Rap’s WW3 is upon us – but why is it so hard to care?

If you tally up the net worth of everyone involved in the ‘Drake v Future’ beef (or, more accurately, the ‘Drake v everyone’ beef), it is literally billions. These are some of the most recognisable names in hip-hop, from Rick Ross to Ye, and some of the highest views for a rap beef ever – the leak for Drake’s response “Push Ups (Drop and Give Me 50)” accrued over six million views in a week. These are heights no rap beef has touched before. So why does it feel so empty?

For those who aren’t up to date, a quick primer: Drake and Future were best buds, then Future broke up with him via the surprise album drop WE DON’T TRUST YOU, produced by Metro Boomin and featuring guest performances from Rick Ross, Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd. J Cole released a diss track jumping to Drake’s defence, then quickly un-involved himself. Drake dropped a response that barely mentioned Future at all, instead sending for Kendrick, Metro Boomin and (allegedly) basketball player Ja Morant. Kendrick didn’t respond, but Ye jumped in with a diss track of his own, so Drake dropped another Kendrick diss in a bizarre AI-filled follow-up (we’ll get to that later). It’s less of a feud, and more of a messy email chain.

TikTok commentator @donnellwrites framed this incident in the context of wider disempowerment of Black artists in the music industry, reminding fans that Tupac’s mother – Black Panther member Afeni Shakur – was incredibly protective of her son’s legacy and has previously taken to court to fight for money owed by record exec Suge Knight. “Drake gave even further clearance and credibility to the exploitation of Black music and Black artists… Will Drake be held accountable?” he said in a TikTok posted on April 24.

Ye, at least, seems quite happy with the news, having had issues with Drake for years now. His two cents came in the form of a since-deleted sexually-explicit meme poking fun at J Cole and a remix of Future’s “Like That”, in which he doubles down on his previous claim that he invented every genre that has emerged in the last 20 years. Neither of which does much for the average listener.

That isn’t to say that the beef is completely devoid of substance. Some of the feud’s most memorable moments serve to exemplify what the rest of the narrative is missing. Kendrick’s “motherfuck the big three it’s just big me” on Future’s “WE DON’T TRUST YOU”, Drake’s incredibly sassy “Metro shut your hoe ass up and make some drums”, and Ye’s “Where’s Lucian? Serve your master, n***a, you caught a little bag for your masters?” are clear and direct, reflecting some small level of accountability in a feud that is full of sneak disses, take-back-sies and AI recreations. 

Hip-hop is predicated on an almost esoteric belief in the power of words as vessels of knowledge, charged with the harsh material conditions in which the genre was given life. Its emphasis on authenticity is what has – until now – kept rap beef from descending into a glorified celebrity squabble: words are nothing without the meaning behind them. When respect is held above everything (as Kendrick espouses in his “Like That” verse; “Money, power, respect, The last one is better”), a rapper’s words are literal weapons and the public arena becomes a battle for survival.

This was present in the paradigmatic Tupac v Biggie beef that dominated the 90s, where their clear public distaste for each other, and the narrative surrounding it, was powerful enough to split rap fans globally into two camps. Even today, long after their deaths, the question ‘Tupac or Biggie?’ is still relevant. This emotional connection is hard to find in the current feud where accountability is sorely lacking, where rap’s wealthiest names jump in and out of the ring with impunity, and where Drake has appropriated one of the genre’s most steadfast voices to insult the values on which it was built.

For all its visibility, the stakes are surprisingly low in rap’s WW3, it seems to have lost all the elements that make rap beef so compelling to begin with. So far, the most interesting thing to come out of the ‘Drake v everyone’ beef is its (dystopian) implications for AI.