How Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy sweep has affected hip-hop’s view of Drake
Kendrick Lamar is officially the first recipient of a Grammy for a diss track. The LA rapper’s 2024 smash ‘Not Like Us’ recently won ‘Record of The Year’ at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, and to the disappointment of Drake fans and critics alike, seemed happy to see Lamar receive the honour.
The legendary diss track didn’t just receive one award, though. Over the course of the night, Kendrick Lamar and DJ Mustard earned themselves three in the categories of ‘Best Rap Performance’, ‘Best Rap Song’ and finally ‘Best Music Video.’
To clinch their accolades, the two West Coast icons beat Cardi B, A$AP Rocky, Doechii, GloRilla, and even Eminem. DJ Mustard picked up the awards for some of the acceptance speeches on behalf of Kendrick. During one of his addresses, Mustard K Dot, God, and pgLang, Mustard then declared that he and Kendrick were just getting started, and said, “Three. Let’s get it.”
With three wins out of the five categories he was nominated in, Kendrick Lamar has now entered the big league and is approaching the same number of Grammy wins as Jay-Z and Kanye, who have won 21 and 24 awards, respectively.
Other artists who won awards at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards include Rapsody and Erykah Badu, who clinched the title in the ‘Best Melodic Rap Performance’ category for their collaboration, ‘3:AM.’ This is the first-ever Grammy win for Rapsody and the fifth Grammy for Badu.
The category hip-hop of ‘Best Rap Album’ is scheduled to be presented during the official 2025 Grammy’s show at Cryptyo.com Arena. Projects up for the award include J Cole’s Might Delete Later, Eminem’s The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce), Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal and the iconic We Don’t Trust You from Future & Metro Boomin.
Kendrick Lamar’s multiple Grammy wins reflect a more significant shift in the wider hip-hop community. For years, Drake has been at the forefront of hip-hop. However, much of his material over the years has fallen outside hip-hop. Whether it’s his experimentation with house music or afrobeat, Drizzy’s music has sounded less and less like rap music over the years.
In fact, it has become an unrecognisable mix of pop and dance music that has somehow managed to impose itself into the hip-hop category. The Toronto emcee has received various accolades, cementing him as the best rapper for music that has very little to do with the genre and until recently, the culture didn’t seem to care.
While this was happening, Kendrick Lamar was releasing high-quality hip-hop albums with meaningful messages and instrumentals that were true to the genre. That said, his battle with Drake last year made many people question the Canadian’s place in hip-hop. Furthermore, a lot of commentators and podcasters have insisted that Drake’s dominance has been chiefly due to record labels.
During an episode of his People’s Party podcast, Talib Kweli admitted that Kendrick Lamar’s deconstruction of Drake’s relationship with Black America on ‘Not Like Us’ made him aware that he was never comfortable with Drizzy using the word “n*gger” in his music considering his biracial, middle-class background.
Although other MCs in hip-hop experiment with different genres, people have noted an inauthenticity concerning Drake and his willingness to drop rap when other sounds become more popular. The ‘War’ emcee was quick to begin making drill in 2014 and swiftly pivoted to afrobeat when Burna Boy gained traction in the US.
Kendrick Lamar has done no such thing, and as Kanye West stated last year, many are “energised” to see the downfall of Drake, who has ridden many cultural waves over the years to his own benefit.
After years of TikTok sensations, fads and subpar musicians, it appears that Kendrick Lamar has single-handedly revived hip-hop and opened people’s eyes to the tacit exploitation of the culture by foreign MCs dominating a homegrown African-American movement.