Drake and Kendrick's Beef Is the Most Miserable Spectacle in Rap History

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I thought so, at least until last week, when Kendrick released "Euphoria," his slow-building evisceration of Drake's identity, marked by the hilariously dramatic, "We don't wanna hear you say 'nigga' no more." Since then, the beef has picked up an unprecedented, live-wire pace and reached dark, dark places that I never imagined the beef between the former star of a Canadian teen soap opera and a Pulitzer Prize-winning advocate for therapy would ever get to.

In the last few days, we got nearly 30 minutes of music dedicated to this beef: Friday night gave us Drake's "Family Matters" and "Buried Alive Interlude" parody, a one-two-punch complete with impersonation work and mafioso-style posturing as a response to Kendrick's "6:16 in LA," which he dropped earlier that morning. Immediately after "Family Matters," on Friday evening, Kendrick responded with the tectonic-plate-shifting "Meet the Grahams" and shot back again on Saturday night over club-ready Mustard beat with "Not Like Us."

The internet lit up like a pinball machine. The speed with which it was happening just spiked the adrenaline even more. These are a few of the most bizarre, uncomfortable, overwhelming, and evil diss tracks ever. Full of contradictions and hypocrisies. Full of legitimately funny, or maybe, just shocking moments when Drake calls Kendrick's pro-Blackness a sham and Kendrick calls Drake a degenerate deadbeat. Full of gotcha accusations with no party bearing the burden of proof, allegations that are so serious they will hang over their legacies forever.

On "Family Matters," after seven well-rapped minutes of poking holes in Kendrick's manicured image, Drake drops a bomb—"They hired a crisis management team to clean up the fact that you beat up your queen"—trying to destroy the perception of Kendrick as our most thoughtful, socially conscious rap star. On Kendrick's proportional response "Meet the Grahams"—a psychological, Eminem-like takedown of Drake, where he raps like he's scribbling on the walls in the Barbarian basement—he offers twisted advice to Drake's son (Adonis), Drake's daughter (who may or may not exist), and Drake's parents (Sandi and Dennis). At one point, he even raps toward Drake's dad, "You raised a horrible fuckin' person, the nerve of you, Dennis," one of the most hateful bars to come from a beef that is all hate.

But the direction Kendrick takes the song is way more unsettling, alleging that OVO is a ring of sex predators led by Drake: "Him and Weinstein should get fucked up in a cell for the rest of they life." Less than 24 hours later, Kendrick doubles down and comes even more directly on "Not Like Us," where he chants "Certified lover boy? Certified pedophile," and, "Tryna strike a chord and it's probably A minor" on a funky L.A. party song. You can imagine people all summer rapping along to bars accusing Drake of pedophilia, with big smiles on their faces and drinks in their hands, while they hit the little two-step that Kendrick calls for at the end of the song while he shouts "OV-hoe." (It's actually already happened.)