The two have a beef, that is for sure.
In his most famous recent song “Not Like Us”, Kendrick full blown says:
My question is: Is there any real evidence for these claims? Is this another R. Kelly or Harvey Weinstein type open secret that Kendrick Lamar just went for it and shared?
What’s the Straight Dope as far as we know on Drake and underage girls?
Drake has been scrutinized in the past for what some feel are inappropriately close relationships with underage girls (most recently, Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things). This video on YouTube was recommended by someone on Reddit; I can’t speak to its overall quality, but the recommended videos stemming from it should have plenty of other choices.
I couldn’t make it though that video. They are taking over each other and dropping references that probably make sense for their audience, people who follow rap, but it’s incoherent noise to me. Album and song titles I don’t understand, lines that I can’t parse.
Try this one. You’ll want to skip the commercial, but it’s only a minute, just click forward. The stage bit is especially sickening.
I’m going to suggest the, very long but very thorough FD Signifier video
You will get the whole of everything going on in the beef as well as what we actually know to be true vs what is likely made up. It is 3.5 hours long. But…FD is a good storyteller, and it’s compelling.
A three and a half hour video better be the next Return of the Goddamn King or I’m not watching it.
For us 20th-century media consumers, here’s a text article about Millie Bobby Brown and Drake:
Yeah, I needed at TLDW summary.
I’m not going to lie to you and say that there will be epic battles of good vs evil
But, it’s genuinely worth watching if you are interested in what has been happening in “the culture” for the last couple of years, sort of including the stuff with Diddy more recently (though there is also a whole other video on that)
But he does a lot of long form video essays on politics and media criticism through a black American lens and approaches the topics as an academic. Here is a shorter one on why we should not be surprised by Kanye, he was always evil.
At fifty, I’m not interested enough in anything to watch it for three and a half hours. That article I quote above, as well as this one, give a broad overview of the beef between the two.
Yeah. I don’t have a burning need to be current on the culture. Idle curiosity at most. Hell I was current on the culture at any point in my lifetime!
Sounds like everyone actually involved denies any underage sexual relationship? As a FQ there is no real evidence at all? Just people talking because of a close friendship between a 14 year old white girl and a big Black man old enough to be her father?
Not curious enough to watch an epic (is there an intermission?) but has any girl or woman claimed they had sex with him when underage? Or exclusively that people talk?
That’s my read. OPINION AHEAD: The stuff about this thirty-year-old dude giving a teenage girl advice about boys is skeevy as hell–I’d be beyond weirded out if my own teenage daughters were texting about romance with a mid-thirties guy–but it sounds like a lot of it is being hyperbolized for the sake of the beef. It’s a rap feud, not a courtroom, and the relevant evidence standards pertain.
Ditto. Nothing but smoke so far.
Wow, he can do that and not get sued for defamation of character?!
Edit. I was NOT ever up on the culture at any point in my life. No need to start now.
Maybe skeevy, but if this was a woman 19 years older playing a mentor older friend role few would think talking teen romance would be out of bounds.
Maybe he is a groomer. But if the only evidence for that is that he was in a relationship with someone underage which all involved say was NOT sexual?
FWIW.
Will he win?
Ken White (Popehat) seems to think it’s a ridiculous suit.
IANAL. What are the standards for defamation lawsuit success against a public figure? It seems a bit odd to be avoiding suing Lamar directly. Answers that are not Brutalist level links appreciated!
IANAL either. The standard for defamation against a public figure is “actual malice,” which is a legal term of art meaning that the speaker knew the statement was false, or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Defamation against a non-public figure only requires the speaker acted negligently with regards to the truth.
If I understand Ken White’s comments on the case correctly, that standard isn’t the chief problem. The problem is that defamation requires a provably false statement of fact, i.e. not opinion, not rhetorical hyberbole, insult, etc. And, in the context of a rap diss track, statements are prima facie all rhetorical hyberbole and trashtalk to begin with, and don’t meet the standard of ‘provably statement of fact.’
You can hear more of his comments on this episode of his podcast Serious Trouble, because he’s the expert in defamation law, not me.
Thanks, folks.
It’s not as clear as R. Kelly, Harvey Weinstein, or Bill Cosby, but it sounds like a lot of bad behavior that is suspicious.
I, for one, didn’t think he’d full-blown call Drake a pedophile, etc. live at the Super Bow, but you have to give him credit…he did it.
Drake probably could - there’s enough specificity there that I’m not sure Kendrick could get away with a hyperbole/just doing it for the song defence. But this is a rap beef, in a culture with longstanding distrust of the justice system, in which you’re expected to handle your own problems. Legal action would be absolutely unacceptable to fans - it would instantly turn Drake into a laughingstock and cause droves of fans to abandon him.