The biggest debate stirred up over a partial Kendrick “leak” that hit Monday April 15, with lyrics that were less-than-biting and an unimpressive beat. While Daylyt, a rapper affiliated with Kendrick, immediately called it out as being A.I., Drake’s longtime OVO affiliate Hush fanned conspiracy flames by imploring Kendrick fans to keep the same energy about it being underwhelming when they “find out it’s real.” (Drake responded to Hush’s post, laughing.)
The rapper behind the fake song eventually came forward with a video revealing how he made it and a subsequent interview with Complex. Even with that officially debunked, Drake continued to taunt Kendrick with social media antics like repeatedly posting pictures Ant Saleh, one of Kendrick’s managers, on his Instagram story, daring the pgLang team to drop their response to “Push Ups.”
On Friday night April 19, Drake finally got tired of waiting and dropped another track—sort of. This isn’t quite a “Back to Back” situation, and this new song hardly “counts” as another official diss, but it does apply pressure. Drake leans right into the whole A.I. debate with “Taylor Made,” a track that employs artificially-created verses from the late 2Pac and Snoop Dogg, clearly written by Drake before Drake tags in himself at the end with some new taunts for Kendrick.
There’s levels to this: obviously it’s funny and witty on Drake’s part to flip the annoying “is it A.I.?” debate that’s raged all week. Kendrick has been vocal about his idolatry of 2Pac—To Pimp a Butterfly even ends with Kendrick staging a “conversation” with Pac via interview audio that Afeni Shakur granted him permission to use. And Snoop is a west coast rap forefather to Kendrick, one of several legends who formally passed Kendrick the torch at a seminal House of Blues LA show. Drake’s zombie-Snoop verse makes note of that moment. He uses the fascimile of the two West Coast legends to “urge” Kendrick not to let their city down by not rising to a moment that he technically started with “Like That.”
But it’s more than just jokes; Drake uses his own verse and the two “fake” verses to respond and address some more things. He continues mocking Kendrick for having a deference to his pop collaborations, alleging that Taylor Swift is “his new Top Dawg” and she’s making him sit this weekend out to let her new album roll out uncontested. Via “2Pac,” he directly responds to Kendrick’s “Like That” line about “snatching chains and burning tattoos,” warning Kendrick that “All that shit bout burning tattoos, he is not amused/That’s jail talk for real thugs, you gotta be you.”
Drake even uses a bit of the B-Rabbit, 8 Mile play—getting ahead of jokes your opponent might make about you by saying them first—by using “Pac” to say “Call him a bitch for me/Talk about him likin young girls, that’s a gift from me/Heard it on the Budden Podcast, it’s gotta be true.” The question of Drake, 37, dating girls in their young 20s is a topic that has come up frequently in the past and more recently as this beef started on The Joe Budden Podcast—Drake’s issue with the titular host is deep and layered enough to power its own explainer post.
So Drake gets to seemingly take the wind out of one of Kendrick’s potential diss angles, and get a little chin check in on his mortal enemy Joe Budden. Reaction to the track is wildly divisive, with some calling it corny, others taking Drake to task for encouraging more A.I. shenanigans to come, and others saying the pressure is on Kendrick now more than ever to move the ball forward on a fight that he technically initiated.
