Fans React To And Decipher Kendrick Lamar’s Drake Diss “Euphoria”
Hip-Hop fans finally got what they wanted. Kendrick Lamar offered his response to Drake’s “Push Ups” and now-deleted “Taylor Made Freestyle” with his new diss track, “Euphoria.”
One highlight of the record is K. Dot’s signature use of multiple accents, which one fan acknowledged creatively. “Kendrick Lamar hating in four different voices on this song,” they wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, accompanied by a clip from the 2011 ESPN documentary The Fab Five. In the clip, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, and Jimmy King called former Duke Blue Devils basketball player Christian Laettner “soft, overrated, pretty boy, a bi**h” one by one.
The Compton rapper mentioned J. Cole in the record, who previously dissed him on “7 Minute Drill” only to apologize days later, but kept things mostly tame to focus solely on the Toronto superstar. “J. Cole somewhere on his bike extremely relieved,” one fan wrote. However, another fan wasn’t willing to let the Dreamville rapper off that easy. “2 biggest rap stars in the world exchanging bars and Jermaine sitting at home after saying he’d smoke anyone for 10 years,” they wrote.
One beautiful aspect of Hip-Hop is its direct connection to sports. “Haven’t felt LA hate a Canadian man like that since *checks notes* Jamal Murray,” one fan wrote. Murray, a star guard for the Denver Nuggets and Canadian-born man, hit two-game winning shots on the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of their playoff series this past week. The Lakers ended up losing that series in five games and the fanbase is not happy with the one-time NBA champion.
Kendrick Lamar spent a good portion of the record discussing how he doesn’t like that Drake says “ni**a.” X detectives were quick to remind users that K. Dot himself is married to a woman who is mixed race. “Kendrick married to a half & half talmbout who can’t say ni**a, please get the f**k on,” one fan wrote.
The For All The Dogs artist has long been accused of inappropriate relationships with younger women, though there hasn’t been any litigation sent his way; rather, people cite his friendship with Millie Bobby Brown and an old video of him kissing a 17-year-old during a show when he was 24 years old. With this in mind, many people believe that the “Like That” rapper was addressing these rumors via the title “Euphoria,” which could double as a reference to the MAX show Euphoria Drake is listed as an executive producer for.
One fan quoted the lines “I make music that electrifies ’em/ You make music that specifies ’em/ I could double down on that line but I’ll spare you this time/ That’s randoms acts of kindness” and believed that Kendrick Lamar was calling him a pedophile.
Needless to say, there is a lot to unpack from “Euphoria” and fans are having a grand old time doing it. This battle began with K. Dot’s appearance on Future and Metro Boomin’s song “Like That” last month, which Drake responded to weeks later with “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle.” It will be interesting to see where this goes next.
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