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Drake and Kendrick Lamar don’t get that women’s pain isn’t a punchline | Tayo Bero

The rappers’ fiery diss-battle has raised allegations of domestic violence and sex abuse – but for the wrong reasons

Lamar’s pretense of advocating for victims of sexual violence is also a grim joke: his last album featured Kodak Black, who was sentenced to probation in 2021 for attacking a teenage girl, who said he bit her on the neck and breast and persisted after she asked him to stop. At the end of the day, he is a biracial light-skinned Canadian who is able to (and happily does) manipulate his proximity to whiteness in ways that other darker- skinned, coarser-haired Black men who have actually lived the life that Drake fantasizes about on songs like Knife Talk never could. Of course, while Drake might be an interloper with gangster dreams who thinks going to jail scores you cool points, taking shots at his persona is a far cry from accusing someone of child sex abuse and the two denunciations not belong in the same world, let alone on the same diss track.

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