Do you folks remember last year, right around this time, when the hip-hop community was debating whether the genre was dead or not? We hadn't seen a No. 1 rap song or album in a long time as of May 2023, and it was a conversation that permeated through a lot of those 365 days. Well, nowadays that conversation looks very different, and it's thanks to the biggest rap beef we've seen in at least a couple of years: Drake versus Kendrick Lamar. Right now, that's the main event, but just a few weeks ago, there were many more players directly involved, namely Future and Metro Boomin.
Speaking of which, the St. Louis producer recently posted a picture of him in the studio (making some drums, as Drake requested) with the following caption: "HIP-HOP IS ALIVE AND WELL." Of course, there are multiple different ways in which fans could be interpreting this message right now. The first is that Metro Boomin is teasing an upcoming project, song, or other related release on the way, and that this means that he will keep contributing to rap music's canon very soon. The other and much more likely explanation is that he's celebrating the success of his and Future's collab album series, WE [STILL] DON'T TRUST YOU, and gassing up the release of Kendrick Lamar's response track to Drake, "euphoria."
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Furthermore, their Kendrick Lamar collaboration "Like That" on the series' first installment is what really ignited the explosion of this whole beef, roping in Rick Ross, A$AP Rocky, The Weeknd, Kanye West, and more against Drake. Also, Metro Boomin had previous rumored issues with Drizzy, and these releases and disses exposed a lot of shifting relationships and bonds in the OVO camp and beyond. Right now, Aubrey Graham is probably hard at work on a response to K.Dot, and they've both teased nuclear weapons in their arsenal that they haven't revealed yet. Only time will tell whether their bluffs will become bombs.
Meanwhile, even though Drake kind of shooed away everyone in this fight expect Kendrick Lamar, Metro Boomin is right to make this assessment of hip-hop, which has always been true since its birth over 50 years ago. Even though he didn't come out as an explicit victor in this beef, his "Like That" track, its aftermath, and all his work this year has kept rap at a commercial and artistic high, plus previous chart-toppers in 2024 such as 21 Savage and others. Whether it's reigning over Billboard charts or causing more interest in verse writing and bar work, it's a stimulating, chaotic, but pretty fun time to be a hip-hop fan. But we need to acknowledge how to handle that attention responsibly, because the numbers are temporary, but the art is forever.
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