Few things provide me the torrents of cackling, schadenfreude-dripping delight I get from watching people who should know better get extremely heated over things that simply and unequivocally do not matter.

Observing other people’s esoteric turf wars, internecine family feuds, and frantic spirals of obsession is one of the best ways I know to put my own adorable little problems in perspective, as well as distract myself from the holy-shit horrors of the actual contemporary world.

The less I can believe they can possibly be serious, and the more they commit to the is-it-or-ain’t-it kayfabe, the more I am at once soothed and exhilarated to know I am still capable of such unapologetic, unconditional glee. Even as my world has shrunk these last few years and I have become increasingly ensconced within it, there will always be some stupid bullshit to bring me back to Earth, so long as I keep myself open to the possibility of receiving it through unanticipated avenues.

A seven-hour flight delay at LAX, where I’m considering buying a timeshare, might seem like a bad thing. But in this thoroughly quotidian inconvenience, I found an opportunity to become a learned scholar on the least consequential and most entertaining story that currently bedevils my newsfeed, the Drake vs. Everybody Rap Beef Battle Royale of 2024, and I am happier for it.

The roots of Drake v. Everyone extend into the early days of the careers of the MCs involved, all of whom dominated the charts and popular rap consciousness through the 2010s and have collaborated with each other a dozen ways from Sunday. The two principals – the Toronto-based Aubrey Graham, d/b/a Drake, and LA’s Kendrick Lamar – are sharply different rappers. Even when they worked together, they always seemed like the sort of pair who didn’t belong on the same planet, much less the same DJ Khaled monstrosity.

Drake is the guy who knows everyone, listens to everything, studies every trend inside and out, partly from careerist cynicism, mostly because Drake is irrepressibly curious about music and the world around him (even if he doesn’t have one of the game’s great attention spans).

Commercially, he’s in his own orbit. He’s been effortlessly wealthy, popular, funny, and good-looking for as long as anyone can remember. He makes state-of-the-art bangers and albums that capture the essence of the zeitgeist at the times in which they were made but don’t go much deeper than that. He’s deeply flawed and increasingly mean-spirited and bitter, but you’d think Drake wound want for nothing.

Except! The weirdest and most fascinating thing about Drake is that he is so objectively terrible at beefing with other rappers that it’s either 5D chess, hazardous masochism, or high-functioning yet rank stupidity, and it’s impossible to tell which. He beefs with dudes tragically outside his weight class, gets absolutely smoked every time, and just smirks while the shit goes down his throat. (Rest assured, Shopping Bag Drizzy also gets bodied by the women who pretty much run rap in the ’20s, which does nothing to curb his wounded misogyny.)

Kendrick Lamar is one of the most artistically respected and significant rappers – fuck that, recording artists – of all time, for good reason. Kendrick is an Artist. His albums are fluid, experimental, challenging, progressive, solipsistic, galvanizing, and gloriously self-indulgent, subverting fan expectations with sublime, fascinating whimsy and cruelty. His baffling and amazing 2022 LP Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers got a Grammy, a Pulitzer, and a good amount of hate from Kung Fu Kenny’s frenemies, who are legion when you’re that much of a one-off polarizing weirdo.

Beefing with Kendrick Lamar is very stupid. But it’s not just stupid. It means he will ether you with a timeless work of scathing social commentary that will outlive your grandchildren’s grandchildren. It’s a straight-up weird thing for Drake, who must at least know his own weaknesses by now and has taken noticeable damage to his mental health, if nothing else, to do. You could draw some lofty conclusions about power dynamics in the creative fields, but it’s best enjoyed as the absolute farce it is on its face.

All these guys are old. Almost my age. With the likely exception of Kendrick, their best work is behind them. If they’re Drake, they’ve got their hands full with their recently discovered children and their girlfriends’ pre-algebra homework. This is a ridiculous way for these dudes to spend their time, but it also means they’re old-school enough to drop actual bars on wax about each other so the beef is legible for salty Oregon Trail Generation kids such as myself, not just TikTok bullshit.

The particulars are delightful.

Kendrick has never pretended to respect Drake as an artist, and K-Dot has caught strays in some of Drake’s hotter feuds. So he wasn’t the only surprising thing about WE DON’T TRUST YOU, a Future and Metro Boomin concept album that sounds live from 2016, on which a bunch of Drake’s old coworkers take shots at him.

Among Drake’s many questionable pugilistic decisions has been to align himself with J. Cole, a talented wordsmith who doesn’t seem to have ever met or talked to a human being. On Drake’s “First Person Shooter,” from his vaguely burned out-sounding 2024 LP For All the Dogs, Cole suggests that he, Drake, and Kendrick are the “big three” of rap, which no one actually believes.

So Cole got some of Kendrick’s weird, theatrical, incendiary venom on “Like That,” lead single from WE DON’T TRUST YOU and an absolute banger that keeps me pushing the cocaine-rat lever to hear it dozens of times in a row. But it was mostly about Drake, and the fact that Kendrick just fucking hates Drake and doesn’t know why, which makes it harder, not easier, to deal with.

Cole released a pathetically half-assed Kendrick dis and then immediately deleted it, showing uncharacteristic social acumen by bowing out of a fight in which he was nearly guaranteed humiliation. You know who didn’t bow out?

Drake fired back at Kendrick with two dis records, one, “Taylor Made Freestyle,” so pathetic he deleted it by request of Tupac Shakur’s estate for what pure, uncut, pharmaceutical grade cringe it was.

The other was better, bringing back the old, funny Drake calling Kendrick a “pipsqueak,” telling him to “pipe down,” and accusing him of hypocrisy for calling his album The Big Steppers while wearing a 7 mens. Then Drake sat back and laughed, waiting to get stainlessly wiped off the ontological chalkboard.

At some point in April – the same goddamned month – Future and Metro dropped another full-length album called WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU, which was the point where I never stopped crying tears of orgasmic jouissance and the sky filled with bright, beautiful stars forever.

I love this beef. It’s fascinating on many levels, and it’s so bafflingly stupid that it makes me realize I’m alive, which lately has taken some doing.

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