Drake is soon expected to drop his first solo album since his ignominious loss to Kendrick Lamar. Amid the fallout of their feud, both Drake and Lamar have continued to amass commercial success. Kendrick Lamar released his sixth studio album, GNX, that same fall of the 2024 beef, with all 12 songs debuting on Billboard’s Hot 100 list. Lamar scored three number 1s on the project with the songs “Squabble Up”, “TV Off”, and “Luther”.
Notably, that following winter, Drake released an R&B album, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, with longtime collaborator and labelmate, PartyNextDoor. Although the album slightly underperformed Lamar‘s commercially, Drake remained uncontested in terms of overall global streaming numbers. Still, in the time that has followed, the infamous battle has had a puzzling effect not only on their respective careers but also on the rap industry as a whole.
In October 2025, for the first time since 1996, no rap songs appeared in the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. This is alarming because in 2017, hip-hop officially became the most-consumed musical genre in the United States, dominating streaming platforms, social media, fashion, advertising, and society as a whole. For nearly a decade that followed, rap music did not merely influence popular culture; it was pop culture. By the end of 2017, hip-hop had officially eclipsed pop music as the most consumed genre in America.
Think about that: a single genre had essentially surpassed a category designed to encompass every genre. The absence of rap from Billboard’s charts nearly a decade later therefore reads less like a random industry fluctuation and more like a glaring warning sign. It ultimately raises the question: what if the real casualty of the Drake and Kendrick feud was hip-hop itself?
The 2024 rap feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake had an enormous, though contradictory, impact on hip-hop’s commercial success. While it drove unprecedented short-term streaming numbers and financial gains, it has ultimately altered the genre’s long-term chart performance.
Recently, hip-hop producer Ray Daniels expressed concern about the future of rap while discussing Drake’s upcoming release. “If Drake doesn’t work, y’all are f*cked until the next hero come and I don’t see him nowhere in sight…” Daniels continued: “I pray Iceman work because we need it, but if it don’t? Oh my God… I think hip-hop might really be dead like Rock.” This sentiment may seem frightening or alarmist at first. However, Daniels’ observations are evidenced by the genre’s commercial decline.
The cultural impact of Drake’s loss was felt immediately across the industry. LA-based rapper, the Game, similarly argues that the fallout from the Drake and Kendrick Lamar feud has left hip-hop “down 50 percent”, suggesting the culture failed to appreciate Drake’s importance to the genre during the conflict.
Without Drake, the aforementioned rise and dominance of rap music in the 2010s would not have been possible. His fusion of emotional lyricism, pop aesthetics, and R&B-style melodic hooks fundamentally redefined the genre and helped to make it the dominant global commercial force it became.
Record producer Isaac Hayes III notes that the 2024 battle shifted the genre from a commercial powerhouse into a divisive “engagement art form “driven by pure spectacle and social media metrics rather than musical quality or depth. Both Drake and Kendrick Lamar took personal jabs at one another during the feud.
Drake targeted Lamar’s family and his artistic integrity, alleging domestic abuse, questioning his parenting, and claiming that a close member of his team fathered one of his children. Drake also repeatedly mocked Lamar’s height.
Kendrick Lamar attacked Drake at a seemingly darker, more systemic level. In tracks like “Meet the Grahams”, he accused Drake of being a deadbeat father, having a hidden daughter, and struggling with severe gambling and substance addictions. Most damagingly, in “Not Like Us”, Lamar labeled Drake as a “certified pedophile” and accused him of preying on young girls. The battle was undeniably entertaining, and both artists showcased their tremendous lyrical skill set.
Indeed, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” boasted the denigration of rap’s biggest commercial artist at the time. It became a public celebration of Drake’s humiliation.
This battle did not occur in a vacuum. The decades-long relationship between Drake and Kendrick Lamar evolved from early career collaborations, such as Drake’s “Buried Alive Interlude”, into one of hip-hop’s most high-profile and litigious rivalries.
Tensions between the two simmered for years after Lamar’s “Control” verse in 2013, where he declared himself the greatest rapper alive, two years into his career. Later that year, Drake scoffed “F*ck any n*gga that’s talkin’ that shit just to get a reaction” on his song “The Language”.
The conflict reached its climax in 2024 with a brutal public exchange of diss tracks, most notably Kendrick’s chart-topping “Not Like Us,” which leveled the serious allegations of pedophilia against Drake. Numerous other rappers joined the fray with their own diss tracks against Drake, including verbal jabs and public allegiances.
That same year, Roc Nation recruited and selected Kendrick Lamar to perform at the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show. This all culminated in Drake filing a defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG), alleging that the label used bots to inflate Lamar’s streams and failed to censor the harmful lyrics.
Over a year following Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance, rap pioneer and founder of Roc Nation, Jay Z, not only expressed disappointment with the feud’s fallout, but he also shared that he was wrestling with the implications of the actual beef itself. He argues that “it’s like trying to tear down people’s lives. I don’t know if it’s worth it at this point. I love the idea that we got so much music in such a short period of time. Just everything around it was like, ‘Man, this is taking us a couple steps back.’ We’ve just grown so much that, I guess I’m going to say it, I don’t know if battling needs to be part of the culture anymore.” Could Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s feud really have rendered battle rapping obsolete?
The implication is devastating, considering how intrinsic competition and battling are to the genre’s DNA. Still, it is hard to argue against Jay-Z’s point when you consider the subsequent decline in rap’s commerciality. It is also difficult to ignore the irony that Jay-Z himself was the protagonist of one of the most famous rap battles in history (against Nas). He understands better than most that the genre stands to gain nothing from destabilizing one of its primary commercial anchors. After all, no one really wins when the family feuds.
Atlanta-based rapper 21 Savage also weighed in on the battle, arguing that there was no way Drake could have won in 2024. He stated, “When you the No. 1 n**ga, where does winning put you? You can’t go like No. 1.1. So how the f**k could you win anyway?” Still, although Drake did not stand much to gain in the battle, he was not the only person who had a lot to lose.
It seems that hip-hop became a casualty of itself during this battle. Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance felt less like a celebration of artistic achievement and more like a victory lap following the feud. Much of the setlist centered on GNX-era songs containing subliminal references to Drake, alongside “Not Like Us”, the diss track that came to define the conflict itself.
The only songs performed that existed outside the shadow of the feud were “HUMBLE”, “DNA”, and “All the Stars”. While all three are successful records, few rap fans or critics would argue they fully represent the depth, quality, or breadth of Kendrick’s catalog.
As a result, the halftime show often felt less like a tribute to Kendrick’s artistic legacy and more like an extension of the cultural spectacle surrounding Drake’s public dismantling. The performance was not simply about celebrating Kendrick’s greatness; it was about reaffirming Drake’s humiliation before one of the largest audiences in the world. Somehow, the feud elevated hip-hop’s visibility on the world stage while simultaneously diminishing its artistic and emotional substance in pursuit of rivalry and spectacle.
Battles like the one between Drake and Kendrick Lamar should serve as a reminder that rap cannot continue cannibalizing itself merely for the sake of entertainment. One day, it might just be eaten alive.