Dr Dre reveals reason why Drake crossed line in Kendrick Lamar beef
Drake was involved in a bitter feud with Kendrick Lamar last year involving scathing diss tracks. However, there was one moment in particular when Dr Dre believed Drizzy had crossed the line.
During an episode of the new Audible series The Unusual Suspects with Kenya Barris and Malcolm Gladwell, Dre touched on the beef and claimed that Drake took it too far by mentioning Kendrick’s wife and kids.
“I love that record,” he said about the ‘Not Like Us‘ diss track. “I’ma say this on camera. I don’t want to get negative. My whole shit is about being positive and moving forward and all that shit, but the fact that I heard Drake say something negative about Kendrick’s wife and his kids, that made me say, ‘Ah, adios!’”
Drake made allegations about Kendrick abusing his wife, Whitney Alford, and claimed that Dave Free, K.Dot’s longtime friend and pgLang business partner, was the father of one of his kids. He took shots about the topics across songs such as ‘Push Ups’, ‘Family Matters’ and ‘The Heart Part 6’.
Kendrick explained the meaning behind ‘Not Like Us’ during a conversation with SZA for Harper’s Bazaar in October. “This man has morals, he has values, he believes in something, he stands on something. He’s not pandering,” he said about the song’s character.
“He’s a man who can recognise his mistakes and not be afraid to share the mistakes and can dig deep down into fear-based ideologies or experiences to be able to express them without feeling like he’s less of a man. If I’m thinking of ‘Not Like Us’, I’m thinking of me and whoever identifies with that.”
Drake actually wrote for Dre when he was 19, as told in the 2016 book The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory. “It was some of the most strenuous militant shit I’ve ever done,” he said. “But no useable songs came out of it. When I think of how he worked us, it’s no wonder he didn’t get anything out of it. It was just writers in a room churning out product all day long.”