This whole thing might be our fault. Seriously. The recent details behind the story of Lupe and Kendrick coincidentally escalate sometime after our KDot vs Lupe debate got a lot of traction on our facebook page.
Becoming legendary is a burden. Beyond the perceived expectations of constantly outdoing a previously un-outdone tier of performance, the pressure in comparison begins to show. Every GOAT has an often unsung challenger to the throne. Jordan had Len Bias. Jim Brown had Gale Sayers. “What About Rocky Marciano?” is only funny because it’s valid. The cult classic “Afro Samurai” explains the phenomenon of challenging legend beautifully – the hierarchy of greatness in the anime film surrounds the number one headband. The only one that can challenge the number one is the holder of the number two headband, who in turn can be challenged by anyone. In the world of Hip-Hop, many people believe the next to have a crack at being legendary would be none other than Kendrick Lamar.
Unless your name is Lupe Fiasco, so it seems.
On the surface you can see why: Lupe himself was considered en route to become the heir apparent in the rap game some 12 years ago. The CEO of 1st and 15th Entertainment had all the juice after his debut Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liquor and follow up album The Cool received critical acclaim from reviewers and fans alike. It wasn’t until 2011’s Lasers dropped, complete with his vocal disapproval in how Atlantic Records handled the project, and much of his career. Lasers was released to mixed reviews, yet was Lupe’s first number one album on Billboard’s top 200. Ultimately Lupe’s projection into the stratosphere of MCs is a fair mix of pinnacled praise, high hopes and label fumbles which pins him somewhere between the grossly underrated and a class all his own. More like a planet.
Meanwhile in the midst of these ups and downs, a little thing was happening in Compton, where TDE’s Golden Child was about to get a golden ticket into hip hop stardom, signing with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Records in 2012 after releasing one of the previous years standout independent releases in Section 80. K.Dot’s rise from there would be nothing short of remarkable, with 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city taking the number 2 spot on Billboard that year. Grammy accolades and more success would come from the 2015 release To Pimp A Butterfly and his latest release DAMN is currently nominated for Album of The Year. He’s even curating the soundtrack for the year’s most anticipated film, Marvel’s Black Panther. Who can complain about that?
For the answers to that we start at the end, when at the beginning of the year Lupe was very observant when he noticed that album art for Kendrick and SZA’s “All The Stars” single was highly reminiscent of the artwork for his upcoming project, Drogas Wave. In a series of now deleted tweets, Lupe would say “Even I admit this is a little too close for comfort…damn now I guess I need a new album cover,” as well as several other accusations of artistic style jacking, even as far as saying he did the whole “backwards album thing” first on his last full release, Tetsuo & Youth. Top Dawg Entertainment President Dave Free would go on to tell Lupe via Twitter to “go kick & push yourself into a tree with these wild allegations.” Some days later, Fiasco would return to twitter to diatribe on how Kendrick wasn’t “a top tier lyricist to me”, counting the Compton MCs verse on Big Sean’s “Control” as “wack and overhyped”. Not necessarily an unheard opinion, the comments coming when they did struck as incendiary. However even this latest lip service only tags onto a further tangled past, when Hot 97’s Peter Rosenberg was lambasted by Lupe for “hugging Kendrick’s nuts” in a 2014 interview. It seems like the “Murals” artist has painted quite a picture of less than admiration for one Kung Fu Kenny (Lupe even noting that his love of martial arts and eastern culture predates Mr. Lamar’s newest moniker, inspired by Don Cheadle in “Rush Hour”).
So is this real beef or just chatter?
At this point it’s tough to tell. Of course it takes two to tango, and outside of Dave Free’s tweet, TDE and Kendrick have been relatively silent regarding Lupe’s opinions on the music and the artwork plagiarism accusations. Lamar is not shy to respond to slick disses and does a respectable job of bringing the issue to anyone that has something to say, directly or not. Unfortunately if his pattern of production is consistent, we’re probably 2 years away from another project from K.Dot, and unless he’s got some darts for Lupe on Jay Rock’s upcoming project, this battle runs the risk of becoming yet another in the long list of head to head competitions hip hop fans have been hoping for. Real rap heads don’t desire lopsided battles or to see lyrical juggernauts pick on the trap or pop hot tickets. Most real fans want to see the art pushed to another level, to hear music that is desperate to outdo the artist and all others. We are talking about two MCs that are highly regarded and are imperative to the narrative of how the craft of songwriting and rocking the mic have pushed in the new millennium. Friendly competition is the healthiest thing for the culture – without it creativity gets stale and every verse feels like a participation trophy. 2018 style rap beefs involve so much social media posturing and way not enough credible music. Even if not another word was uttered between them, the sheer threat/potential of a Kendrick vs Lupe skirmish would spell the raising of the bar on bars, and that becomes a battle everyone wins.
