While Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s heavyweight battle has been a spectacle sweeping pop culture for the last few weeks, Questlove isn’t thrilled with the messy feud and its “mudslinging” antics.
The Roots drummer scoffed at Drake and K. Dot’s war in a fiery Instagram post on Tuesday night (May 8) where Quest put fans on blast for their visceral reactions to the haymakers exchanged on the scathing diss tracks.
“Nobody won the war. This wasn’t about skill. This was a wrestling match level mudslinging and takedown by any means necessary — women & children (& actual facts) be damned,” he wrote before declaring hip-hop to be dead. “Same audience wanting blood will soon put up ‘rip’ posts like they weren’t part of the problem. Hip Hop truly is dead.”
Questlove’s post made references to both Drake and Kendrick bringing family and children into the beef in a very personal way to attack one another. K. Dot accused Drizzy of hiding an 11-year-old daughter on “Meet the Grahams,” while the 6 God alleged that Lamar’s manager Dave Free was the father of one of the Compton rapper’s children on “Family Matters.”
“Here We Are Now…Entertain us,” Questlove captioned the post, quoting Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Quest turned off his Instagram comments, but that didn’t stop his hot take from sparking reactions on X as one user reminded Quest that he played the drums for Jay-Z’s Unplugged live album in 2001 that included “Takeover,” Hov’s diss track against Nas. “Wasn’t Questlove the drummer on ‘Unplugged’ live where Hov performed ‘Takeover?’” the user wrote. “A battle where women and children were also mentioned? Shut up, man.”
Including Kendrick’s explosive assist on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That” in March, Lamar and Drake exchanged 10 diss tracks in total with the latest installment coming on Sunday (May 5) with the defensive “The Heart Part 6,” where Drake shut down pedophilia allegations repeatedly made by K. Dot.
Read Questlove’s full post below:
