The one Drake mixtape Kendrick Lamar admires: “He’s a good artist”
Some of the biggest rap beefs in history begin, first of all, with mutual admiration. Tupac and Biggie were friends before things went south. So, too, were 50 Cent and The Game, Birdman and Lil Wayne, and countless other rappers who, eventually, went on to despise each other. It’s easy to forget it now, but Kendrick Lamar and Drake used to get along just fine, too.
Long before the likes of ‘Family Matters’ and ‘They Not Like Us,’ Drake and Kendrick were not only on good terms but also made music together. Kendrick appeared on Drake’s second album Take Care in 2011, performing the two-minute-long ‘Buried Alive Interlude’ all by himself. Drake allowing Kendrick to perform his own song on his album was quite the endorsement, especially since Drake was, at this point in time, by far the more popular of the two. Kendrick was still an up-and-comer.
In an interview with XXL in 2011, the year that both Take Care and Kendrick’s debut Section.80 came out, Kendrick was full of praise for his contemporary. “We met up, chilled out, got to vibe, see where each other was at and shit,” he said of working with Drake, whom he praised as “a real good dude” who “got a real genuine soul.”
“We clicked immediately,” Kendrick said, really emphasising the fact that they liked each other a lot in those days. It’s odd to read now, in light of all the bad blood to come.
A couple of years later, in 2013, Kendrick was still rooting for Drake. He gave an interview to Acclaim, in which he was asked about Drake’s more mainstream sensibility compared to his own. Given that Kendrick had collaborated with Drake in the past, did he view that as a “compromise of integrity” at all?
He decidedly did not. Kendrick, if anything, doubled down on his purported admiration for Drake, singling out one of his works for particular praise. “Drake is an all-round artist,” he said. “People seem to forget his Comeback Season day and what he was talking about back then and even he what he talks about now.”
Comeback Season was Drake’s second mixtape, released in 2007, a couple of years before ‘Best I Ever Had’ dropped and transformed him into a global pop star. Kendrick claimed to be fond of the mixtape, highlighting the honesty of Drake’s lyrics in it.
“He’s just trying to explain his lifestyle the way it is now and tell dope stories,” he said. “That’s no different to what I do. We’re coming from different worlds as far as the storytelling, but I think everyone’s story can find a balance somewhere down the line, so that’s definitely no compromise.”
Kendrick plainly seemed to like Drake at this point in time, before things turned sour between them. “He’s a good artist,” he said, “and for him to get me doing my thing on his album is just crazy.”