So, I heard this morning that Kendrick Lamar is coming to Toronto.
Big f**king deal.
Except that it is.
We just survived six shows of Taylor Swift in The Big Smoke and now comes another performer who will command stratospheric ticket prices and bring the attention of the world onto Downtown Toronto. But, whereas Taylor Swift fans exchange friendship bracelets with one another, we can only hope that competing rap enthusiasts don’t exchange gunfire.
Before I write another word, I have to make something profoundly clear.
I’m a gunna tell ya tha’ I ain’ no racist, and I’m a gunna tell ya that tha’ ain’t no basis,
for dat shit I gotta say, as I startin’ wid ma day.
It only just da way it is and all ya gotta face it.
Or something like that.
My apologies to my children, to any rap fans, or to worshippers of rap warlords world-wide. For a sixty-five year old man to be cringe-rapping into his cornflakes on a Saturday morning is perhaps a low point for just about anyone starting their day. But in my defence, it’s important to point out that my commentary has nothing to do with skin colour, since that’s not on my list of criteria for judging a person. So there.
Kendrick Lamar is coming to the 6IX, which is rap slang for Toronto, based upon some cleverness originated by another rapper named Drake, who happens to call Toronto home. It’s a derivative of the city’s long serving 416 area code.
Kendrick appearing anywhere is a big-time event and big news all by itself. We’re talking about a guy who appeared with Snoop Dog at the Super Bowl Halftime show a couple of years ago. But never mind Snoop, Kendrick is currently Da Man when it comes to Mount Rapper, where the really big rappers have their likenesses etched into the stone frontage of a mountain, like Mount Rushmore. And like Mount Rushmore, all of the fellows etched are dead. Well, most I guess. Also like Mount Rushmore, some of the dead ones got there through gunfire.
Back to that Drake fellow, aka Aubrey Graham, a mixed-race child actor who once starred on the television series DeGrassi High but, aside from that, had within him the talent to eventually become a giant in the world of hip-hop and rap, although purists may quibble about my use of both terms in the same breath. Quibble away.
It seems these two, Kendrick Lamar and Drake, have developed a profound dislike for one another, and their feelings about the whole situation has more than seeped into their music, or art, or self-expression, or whatever the hell it is that they do.
And I’m not dissing the music genre these guys represent. Music takes on many forms and I’m not the one to be judging any one of those forms. But when your so-called music inspires people to violence, when your lyrics promote all manner or repugnant suggestions, like bestiality, violence, misogyny, self-directed racism, outwardly-directed racism, infidelity, secret children, statutory rape, and other stuff, then I kind of begin to take notice.
We’re not talking Taylor Swift here. And I’m not talking her skin colour, I’m talking her lyrics. Taylor can be sort of edgy in her own right, but she’s like a Hallmark Christmas Special compared to these guys.
It all started when Drake teamed up — they all do this, a lot, piggy-backing on each other’s fan base —with another rapper, J. Cole to produce a track on the latter’s album entitled “First Person Shooter,” the kind of album title that gets you that street cred you be lookin’ for.
On that track, J.Cole wonders who sits atop the pantheon of rap artists today. As he says:
“Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the Big Three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali.”
Apparently, Kendrick Lamar doesn’t consider himself to be part of the Big Three. Kendrick Lamar considers himself to be the Big One. And he didn’t take this diss lying down.
Lamar fires off what would be the first round of diss tracks, primarily focussed upon Drake, accusing him of being a wanna be black man and imposter, and suggesting all manner of sexual impropriety with respect to the Canadian rapper. Drake, thus dissed, disses back with a revenge track of his own making fun of Lamar’s height and himself floating allegations around Lamar’s own human shortcomings. And there we have it, the opening cross-fire of a good old-fashioned rap war.
The kind of thing that led to the killings of such rap giants as Tupac Shakur, G-Slimm, Notorious B.I.G., and Fat Pat back in the 1990’s.
It was only this past May when Drake’s Toronto Bridal Path mansion was peppered with gunfire from unknown sources. Not in a million years would I suggest an involvement by Lamar, but his rap lyrics wouldn’t have done much to calm down the tone of aggression that exists out there in Rap Land. When gun violence is part of your cultural schtick (Rap culture, not Black culture, relax) you can’t come away all shocked at the idea that you may be influencing others to carry out your feud on your behalf, not that you’d ever condone such a thing.
By no means is Drake a good-guy in this. He’s as Notoriously H.U.M.A.N. as anyone else, so he reacted to Lamar’s dissing in exactly the same vein. Drake, you see, has sold more records. Kendrick, you see, has won more awards. Neither can lay claim to both, and both artists seem to be insecure without the mantle of being The One and Only One. And so they publicly feud, and their followers lose their shit.
Lamar seems to have landed the final blow in his famous track “Not Like Us” where he makes the case that Aubrey, as he refers to Drake, is not Compton born and raised, like the “us” portrayed in the video. A video featuring former Toronto Raptor DeMar DeRozen, with whom Drake had a significant friendship while the basketball player toiled for Toronto.
That “betrayal” got Drake in a frenzy. He even said during a courtside interview during a Raptors game that if the team ever retired DeRozan’s number, he, Drake, would climb up into the rafters and tear it down. I guess we’ll have to see about that. DeRozan was one of the best Raptors ever, but did the franchise the biggest solid when he got traded for Khawi Leonard, who then led Toronto to its only NBA championship back in 2019. So that jersey may well make it into the rafters. So I guess venue security should be on their toes.
Aside from the gunfire outside of Drake’s mansion, the tiff seems to have settled down somewhat, perhaps because of the shooting itself. Regardless, it’s generally accepted in the rap world that Kendrick Lamar scored a decisive victory in his feud with Drake, something I’m sure that has the latter stinging. He’s been quiet for a while, which some may take as a good sign. But others may take it as a sign that he’s up to something big, really big, something more than ripping a jersey down.
All I know is that Kendrick Lamar is coming to Toronto in June to what will be sold-out appearances right in Drake’s hometown, a hometown that got slagged by the Compton Boy in the course of his tit-for-tat with Drake.
In short, Compton’s coming to the 6IX for two shows in early June.
Friendship bracelets will be the least of my worries.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 