“Taylor Made Freestyle”
“First Person Shooter” – Drake featuring J Cole – 10/24/23
“Like That” – Metro Boomin featuring Future and Kendrick Lamar – 3/26/24
“7 Minute Drill” – J Cole – 4/5/24
“Push Ups” – Drake – 4/19/24
“Taylor Made Freestyle” – Drake featuring AI Tupac/AI Snoop Dogg – 4/19/24 ← WE’RE HERE
“Euphoria” – Kendrick Lamar – 4/30/24
“6:16 in LA” – Kendrick Lamar – 5/3/24
“Buried Alive Interlude Pt 2” – 5/3/24
“Family Matters” – Drake – 5/3/24
“Meet the Grahams” – Kendrick Lamar – 5/3/24
“Not Like Us” – Kendrick Lamar – 5/4/24
“The Heart Part 6” – Drake 5/5/24
There’s a Simpsons episode that kicks around in the back of my idea sometimes. Homer is talking to evil Billionaire Mr. Burns’ dissolute long lost son (voiced by Rodney Dangerfield) and the son is looking for a way to get Burns’ attention. Homer suggests he stage a phony kidnapping. Burns’ son pushes back, wondering if maybe he should just get his life together and try to speak honestly to his dad, but Homer’s retort is simple: “phony kidnapping…”
We then cut to Mr. Burns receiving a phony ransom note, and the rest of the episode ensues.
It’s sort of a metaphor for bad ideas, in my head. Like “Taylor Made Freestyle.” Rather than, say, honestly continuing the dispute, Drake decides, “Kendrick Lamar respects the west coast tradition and has accused me of being artificial and inauthentic, and argued that authenticity is more important than cheap popularity. You know what would be the best way to clap back? If I use AI to generate verses by west coast icons Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg that make fun of Kendrick! This will surely be my route to victory.” Perhaps one of Drake’s PR team was like “or, you could just…” to which Drake responds – “AI Tupac…”
We then get “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which to me is in some ways when Drake loses the beef (I won’t prove that here but it’s where it’s going as we get to later songs). He doesn’t directly lose, but he creates all the conditions needed for him to lose, ultimately paving the way for Kendrick’s “Euphoria,” “Meet the Grahams,” and “Not Like Us,” a three-part master class in personal demolition, broader social criticism and still somehow catchy pop hooks.
The connection between Kendrick and Tupac has been well-documented, including a seminal moment he remembers from his childhood, being up on his dad’s shoulders at the video shoot for “California Love.” Before recording To Pimp a Butterfly (TPAB -which reportedly was almost called “To Pimp a Caterpillar” i.e., ToPAC”) Kendrick claims to have had a dream where Tupac spoke to him and passed the mantle of the west coast hip-hop tradition onto his shoulders. Kendrick drops Tupac allusions all the time in his music, like at the end of “Hiiipower” where he intones “Thug life!”, and most notably the outro of TPAB itself, which follows the end of “Mortal Man,” and on which Kendrick splices footage from a 90’s Tupac interview into a conversation with him about legacy, history, race, music and struggle.
Drake must be decently aware of all of this. Kendrick isn’t shy about it. So yeah, Drake decided that the best thing he could do after “Push-Ups,” which I don’t think was half-bad, was to imitate Tupac’s voice, not by sampling, which is the time-honored way to use someone’s voice in hip-hop, but by AI fakery. Because well, there’s no back catalog recording where Tupac or Snoop Dogg go after Kendrick for not being good enough. There’s no honest way to use Tupac’s voice to accomplish Drake’s desired ends. No matter.
Something that gave me some renewed faith in the younger generation: this song was universally panned among students in my class (regardless of how they felt about Drake or Kendrick overall). From what I’ve experienced, they’re a lot more anti-AI than you might think if all you do is read clickbait about student cheating.
The song itself comes and goes on Youtube because Drake took it down (see below); I can’t find a working link right now but I’ll share the lyrics:
Verse 1 – AI Slop Tupac
Here’s the “Tupac” verse in full:
[2Pac (AI):]
Killuminati
Dons rise again
You can see it in my eyes again
Kendrick, we need ya, the West Coast savior
Engraving your name in some hip-hop history
If you deal with this viciously
You seem a little nervous about all the publicity
Fuck this Canadian lightskin, Dot
We need a no-debated West Coast victory, man
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
They told me the spirit of Makaveli is alive
In a n**** under 5’5″, so it’s gotta be you
I would beef the whole fuckin’ game
It was me and Snoop Dogg, had my fuckin’ shirt off in the House of Blues
K, you gotta fuck this n**** girl, he gotta get abused
All that shit ’bout burning tattoos, he is not amused
That’s jail talk for real thugs, you gotta be you
Gotta leave this motherfucker broken and bruised before we really lose
You asked for the smoke, now it seem you too busy for the smoke
I won’t lie, the people confused
Now you ’bout to give this shit another week?
And fall back to home girl who runnin’ numbers up? I woulda refused
Fuck these industry relationships, she not in your shoes
You supposed to be the boogeyman, go do what you do
Unless this is a moment that you tell us this not really you
In that case, there’s nothing left to say, I’ll just pass it to Snoop
The conceit seems to be that Tupac is challenging Kendrick for not putting himself out there when he’s needed. Drake is almost trying to encourage Kendrick through Tupac’s voice. But as a student of mine pointed out, all the compliments here are backhanded. For example:
They told me the spirit of Makaveli is alive
In a n**** under 5’5″, so it’s gotta be you
This is Tupac’s voice calling attention once again to Kendrick’s height (a big Drake preoccupation).
I don’t know if Drake wrote these lyrics and just used the AI for the sound, or if actually the whole thing is computer-generated, but either way, there’s just not that much to say about most of the lyrics. Except that it’s ridiculous, inane, and almost seems to prove everything Kendrick suggested about Drake in “Like That” – he’s goofy, lacks any sense of respect, craves attention, doesn’t know when to joke and when to be serious, and overall, advances a fake persona in pursuit of what Kendrick will later say on “Euphoria”: “you chasin’ fake likes and digital hugs.”
Drake also does something here that shows he really does not understand the race-related arguments Kendrick makes throughout the beef. Starting here, Drake repeatedly misinterprets Kendrick’s mention of racial politics as as kind of gatekeeping – “Fuck this Canadian lightskin, Dot” impying that Kendrick’s problem with Drake is that he’s not Black enough (we’ll get to this in “Euphoria” and “Meet the Grahams” but I actually think it’s much different – it’s not that he isn’t “Black enough,” it’s that he insists on trying to be what he perceives to be “Black enough,” instead of being himself). Attributing that to Tupac here also sort of smears the whole tradition with this same misunderstanding. This is especially unfair because Tupac can’t speak for himself. And also, Tupac’s relationship to race is much more complciated than that as well (I got a lot of ideas about this from this 2025 biography):
Drake also seems to try to take the edge off of the sexual assault accusations that come up later too – taking the line (not for the first time) that somehow this is a rumor that Drake’s people planted to get Kendrick to fall for – here, he says “Talk about him likin’ young girls, that’s a gift from me.” As a different student of mine pointed out, that seems like a weird sort of thing to plant, trying to trick your adversaries into accusing you of something that will likely cause you to take a hit regardless of its truth.
In fact, I think a really important reaction this verse inspired was that Tupac’s estate filed a cease-and-desist order, leading Drake to remove this track from his official channels. That’s quite a bit different, to me anyway, than what often happens in hip-hop, where someone sues someone else in an attempt to capture royalties from uncredited sampling.
Here are some excerpts as quoted in Billboard magazine:
The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality… Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use.
At the same time, the letter explicitly praises and thanks Kendrick Lamar:
The unauthorized, equally dismaying use of Tupac’s voice against Kendrick Lamar, a good friend to the Estate who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, compounds the insult.
Note that they go out of their way to mention “respect,” and use it in the very same sense Kendrick introduces on “Like That” – not the receipt of thank-yous from people to Kendrick, but the fact that Kendrick pays homage on a consistent basis to him
This is pretty close to an own-goal on Drake’s part, a massively unforced. The attempt to invoke Tupac as an ally (I guess) in attacking someone led to his lawyers publicly comparing him unfavorably to the very target of that attack.
Verse 2 – AI Slop Snoop
The Snoop Dogg verse isn’t much better:
[Snoop Dogg (AI):]
Nephew, what the fuck you really ’bout to do?
We passed you the torch at the House of Blues
And now you gotta do some dirty work, you know how to move, right? Right?
I know you never been to jail or wore jumpsuits and shower shoes
Never shot nobody, never stabbed nobody
Never did nothing violent to no one, it’s the homies that empower you
But still, you gotta show this fuckin’ owl who’s boss on the West
Now’s a time to really make a power move
‘Cause right now it’s looking like you writin’ out the game plan on how to lose
How to bark up the wrong tree and then get your head popped in a crowded room
World is watching this chess game, but are you out of moves?
Dot, you know that the D-O-G never fuckin’ doubted you
But right now it seem like you posted up without a clue
Of what the fuck you ’bout to do
Snoop’s reaction was a bit stranger (but very much on brand). He seems to have reposted the song, thinking it was a different song he had worked with Drake on, and then later realized that was wrong, claimed to have been high at the time, and later called Kendrick to apologize.
Verse 3 – Drake Speaks for Himself (maybe?)
Drake spends some time here again goading Kendrick into replying, also suggesting that the reason he hasn’t isn’t because he has nothing to say, necessarily, but perhaps because Taylor Swift has asked him to wait so she can release new music that doesn’t step on his release date. This continues a line of argument from “Push-Ups,” about Kendrick’s willingness to work with her (“and if you ‘bout to drop she gotta approve”) and I guess what that means for who he is. Drake somewhat cleverly calls Swift a real gangster (implying that Kendrick isn’t). And he ends with words that, in retrospect, are almost prophetic, given what Kendrick did ultimately produce in reply:
Dot, I know you’re in that NY apartment, you strugglin’ right now, I know it
In the notepad doing lyrical gymnastics, my boy
You better have a motherfuckin’ quintuple entendre on that shit
Some shit I don’t even understand, like
That shit better be crazy, we waitin’ on you
Yeah
Which— is a pretty-much on-the-nose summary before the fact of what “Euphoria,” probably the beef’s best, most intricate and artful track, would ultimately do. “Eurphoria” is a seven-plus-minute extended take-down that might just be sui generis – no chorus, very little hook-type energy, a continually evolving act of signifying that truly re-shapes the entire conflict, putting Drake in a hole he just can’t climb out of. That’s up next.
Original Positions 