Drake and J. Cole dissed on the same track within the same verse. A trigger has been set off in the hip-hop sphere, the shooter being Kendrick Lamar. What appeared to be a neat surprise feature off Metro Boomin’s album turns into a diss toward two prominent icons. “Like That” now sits at the number 1 spot of the billboard hot 100 this week with the sheer impact of Kendrick’s presence alone on the track.

To top it off, before the collaborative Future album We Don’t Trust You was released, Metro Boomin unfollowed Drake just minutes before the release. Just where does one start with understanding the beef between Kendrick, Cole, and Drake?

A key highlight could be pointed toward Big Sean’s “Control”, where Kendrick calls out Drake and J. Cole for the first time directly in the same track. The track however was released over a decade ago in 2013. This isn’t to say Kendrick and Drake haven’t been trading subliminal disses over the years, an example being Kendrick throwing a subliminal toward Drake for using ghostwriters in the track King Kunta.

From then on, subliminals would be thrown between Kendrick and Drake, and eventually, when one would think things began to die down in the 2020s, with Drake acknowledging Kendrick on his own number-one hit, “Top Shooter.” However, with Kendrick calling out Cole and Drake, things are only ramping up even further.

As for Metro Boomin unfollowing Drake, the producer holds his own beef with the Canadian rapper for his own reasons rather than just following along with K-Dot.
It started with Drake leaking one of the tracks the two collaborated on off Mero’s album Heroes And Villains. Drake likely thought it would be good to generate traction toward the album, traction toward the song, and generate higher numbers for the album. This hasn’t been the first time Drake has leaked a track of another rapper though. In 2021, he leaked Ye West’s original version of “Life Of The Party” from Donda before Ye released the finished version, the original including Ye dissing Drake.

Back to Metro Boomin’s end, he wasn’t happy with Drake’s direct leak of the track and when the album finally dropped, Drake was nowhere to be found on the project. It was a missed opportunity by Metro, but an understandable reason to be upset when being the director of a project. The two clashed again in late 2023 on X (formerly known as Twitter), when the Grammys were rolling around. Despite Metro playing parts in the production on Drake and 21 Savage’s collab album Her Loss, he still had issues with the album. This came about from a tweet comparing the numbers of Heroes & Villains to Her Loss. The initial tweet highlights Heroes & VIllains performing better than Her Loss.

“Yet Her Loss keeps winning rap album of the year over H&V,” Metro responds in his now long deleted tweet. “Proof that award shows are just politics and not for me. IDC about awards honestly, the true award and REWARD is knowing that the music I spend so much time on brings joy to people’s everyday lives.”

That briefly recaps Metro’s side of the beef and his issues with Drake. As for Future, there’s only speculation on whether or not he has problems with anyone name-dropped within Like That. Funnily enough, all the artists mentioned have collaborated at least once or communicated with each other. This could at least just be friendly competition. Whether or not it is though, it adds much-needed competition and entertainment to the industry again.