It’s looking like the battle is coming to its conclusion and not the one most expected. Drake recently returned fire at Kendrick Lamar with “The Heart Part 6,” a song that, depending on who you ask, sounds like Drizzy is either looking to keep the battle going or bowing out. The record arrived on Sunday night (May 5) and mainly featured the artist addressing Lamar’s claims that he’s a pedophile, which Lamar laid out in detail in “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us.”
Drizzy and K. Dot stans listened to the song with bated breath, hoping that the track would give them the validation they needed to crown their favorite artist as the winner of this much-anticipated battle. After five minutes of Drake’s follow-up record, the people voiced their opinions across the internet, with mixed reviews painting a picture of unfamiliar territory for Drizzy—there was a chance that he could actually lose the battle of public opinion.
While swathes of folks can agree that the song was one of the better displays of Drizzy’s raw talent for rapping throughout this war, other people opined that there were too many duds on the track, taking away from what could have been a knockout blow to Kendrick Lamar. Or, at the very least, the equalizer. Thus, various spectators have opted to crown Kendrick Lamar the winner of 2024’s great rap war. But what went wrong for Drizzy? And what should he have doubled down on? Question no more, VIBE has you covered.
From the bars revealing he orchestrated the “OVO mole” fed Kendrick Lamar “lies” to Drake doubling down on his family attacks, here is “The Heart Part 6,” the good and the bad.
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Good — “Slick Talk”
Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot. “Ni**a, I’ll see you when I see you like Fantasia/And Whitney, you can hit me if you need a favor/And when I say I hit ya back, it’s a lot safer”
As Kendrick Lamar stated, Drizzy is at his best when singing and ruminating about his emotional shortcomings. But Drake‘s superpower extends further than crooning, especially when he gets into his slick talk bag as a rapper. When deployed, the Toronto native plays to his pretty boy image, frequently offering to rescue a perceived “damsel in distress” away from her tormentor.
Flashes of this strategy are shown in “The Heart Part 6,” with Drizzy aiming to double down on his claims that Kendrick beat his lady, Whitney Alford.
It’s towards the latter end of his track that the slick-tongued rapper employs a sense of imagery to press the matter. Drizzy peers into the soul of Kendrick and Whitney’s relationship, crafting what he interprets as Alford looking for a better relationship, all while painting her as his fan, rapping, “Ni**a, I’ll see you when I see you like Fantasia/And Whitney, you can hit me if you need a favor/And when I say I hit ya back, it’s a lot safer.”
Easily one of the song’s slickest and most natural moments for Drake.
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Good — “Prove It”
Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot. “The Pulitzer Prize winner is definitely spiralin’/I got your f**king lines tapped, I swear that I’m dialed in/First, I was a rat, so where’s the proof of the trial then?/Where’s the paperwork or the cabinet it’s filed in?”
Okay, so it took Drizzy a while to respond to Dot’s claims in “Euphoria” that he allegedly snitched on the men who robbed him in Toronto in 2010. But that’s alright, because a feud should operate on the contestants’ time, not the fans. That said, Drizzy did a great job flipping that bar along with the initial jab, with Dot stating that he was spiraling and flung it back onto Kendrick.
He used some sly wordplay in his later claim that he was the one who fed K. Dot false information regarding OVO, as he has Lamar’s “lines tapped,” hence why he spit that he was “dialed in.” He later challenges Kendrick to show proof that he snitched and cooperated with the feds as Aretha Franklin faintly sings “prove it” in the background.
That’s cold. No shock value. No cringey bars. Just good old-fashioned witty wordplay to drive the point home, beautifully presented with a thematically relevant sample. That’s Hip-Hop right there.
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Good — “Crowd Control”
Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot. “What about the bones we dug up in that excavation?/And why isn’t Whitney denyin’ all of the allegations?/Why is she following Dave Free and not Mr. Morale?”
Ah, yeah, remember I said rappers can take their time addressing accusations? Still keeping that same energy, but, when the other contestant applies pressure on said topic, it can get spooky. And that’s exactly the strategy that Drizzy took here. After revealing the bombshell accusation that Kendrick is allegedly beating his girl in “Family Matters,” Drake doubled down and reinforced the idea that Dot’s manager, Dave Free, is allegedly the father of Lamar’s kids. He presses Kendrick for an answer regarding the domestic violence rumors, an answer that both OVO and TDE fans have become interested in. It’s a valid request considering the man that Lamar positions himself as, but it’s for that same reason that the move could backfire.
Unlike Drake’s “minor” accusations, Kendrick Lamar hasn’t really given fans a reason to believe he would beat his girl, and that’s wholly based on public perception of the artist. The closest incident that would give a reason to pause was back in 2014 when a woman accused Kendrick of beating her up. Media Takeout published the article and featured the woman allegedly talking about the incident.
However, the outlet claims that they were forced to take the video down after some people who used to work at TDE asked them to delete the article. The video of the white woman speaking about the incident was then allegedly deleted from YouTube. K. Dot addressed the rumor on The Breakfast Club, where he referred to the accusations as “foolishness” and denied involvement.
As for Drake, bringing up something akin to this rumor was, at the very least, a great angle to attempt to get the crowd back on his side in a battle full of mudslinging.
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Bad — “Copium”
Image Credit: Sussman/Getty Images “We plotted for a week and then we fed you the information/A daughter that’s eleven years old, I bet he takes it/We thought about giving a fake name or a destination/But you so thirsty, you not concerned with investigation.”
However, that would only last for a short time due to the song’s multitude of inconsistencies. And that wouldn’t be an issue, honestly, but for someone who has touted themselves as a “war general, seasoned in preparation,” the lack of preparation or strategy is a bit puzzling. When you dig deeper, some bars begin to sound like coping mechanisms from someone who knows they lost the war.
One of the points is that Drake claims to have given Kendrick Lamar the information that Aubrey had another secret lovechild. Drizzy also claims to have created the much-referenced OVO mole to do his bidding, like Cell with the Saibamen in Dragon Ball Z or something.
But if you’ve been on the internet throughout this battle, these claims may sound familiar. They echo a recent internet theory that suggested Drizzy had intentionally coached someone in OVO to give Lamar false information. The Canadian was actually caught in 4K liking the Instagram comment, seemingly confirming that he set it all up.
However, on deeper inspection, that claim wouldn’t make sense for a multitude of reasons, but we’re going to offer you a few.
- If Drake is the mole then why did he rap, “Which one of my ni**as do I gotta smoke?” on “Family Matters,” responding to Kenny’s claims that “OVO is working for me” in “6:16 in LA?”
- If Drake fed Kendrick Lamar information, why did he immediately run to Instagram to deny his claims that he was hiding an eleven-year-old daughter in “Meet The Grahams”? Why didn’t he instead sit back with confidence and let it play out?
- If Drake is the mastermind, why didn’t he know that Kendrick Lamar would drop “Meet the Grahams” and immediately step on his music video/single rollout for “Family Matters?” Why didn’t he know Lamar would use his same familial theme to make his bombshell revelation?
- If Drake is in cahoots with the mole, why did he rap, “The ones that you’re getting your stories from, they all clowns,” and then call himself a clown a couple of bars later, rapping, “We plotted for a week, and then we fed you the information.” So, you agree, this is a circus.
Yeah, it’s a bit difficult to believe his overseer angle when so many previous moves contradict his alleged actions. Also, why would you plant damning information that paints you as a pedophile, a deadbeat dad of two, and more just so you can have a potential gotcha moment that lacked punch? “We don’t believe you, you need more people!”
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Bad — “Do You Fools Listen To Music Or Just…”
Image Credit: Hernandez/Getty Images “Mother, I—, mother, I—, mother—”/Ahh, wait a second, that’s that one record where you say you got molested/Aw, f**k me, I just made the whole connection/This about to get so depressin’/This is trauma from your own confessions/This when your father leave you home alone with no protection, so neglected/That’s why these pedophile raps is sh*t you so obsessed with, it’s so excessive.”
Not only does “The Heart Part 6” sound like a PR statement in song form, but it also sounds like someone who apparently was grasping at straws for an angle. So much so that the rapper began using Kendrick Lamar‘s discography against him, drawing references from “Mother I Sober” from his latest release, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.
Drizzy surmises that Dot’s “obsession” with the pedophilia angle is found in his history of being a victim of molestation. He later uses this “revelation” to declare that he doesn’t want to continue his feud with the Compton emcee and asserts that he’s merely projecting his trauma onto Drizzy when he accuses him of being a pedophile in “Meet The Grahams” and “Not Like Us.”
Unfortunately for Drake, he not only used a strange and glaringly tone-deaf angle in a song where he spent much of the time denying groomer allegations, but he misinterpreted “Mother I Sober,” completely missing the point.
Kendrick Lamar’s “Mother I Sober,” much like most of Mr. Morale, examines Dot as a person and peels back the most complicated and controversial layers of his life, such as his “lust” addictions and cheating on his wife. The same song also finds the artist unraveling trauma’s generational knots as he attempts to learn more about himself through his mom’s pain. He reveals that he learned that his mother was sexually abused in Chicago and recalled her fear that he may have suffered the same pain. Although his family didn’t believe him because of their trauma, K. Dot reassured them that he was never sexually abused as a child.
So, not only was the diss another dud (RIP “Taylor Made Freestyle”), but Drake’s comprehension of the song was way off.
In the timeless words of Jay-Z, “Do you fools listen to music, or do you just skim through it?”
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Bad — “Too Famous??”
Image Credit: Sussman/Getty Images “Speakin’ of anything with a child, let’s get to that now/This Epstein angle was the sh*t I expected…Just for clarity, I feel disgusted, I’m too respected/If I was f**king young girls, I promise I’d have been arrested/I’m way too famous for this sh*t you just suggested.”
What are these angles and lyrics? While we understand the presumptions of including Jeffrey Epstein’s name in his rebuttal, the bars don’t hit because Kendrick Lamar, Drake‘s opponent, never mentioned the late sex offender—he mentioned Harvey Weinstein in “Meet the Grahams.” And why would you claim to expect a sex offender angle in this battle? Dud.
Furthermore, which isn’t listed here, Drizzy mentions Millie Bobby Brown elsewhere in the song, whom Lamar has never mentioned throughout the battle. It has only been said in a plethora of videos across social media. So, who is Drake responding to, K. Dot or the internet? Then there is the reason why he explained he could never be someone who was involved in inappropriate relationships, rapping, “I’m too respected/If I was f**king young girls, I promise I’d have been arrested/I’m way too famous for this sh*t you just suggested.” Fam. This line is a poison permeating throughout the song, weakening every subsequent line in “The Heart Part 6.” By the time you arrive at the end of the track, his rebuttal to K. Dot is ultimately dead on arrival.
Drake’s explanation that he could never be accused of these damning claims because you’re famous and the idea is beneath him is a choice. Plus, he asserts that if he was a pedophile, he would be behind bars already because of his icon status. Okay. We do not know if these allegations are true or false. But let’s use our brains for a bit: how many times has a famous, influential person accused of nasty allegations gone unpunished? And then suddenly, they get hit with a lawsuit years or even decades later, accusing them of these said nasty claims, ending with them reaching settlements or behind bars. It has happened to Epstein, Weinstein, Sean Combs, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, and more.
If you’re trying to prove you’re not like these wealthy disgraced men, using bars claiming that your wealth somehow places you above being arrested or accused of these rumored crimes is crazy. These bars stink. This is bad. It’s a no from me, dawg.
