As someone who has some connections in the music industry, these aren’t the only stories I’ve heard, these are just the ones that are public knowledge. Also, there isn’t enough space to write about how many rappers have performed lyrics about assaulting women. Eminem dedicated multiple songs to stories of beating and murdering his ex-wife, and she has said that the ridicule nearly drove her to suicide.
Of the rappers I named here, I only listen to Biggie, Tupac, Nas, and Flavor Flav’s Public Enemy on rare occasions. Once a man is accused of gender-based violence, I generally try to disengage from his work. With Biggie and Pac, I rationalize it by them being dead: My infrequent streams are not empowering them to continue allegedly harming women. As far as Public Enemy goes, I don’t want to hold the whole group accountable for Flav’s actions, though that means ignoring the likelihood that his bandmates had a front-row seat to his behavior. Regarding Nas, honestly, I have no excuse, but what generally happens is that I’ll put on his music and start thinking about what he’s been accused of, and then I turn it off.
Meanwhile, I’ve listened to “Euphoria” and “Not Like Us” on an endless loop for weeks. I keep asking myself, Why aren’t the accusations against him enough to make me stop? I don’t have an answer. I’ve long understood that to be a feminist hip-hop fan is to be somewhat of a hypocrite, considering how much of the music is dedicated to bashing women. But by disengaging with artists who were accused of physical crimes against women, I still felt like I was living within my values. Why am I unable to do that here?
To be fair, unlike in the aforementioned accusations, no known victim has publicly said Lamar harmed her.
To much of the public, and perhaps to me, the allegations against Drake are easier to believe than the ones against Lamar. Drake has partied with girls for years, including the Jenner sisters before they were 18. On “Nice for What,” which was celebrated as a pro-woman anthem, he raps, “High school pics / you was even bad then.” As Lamar calls out on “Not Like Us,” Drake associate Baka Not Nice was arrested for sex trafficking; the charges were dropped when the alleged victim refused to testify, but he did plead guilty to and was convicted of assaulting the woman. Conversely, Lamar has a reputation for being a family man. It’s hard to imagine him being at, say, a Diddy party. Plus, he simply outrapped Drake. He’s the clear victor of this war of words, and, thus, nothing Drake has accused him of has seemed to stick as far as his fans are concerned.
In spite of what Lamar was accused of, I’ve giddily followed each moment of this battle, stopping whatever I was doing when a new song dropped. I haven’t been this excited since Barack Obama won. In the past five years, Drake, who once seemed to be the heir apparent to LL Cool J with regards to his fervent female fandom, has shifted from “nice guy” misogyny to attacking Black women and appealing to incels. He’s spent years posturing as a tough guy even though the world knows he was raised in an affluent white suburb in Canada and appeared as a principal character on the teen show Degrassi. Finally, he’s being called out for all of it over a series of highly enjoyable songs.