“Drake won the beef”: Kendrick Lamar dissed by wrestlers on WWE Raw
Last year was an exciting year for Kendrick Lamar, who had a huge surge in support after he defeated Drake in a months-long feud resulting in ‘Not Like Us’. However, the a beef between the two MCs has had an impact far beyond hip-hop. Cultural commentators, radio hosts and fans have all been debating whether or not the victory was as big as it initially seemed.
Still, now the feud has been referenced in Netflix’s WWE Raw by two prominent wrestlers, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods. However, they didn’t heap any praise on Lamar — in fact, quite the opposite. Before a match in Los Angeles, Lamar’s hometown, the tag team took a shot at the DAMN creator.
During an interview, Woods told the host, “Think about it: for the last six months, y’all have been elevating this trash rapper Kendrick Lamar.” This provoked a large reaction from the largely West Coast crowd, who booed the statement. He continued, “Yeah, boo him! We think he sucks, too. Boo him! So you’re not mad at us, you’re mad at Kendrick Lamar because Drake won the beef.”
This is not the first time Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s feud has entered the wrestling world. Last year, the rap titans were invited to settle their differences in the ring by wrestling legend Shawn Michaels.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Michaels wrote, “A little Sweet Chin Music goes a long way @kendricklamar, you and @Drake are formally invited to #WWENXT to settle this thing. I’m even offering my services to mediate.”
Michaels inserted himself into the conversation after Kendrick Lamar referenced his finishing move ‘Sweet Chin Music’ on his hit diss track, ‘Not Like Us’ when he rapped, “Sweet Chin Music and I won’t pass the aux, aye.”
While opinions are still being shared about the battle, which many deemed Kendrick to have won, all the data suggests Kendrick’s diss tracks were far more successful commercially. Using data from the statistics company Luminate, Billboard recently estimated that both rappers’ diss tracks have generated almost $15.4 million for streaming companies, digital sales, and publishing revenue in the US since last spring.
When looking at numbers alone, Kendrick is the clear winner with ‘Not Like Us,’ ‘Like That,’ ‘Meet the Grahams’ and ‘Euphoria’ accounting for just over $13.4 million of the Luminate figure (almost 87%).
‘Not Like Us’ is, unsurprisingly, the most profitable of the four, as, so far, it has generated roughly $7.6 million, followed by ‘Like That’, the chart-topping collaboration with Future and Metro Boomin that ignited the entire feud.
Since its release, his collaboration with Metro Boomin’ has racked up $4.6million. Meanwhile, Drake’s two commercially available diss tracks, ‘Family Matters’ and ‘Push Ups,’ have generated just $981,300 and $969,400 — totalling a little over $1.9million.