Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about Kendrick Lamar’s “Like That” verse by which he dissed fellow rappers Drake and J. Cole. In this text, I related Lamar’s desire to be the best, regardless of who it upsets, to Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant’s desire to be higher than his peers. Since then, Drake has released two diss records of his own:Push-ups“And”Taylor created freestyle” prompting Lamar to respond. So on Tuesday at 8:24 a.m. West Coast time, in an apparent tribute to Bryant, Lamar tweeted a link to a full-fledged, six-minute onslaught of insults aimed directly at Drake’s neck. Song, “Euphoria” and its sequel, “6:16 in Los Angeles”, which dropped early Friday morning, is now official: two of the best MCs of their class engage in a musical tug-of-war to see who will win. However, at the moment they’re holding their Big Jokers close to the vest in an attempt to control the narrative of winning the battle. With the release of “Euphoria,” we all know Lamar is prepared for a full-on, no-holds-barred smoking session and intends to cut deep. The battle has officially begun.

“Euphoria” is Aubrey Graham’s chaotic surgical dissection. It’s each funny – Kendrick talks about how much he likes Drake singing and desires him to keep doing it, which is funny – and venomous. Lamar consists of insult after insult. Some of them are as direct as possible: “.” Other insults take more time to decipher, corresponding to when Kendrick says, “”he isn’t talking about an engine, he actually means a machine that helps people drop pounds, alluding to rumors of cosmetic procedures Drake has undergone lately.

The challenge of defaming someone as culturally ubiquitous as Drake is that we have heard all of it before. He is certainly one of the most memed rappers in history. He has already managed to survive allegations from Pusha T that he’s an absent father and Meek Mill that he uses ghostwriters. Most recently Rick Ross Drake disgusted repeatedly calling him a “white boy” and clowning his private jet. So capturing a singular insult has all the time been a challenge. But Lamar takes all the low-hanging fruit and adds something to each of them.

For example, as an alternative of calling Drake a “white boy,” Lamar insinuates that Drake uses black culture – specifically black American culture – as a fancy dress to gain fame. “” he asks Drake regarding the song. When Lamar says his opponent doesn’t like women, it is not an attack on Drake’s sexuality. It’s about his history of insults and feuds with women. Beneath the surface of all of it are veiled threats that he’s willing to speak about Drake’s history of interactions with underage girls, which is questionable at best. Like the double meaning of the word “pacify” in the poem “.” Lasting over six minutes, “Euphoria” is overloaded with senses and lyrically dense.

Its follow-up, “6:16 in Los Angeles,” posted on Instagram, is a calmer and kinder open-heart surgery. The song is one more warning to Drake that he has disloyal friends in his circle, and Lamar has dirt on the Toronto rapper that he isn’t afraid to scoop up and unleash on the world. And he did all of it based on quite a lot of measures that may take several days to analyze.

On each songs, Lamar dips out and in of pockets and styles, using multi-syllable internal rhymes and metaphors to create a song that’s as arresting because it is multi-layered.

Honestly, these are songs that Drake has never been able to create.

This is just not a slight against Drake, who’s a terrific rapper in his own right and may make great music without the lyrical flexing that Lamar does. There are few artists in the world who can put words together like Lamar.

Drake definitely tried. After “Like That” dropped, inside 21 days Torontonians responded “Push-ups” but as an alternative of the knockout punch some were hoping for, it was light work. Drake had to answer Lamar, but he didn’t want to play his entire hand. So he decided to drop a second-grade insult about Lamar’s shoe size and height, which was fair and amusing enough, before talking about Lamar, who owes half of his publishing credits to his former label, Top Dawg Records. Drake followed this up with “Taylor created freestyle” which used AI versions of Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg to discredit Lamar. The song was mostly a troll, a social media play intended to lure Lamar into responding. It appeared like Drake was simply testing out what had been required of him so far: he had to respond to Kendrick indirectly, especially after he embarrassed himself by withdrawing from the Pusha T feud without eventually returning. However, the consequence of his battle with Lamar will all the time rely on how aggressively the Compton, California MC approaches the battle and the way Drake could have to respond.

For now, there’s a battle occurring there, with the two megastars tweaking their narratives to persuade fans how they need to select the winner.

“Push Ups” takes place on Drake’s home turf, where he raps about publishing deals, topping the charts, and who has the most power in the industry. Wanting to keep the fight there is smart because his chart numbers are untouchable. So when Rick Ross claims he has more cash than Drake, it feels hole and unbelievable. Lamar knows this and doesn’t care about fighting for charts and money (“,” he raps on “Euphoria”). He said the same thing in “Like That” when he said “”, referring to the undeniable fact that artistic respect was more necessary to him than record sales.

My artistic preferences lean towards Lamar’s version of this beef. I do not care about rappers’ record deals or who has the most hits. I care about who will perform the most masterful takedown of their opponents. And these breakdowns have to be set to music. Drake won’t win with memes and jokes on social media. His destruction of Meek Mill was complete thanks to two great diss songs and a clever understanding of the Internet. These social media gadgets won’t cut it on this battle. This is about music. And now it’s Drake’s turn to show that he could make music that makes rap’s lyrical demigod bleed.

Even if Drake fails, he’ll try, showing him the best motivation to prove his doubters fallacious. So at the very least we’re getting recent music from two of rap’s biggest stars who’re determined to give it their all. When the dust settles, their careers will probably be superb. They will each be secure.

It’s us, the fans, who will profit from the same style of competition that rap is built on. For now we wait. because it is going to only recuperate.