tap into kind of like an endlessly renewable fountain of youth.
00:55:35
Like you want to be a young person's favorite rapper or favorite president or favorite podcast government.
00:55:45
Government.
00:55:46
Yes.
00:55:47
A favorite podcast there.
00:55:48
You know, you want that.
00:55:49
And Drake, I think, is astutely looking at streamers as the fastest path to the youngest generation of listeners and saying,
00:56:00
I can meet them where they're at, which is frankly, it's good marketing, probably a lot of people can learn from that.
00:56:09
That is a little bit what I think is in play here.
00:56:12
That said, if there is not complimentary music to go with this strategic shift, then that's a, we're in a head scratch moment.
00:56:24
I mean, the other link here, if we're going to just tease this out, if we're going to do as extended of a metaphor as Kendrick Lamar on Gloria, you know,
00:56:35
a lot of people have been saying that Drake has gone in cell that Drake is up to his misogyny that Drake is trying to appeal specifically to a strain of young,
00:56:48
of disaffected young man.
00:56:50
And that's one of the things that I have always scoffed at, you know, when it's coming, when it comes to, all right, let's listen to Drake's music, compared to every other rapper in this,
00:57:02
in this fear.
00:57:03
I don't think that his, I don't think that he stands out in any particular way.
00:57:10
These are the kinds of things that I'm, I'm like, I'll move like this, I'll ask you like this.
00:57:15
Like, I'm rethinking.
00:57:16
Like, what is it?
00:57:18
What is, what is Drake's next 10 years as a rapper?
00:57:21
And is it just, I'm, I'm a rapper for eight in Ross fans.
00:57:25
Like, there's probably a really great career in that.
00:57:29
There's probably full arenas around the world.
00:57:32
There's partnerships with all sorts of, you know, crypto and gambling platforms that we haven't even heard of, like, there's UFC, like, there, you know, I don't like,
00:57:43
is that, is he just going to exist in that alternate mainstream and no longer, like he's basically saying, if you people want Kendrick, fine, have Kendrick,
00:57:53
I'll, I'll go somewhere else.
00:57:55
Or dare we say, not alternate mainstream, actual mainstream, because this is something that we talked about last week is one of the sort of anxieties of conventional media is like,
00:58:09
oh, it's, they're not doing the real thing.
00:58:11
We are doing the real thing.
00:58:12
They're doing are kind of like, shoddy.
00:58:15
It's like a thing that kind of looks like it, but it's not actually.
00:58:18
And then it turns out that many more people like those things.
00:58:22
So who gets to decide what the mainstream is?
00:58:26
Maybe this is the mainstream.
00:58:28
I would say this is where it falls apart because what Kendrick Lamar is doing, bots are not, is connecting.
00:58:35
And it is extremely popular.
00:58:37
He is more popular than he's ever been.
00:58:39
He's not doing succession and brat numbers, you know what I mean?
00:58:42
Like, he's not just big on coastal Twitter, like he is legitimately the biggest artist on the planet.
00:58:51
The biggest rapper on planet, at least right now.
00:58:54
Right now.
00:58:55
And so I don't know how Drake cuts into that, and it's certainly not through legal channels.
00:59:01
Okay.
00:59:02
The last thing, and this is more of a musical question, if you, if we take what you just said at, as fact, which is that Kendrick is the biggest rapper out right now,
00:59:15
who are number two, three and four or five or whatever, and what style are they working in?
00:59:23
Because even, we're making our big fives, no, no, but I don't even mean it in like a literal number.
00:59:29
But it's like Kendrick can somehow be the biggest rapper working while having no tangible sonic impact on like what rap caviar sounds like.
00:59:44
Who's out there, there's a vacuum to, I think what I'm trying to get at is there's fundamentally a vacuum without Drake putting out a lot of music.
00:59:53
There's a bit of a vacuum, a bit of a power vacuum happening right now.
00:59:58
That's really striking to me that I couldn't even tell you, like, you know, it's like, it's not like even a future had a big year.
01:00:06
It's not future.
01:00:08
No shots at future.
01:00:09
Well, I love and think it's great, but it's like, it's not future right now.
01:00:12
And it's not Tyler, the creator, it's not Tyler, it's not low baby.
01:00:17
And again, it's like, I don't dislike any of these, any of these rappers.
01:00:21
It's just they're not setting the tempo for an entire generation.
01:00:28
And Kendrick also is not setting a creative tempo for an entire generation.
01:00:33
So he does that, which does that leave a window that's big enough for Drake to come and paint on it.
01:00:40
Here's what I think, I think in the past and even up until this week say it was possible for Drake and Kendrick to both be huge.
01:00:52
And they were for a decade, largely parallel narratives, largely parallel sounds, not a lot of overlap except at the beginning of their career.
01:01:03
And Kendrick could be Kendrick.
01:01:04
He could be Pulitzer Prize winning Kendrick Lamar on his own time on his own island, as you've said and written.
01:01:14
And then Drake could do the other thing.
01:01:16
It is increasingly feeling to me zero sum between the two of them.
01:01:20
I do not think audiences at least at the moment will both crown Kendrick and accept whatever hitstrick gives them.
01:01:32
And I think that that is something that has calcified, that has ossified in the last weeks and months.
01:01:39
And now with something like the lawsuit where, you know, haha, your pedophile is one thing, but like you put civil Rico in a lawsuit after losing a rap battle is like a totally other thing.
01:01:56
And I think this is where we differ on GNX, which I do think it is possible that this is Kendrick saying we've had our little thing in the West.
01:02:05
You don't hear it on rap caviar.
01:02:08
I'm about to put my thumb on the scale.
01:02:10
And now everything is going to sound like Drake or the ruler.
01:02:12
It's possible.
01:02:13
Okay.
01:02:14
Here's my counterpoint.
01:02:15
And it's the final note that I'm going to leave everybody with, 2025, Drake and Morgan Wallen.
01:02:23
That's a move.
01:02:24
That's it.
01:02:25
That's it.
01:02:26
That's it.
01:02:27
It's like, I'm going to leave it here six to 12 months now.
01:02:30
We're going to run this back.
01:02:32
Drake and Morgan Wallen, 2025, head scratch, shrug, who can say really, but you want to talk about people reaching for safe spaces, looking for untapped markets,
01:02:44
looking for paths to hugeness that are not necessarily the previously inhabited paths, but art parallel or close enough.
01:02:52
Yeah, truly, truly, I got you all in check.
01:02:57
That is our show, Joe Monday night.
01:03:01
This is like the original Drake and push episode kind of a little bit.
01:03:04
Yeah.
01:03:05
Yeah.
01:03:06
Sure.
01:03:07
Emergency pod.
01:03:08
Very crucial.
01:03:09
I'm racing in the car.
01:03:10
I was racing back.
01:03:11
There's no way I was going to miss our date.
01:03:14
Every episode of pop cast is at ny times.com/popcast.
01:03:19
Every op of pop cast is fragile.
01:03:22
You can subscribe to pop cast on Spotify and Apple and ny times.com/podcasts, where if you subscribe to the audio products, you get access to the full archives,
01:03:32
including the very famous emergency push to T Drake episode.
01:03:36
Our producer is always his Pedro is out of his head, super media.
01:03:40
We will be back next week.
01:03:41
I don't know.
01:03:42
We were going to do wicked.
01:03:43
I guess we're not going to do wicked.
01:03:44
I can't do wicked.
01:03:45
No, we got to do wicked.
01:03:46
A thousand percent were doing wicked.
01:03:47
You have to do it.
01:03:48
We have to do wicked.
01:03:49
All right.
01:03:50
I'm dying on this hill.
01:03:51
Post Thanksgiving, we're doing wicked.
01:03:53
Put it in stone.
01:03:54
Put it in the episode.
01:03:55
So then people will never let you forget it.
01:03:57
We're doing wicked.
01:03:58
All right.
01:03:59
Okay.
01:04:00
All right.
01:04:01
It's important.
01:04:02
You're an Ariana Grande scholar.
01:04:03
It is important that we see you and discuss wicked.
01:04:06
All right.
01:04:07
We will defy gravity next week.
01:04:08
What should we go out with?
01:04:09
We'll do this.
01:04:10
We'll just play peek-a-boo.
01:04:11
Great song.
01:04:12
Great song.
01:04:13
Pick a bow.
01:04:37
[BLANK_AUDIO]
01:04:47
