Drake appears to respond to Kendrick Lamar diss during J Cole tour

Canadian hip-hop star seemed to shrug off last week’s headline-making verse from the ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ artist

Drake seemingly responded to fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar’s swipe in a recent track, during a live performance while on his It’s All a Blur co-headline tour with J Cole.

Rumours of a feud between Drake and Lamar have simmered for years, with the To Pimp a Butterfly star adding fuel to the fire last week with his guest verse on “Like That” with Future and Metro Boomin.

Lamar’s lyrics seemed to directly respond to Drake’s 2023 track “First Person Shooter", on which Cole raps: “Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali.”

K-Dot is a nickname given to Lamar, while Drake’s birth name is Aubrey Drake Graham.

On “Like That”, Lamar appeared to dismiss Cole’s suggestion that they were on the same level as artists: “Motherf*** the big three, n***a, it’s just big me,” he rapped. “N***a, bum, what? I’m really like that / And your best work is a light pack.”

Meanwhile, as Drake compared his commercial success to that of Michael Jackson, Lamar referenced the historic beef between the King of Pop and Prince during the Eighties: “N***a, Prince outlived Mike Jack.”

(l-r) Kendrick Lamar, Drake and J Cole (Getty)

“A lot of people asking me how I’m feeling… listen, the way I’m feeling is the same way I want you to walk out of here feeling tonight about your f***ing self,” Drake told his audience, footage shared to social media on 25 March shows.

“Because you know how I’m feeling? I got my head up high, my back straight, I’m 10 f***ing toes down… and feeling like anywhere else I go… and I know no matter what, there’s not a n**** on this Earth that can ever f*** with me in my life,” he shouted. “And that’s how I want y’all to walk out of here tonight…”

“But,” he continued, “you know, you can get yourselves gassed up, riled up and move towards the future… Sometimes you’ve got to acknowledge the mistakes you’ve made in the past… right? So that’s what I want you all to do. Everybody in here.”

While fans could be heard cheering as Drake made his speech, other hip-hop fans felt that the “One Dance” artist would be better served responding to Lamar with another track.

“He needs to lock in and get his ass to the studio,” one fan wrote on X/Twitter.

“I’m sorry Drake but you going to have to say something to this man Kendrick because speeches is not going to cut it,” another said.

In a two-star review of Drake’s 2023 album For All The Dogs, critic Nadine Smith wrote for The Independent: “Instead of chilling out and settling down as he approaches his forties, Drake’s new album For All the Dogs sees him acting up more than ever, in ways that frequently reek not just of insecurity, but outright misogyny.”