Kai Cenat didn’t become the most popular Twitch streamer in hip-hop by holding back his real opinions. So while speaking to Billboard for his January cover story, he didn’t hold back when it came to his takes on the Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar rap war of 2024.
In conversation with Billboard‘s deputy editorial director Damien Scott, Cenat — who once FaceTimed Drizzy on his Twich livestream — began by saying, “I’m cool with Drake.”
“So people would expect me to be on Drake’s side,” he continued. “But I’m not going to lie. Kendrick won that battle.”
Cenat was one of countless hip-hop fans who was locked in during the Toronto native and Dot’s musical conflict last spring, during which the two rappers lobbed searing diss tracks at each other throughout April and May. The streamer reacted to the drops in real time on his channel, with Drake notably instructing him to “stay on stream” before releasing “Family Matters” in May.
“I loved every second of it,” Cenat told Billboard of the musical back-and-forth. “I was just appreciating the moment. Like, bro, we got bangers right now that’s dropping back to back and everybody’s talking about them. It was definitely fire.”
Things took a turn in November, however, when Drake filed two legal actions against Universal Music Group over Lamar’s “Not Like Us” — the two-week Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper in which the Compton musician famously calls his opponent a “certified pedophile.” The “God’s Plan” artist accused the label of inflating the track’s streams through nefarious methods and cited defamation, alleging that UMG “could have refused to release or distribute the song or required the offending material to be edited and/or removed.”
Earlier this month, Drake escalated things further by launching a full-blown lawsuit against UMG; the label has denied the allegations in his suit and called it “illogical.” Cenat also just so happened to be mentioned in the filing. The Degrassi alum’s lawyers named him and a few other streamers who reacted to “Not Like Us” when it dropped as examples of UMG “whitelisting” the song, something Cenat also reacted to on a stream.
“Wait, why am I in this s–t?” he asked his viewers at the time, baffled. “Wait, hold on! Wait, what the f—? I’m getting sued?!”
See Cenat on the cover of Billboard below.
