The first time Kendrick Lamar and Drake met: “We clicked immediately”
Kendrick Lamar and Drake famously exchanged fiery diss tracks last year, resulting in one of the best feuds in hip-hop history. The beef also filtered into 2025, with K. Dot continuing to bash Drizzy during his Super Bowl halftime show, performing his hit single ‘Not Like Us’ while continuing to accuse him of being a paedophile.
However, Kendrick and Drake haven’t always been on bad terms. The rappers first crossed paths in Canada in 2011 following Kendrick’s first-ever Toronto show. At the time, the 6 God was working on his Take Care album.
“We was going back to the hotel, and he hit my phone,” Kendrick told XXL about Drake. “I guess he had got the word that I was in town. He was there for the night working for the album, and he just said [he wanted to] meet up. We met up, chilled out, got to vibe, see where each other was at and shit.
“Sometimes you like a person’s music but you definitely don’t like the actual artist when you sit down and you talk to them. That’s a real good dude. He got a real genuine soul. We clicked immediately. We had spoken probably one time before that.”
Kendrick’s flattering words about Drake are bizarre to hear now, considering everything that’s happened between them. That night, he gave Drizzy a copy of his debut album, Section.80, which was released in July 2011.
“He reached out, I wanna say, after I dropped Section.80,” he said. “He was actually the first person to hear Section.80. I gave it to him that night. He was catching a flight somewhere, and I sent it to him through email, and he was just rocking out with it for a minute. Really bigging me up on the project, telling me to keep doing what I’m doing, that it’s amazing.”
The project impressed Drake so much that he asked Kendrick to feature on Take Care. “Probably a week after [Section.80 dropped], he said, ‘I wanna get you on the album,'” Kendrick recalled. “The first time he told me, he said he wanted to get me on a song with The Weeknd. But I don’t know if that song actually made the album. And then after that, a few more conversations, and he finally sent me an instrumental and told me to do what I want on it.”
Kendrick ended up having his own song on the album, ‘Buried Alive Interlude‘, without Drake even providing a verse. The Compton rapper appreciated Drizzy reaching out in the first place and taking the time to link up in person.
“For him to actually reach out and say come to this spot where we at to chill out, that was a move by itself,” he said. “A lot of people will talk to you on the phone or text you, but when it’s actually time to sit down and work, you never catch ‘em. I thought it was dope on his behalf to even reach out.”
Following that record, they collaborated on ‘Poetic Justice’ from Kendrick’s good kid, m.A.A.d city album. They also teamed up on A$AP Rocky’s ‘Fuckin’ Problems’ alongside 2 Chainz, which appeared on LONG.LIVE.A$AP.