In the Kendrick-Drake dispute, women and other victims of violence are a recurring punchline

Like everyone else, I maintained perfect attendance during the Kendrick and Drake beef.

I actually have been online at every drop and have been involved in lots of discussions about it on social media. If you would like my opinion, Kendrick won.

Kendrick won, but women and victims of grooming, pedophilia and domestic violence, in addition to children, lost. They lost, as they at all times do, because hip-hop doesn’t care about casualties in the grand scheme of things.

I won’t trouble repeating who said what to whom because there may be enough evaluation like this and you do not need my help to figure it out.

Kendrick has repeatedly accused Drake of being a loser and a skilled makeup artist who actively seeks relationships with young girls and age-inappropriate women.

Drake accused Kendrick of beating his wife and playing father to a child that will not actually be his.

All this stuff were said for the purpose of elevating each other. None of these actions were intended to lift awareness or provide justice for victims. None of these statements were made as a option to mitigate further harm to anyone.

We should not be surprised. After all, hip-hop is legendary for its rampant misogyny and blatant disregard for women.

Dr. Dre notoriously beat Dee Barnes 30 years ago in a nightclub in Hollywood. The beating has turn out to be a running joke and punchline for a lot of rappers, including Eminem and T.I. As Dee herself said on Twitter this weekend, she’s “reduced to a punch line in a song that made millions… and meanwhile I can’t pay the rent.”

Yes, I laughed together with everyone else when Kendrick pulled Drake’s dirty hair, but in some unspecified time in the future during the weekend I sobered up and realized that none of this was funny.

Kendrick writes open letters to Drake’s parents and children it was fun in the moment, but ultimately, what happens when that child (or children?) is sufficiently old to devour this art on their very own and dive deeply into its meanings?

Kendrick tried to stab Drake as over and over as he could, but had he stopped to take into consideration the harm it was doing to that child (or those children?) as well?

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Drake brings up domestic violence allegations against Kendrickbut does he do it because he cares about the safety and well-being of Kendrick’s wife, or does he do it since it helps him in his quest to make Kendrick look worse than him?

And truthfully, each the alleged pedophile and the alleged wife beater are abusers, so is there really a option to make one look higher than the other? Allegedly?

The claim that one of Kendrick’s children is just not his and that his father is in actual fact his best friend and former Top Dawg Entertainment president Dave Free is disgusting in some ways.

First, there may be a layer of him subtly shaming Kendrick’s wife while making the allegations. Even if he didn’t say it out loud, the conclusion is that your wife not only cheated on you, but in addition gave birth to a different man’s child and made you raise it like an idiot.

I would like to ask why raising one other man’s child as your individual is such a bad thing, but then I keep in mind that I exist in the same timeline where grown men openly criticize Russell Wilson for doing exactly that.

Still, Drake is “mad” at Kendrick. Why did Kendrick’s wife need to catch the homeless man?

Women have at all times been the punchline and collateral damage in hip-hop and hip-hop. Think Faith Evans.

When Tupac desired to piss off Biggie, he got the tape and claimed he slept with Faith, who was Biggie’s wife at the time. What did Faith do to deserve this?

Every criticism Kendrick made accused Drake of being a pedophile and a seducer, and while that “A minor” bar hit like hell (I by accident found myself blurting out “A-mollrrrrrrrrrrrrrr unprovoked during the day), is Kendrick attempting to help the victims or is he just embarrassing Drake?

Diddy kerfluffle’s current show shows us in real time that men in hip-hop have long been aware of the violence that women on this culture experience – sexual and otherwise – and are willing to show a blind eye to it until they feel comfortable speaking up .

In this case, Kendrick and Drake are “speaking up” but not “speaking up.”

Everyone laughs except the women and children used as bait.

Everyone is having fun except the victims.

Things appear to have died down since Kendrick released “Not Like Us” and truthfully, I hope it stays that way because we will not keep doing this.

I challenge Kendrick, Drake and anyone else in hip-hop to make a diss track calling out perpetrators of violence to stop further harm to victims.

I encourage Kendrick, Drake and everyone else in hip-hop to carry their peers accountable, and by accountable I mean in a way that forestalls them from harming others – not in a way that simply causes streams to turn out to be diss.

I encourage everyone who is an element of this culture to look at how we participate and engage in these issues.

Ultimately, gladiators fight because the crowd wants blood.

The query is, will it’s the blood of the combatants or the blood of their alleged victims that can ultimately be shed?