Kendrick Lamar’s “Euphoria” Acknowledges Drake’s Misogyny in a Way That Feels Kind of... New?
By stacy lee kong
Image: instagram.com/champagnepapi
If you’re even nominally a hip-hop fan, you know that Kendrick Lamar dropped a Drake diss track called “Euphoria” earlier this week, and you’ve probably listened at least a couple of times (and/or spent some time on Genius) to ensure you’ve taken in every single mean thing he had to say about the self-proclaimed 6ix God. And there were a lot of mean things to take in. As a quick recap, K-Dot came for Drake’s:
Hip-hop credentials (“You not a rap artist, you a scam artist with the hopes of bеing accepted”)
Plastic surgery allegations (“Yeah, my first one like my last one / It’s a classic, you don’t have one / Let your core audience stomach that / Didn’t tell ’em where you get your abs from”)
Blackness (“How many more Black features till you finally feel that you Black enough?,” “Tommy Hilfiger stood out, but FUBU nеver had been your collection” and “I even hate when you say the word ‘n***a,’ but that's just me, I guess”)
And even parenting (“Y’all think all of my life is rap? / That’s hoe shit, I got a son to raise, but I can see you know nothin’ ’bout that / Wakin' them up, know nothin' 'bout that / And tell 'em to pray, know nothin' 'bout that / And givin' 'em tools to walk through life like day by day, know nothin' 'bout that /Teachin' them morals, integrity, discipline, listen man, you don't know nothin' 'bout that”). I mean… he said Drake hasn’t taught his child how to pray. I’m not even religious and I gasped!
Unsurprisingly, culture critics have a lot to say about the rappers’ ongoing beef, and this song in particular. (The race conversation alone is pretty nuanced.) But there’s one other angle that I think isn’t being discussed enough amid all the glee over Lamar’s lyricism—or maybe just not in enough depth: Drake’s misogyny, including the rumours that he grooms (or at least, takes an inappropriate interest in) underage girls. So… let’s do that.
Drake has a long history of misogyny, which Black women have been calling out from time
Lamar references Drake’s sexism in a couple ways; first in the name of the song, a clear reference to the show Euphoria, which notoriously sexualizes its underage characters and which Drake executive produces, then in the lyrics themselves, including this one: “How I make music that electrify 'em, you make music that pacify 'em / I can double down on that line, but spare you this time, that's random acts of kindness” (I read the word pacify as a reference to both the shallow content of Drake’s lyrics and to teen girls) and this one: “When I see you stand by Sexxy Red, I believe you see two bad bitches / I believe you don't like women, that's real competition, you might pop ass with ‘em.” (Undermining Drake’s masculinity by comparing him to Sexxy Red is definitely misogynist, but I don’t think Lamar is questioning Drake’s sexuality here, as some people have theorized. To me, this is about misogyny—literally not liking women, and also seeing young women rappers as competition and a threat.)
But this doesn’t really get at the sheer scope of this behaviour, which Black women, and rap feminists of all ethnicities, have been pointing out for literal years. There’s the way he’s always talked about women in his lyrics, classifying them as either ‘good girls’ or hoes—or, sometimes, good girls who turned into hoes. Take his verse on The Game’s 2011 song “Good Girls Go Bad,” where he raps, “With some girls that say they models but umm, I don’t believe ’em / Who’s still getting tested? / Where’s all the women that still remember who they slept with? / Where’s all the girls too busy studying to make the guest list? / But when you do go out, you still working what you was blessed with.”
As a Splinter op-ed put it in 2015, “In Drake’s eyes, a woman is deemed worthy based on his approval of her behavior. That’s a form of control for men—and damaging for women. The women he sings about are usually independent—and have probably been wronged by Drake. But: A ‘good’ girl is elusive, stable, goal-oriented, virtuous yet somewhat sexually active, and wants to be in a relationship [while] a ‘bad’ girl is care-free, untrustworthy, not marriage-potential, into casual sex, needs saving, and is possibly this way A.D. (after Drake)… Drake’s lyrics aren’t violent, but his concept of love is closely related to ownership—on both sides of the relationship.”
Then there are the rumours about him taking an inappropriate interest in then-teenaged celebrities Millie Bobby Brown and Billie Eilish. In 2018, Brown, who was 14 at the time, told W magazine that Drake “invited [her] to his concert” the previous year. “And now we talk all the time. I ask his advice.” Later the same year, she told Access Hollywood that Drake is “so fantastic and a great friend and a great role model. We just texted each other the other day and he was like, ‘I miss you so much.’ I was like, ‘I miss you more!’ He’s coming to Atlanta so I’m definitely going to go and see him. I'm so excited. About boys, he helps me. He’s great, he’s wonderful. I love him.” The following year, a then-17-year-old Eilish revealed to Vanity Fair that the rapper was the most famous person in her phone, saying, “Drake is, like, the nicest dude I’ve ever spoken to. I mean, I’ve only, like, texted him, but he’s so nice. Like, he does not need to be nice, you know what I mean?” In both cases, it took approximately three seconds for the internet to wonder why, exactly, Drake was texting with teenage girls, especially about boys.
To be fair, both Brown and Eilish have consistently insisted that their interactions with him have been strictly platonic. And the last time I wrote about his soft misogyny, I noted that it makes me uncomfortable when people, especially white women, assume that men, especially Black men, are inherently predatory and therefore cannot interact with children without some nefarious ulterior motive, which I still think is true. That being said, in the context of his wider behaviour, it makes a lot of sense for people to be suspicious.
And it has only gotten worse in recent years
That’s especially true when you look at his recent behaviour. As culture writer David Dennis Jr. argued in his sharp and on-point review of Drake’s 2023 album, For All the Dogs, “this current version of Drake, one that has been brewing over the past couple of years, is an artist at his most regressive and most blatantly misogynistic. On For All the Dogs, we got a Drake who speaks to men with utter disdain for the women they interact with… He’s deploying ‘bitch’ way more frequently and aggressively than before… These are tropes that just about every popular rapper uses, but it hasn’t been Drake’s M.O. to date. So it’s odd to see an artist embrace this ideology about women so deep into his career when it had previously mostly been absent,” he wrote, before going on to note the cruel way he spoke about Rihanna on “Fear of Heights” and Esperanza Spalding (the jazz musician who won the Best New Artist Grammy over him… in 2011) on “Away From Home,” as well as other examples of recent problematic behaviour. Namely, siding with Tory Lanez after he shot Megan Thee Stallion and insinuating that she was lying about being injured in the shooting on 2022’s “Circo Loco,” off his Her Loss album with Future, a notable dismissal of her experiences that only feeds into wider distrust of women, and particularly Black women, who come forward about abusive behaviour.
Misogyny in hip-hop is obviously not a new conversation, but there’s something fascinating to me about this specific iteration, especially considering Drake’s trajectory toward a more common and blatant form of misogyny that he had previously rejected, juxtaposed with Lamar’s seeming trajectory away from that style of lyricism—or if that’s being too generous, at least tacit acknowledgement that hating women is clown behaviour.
Drake’s journey closely follows the mainstreaming of incel culture; he went from the casual or ‘soft’ misogyny of his early career, where he was a bit condescending and mostly judged women’s value on how interested and available they were to him (bullshit and far too common, but non-violent), to being outright cruel to exes and their new partners, using dehumanizing language and, as Dazed put it last October, “behaving like a manosphere influencer.”
Case in point: at a concert last fall, he spotted a fan holding a sign that said, “I spent all my savings buying tickets for me and my ex, but Honestly, Nevermind, it’s really Her Loss.” In a moment of mid-concert banter, he fully encouraged the man’s anger at the woman who broke up with him, which sparked a stadium-wide chant of “fuck that bitch.” And when he decided to give the man $50,000, he did so saying, “But you know what? She’s gonna feel real fucked up ’cause I’m [gonna] give you 50 bands so you gon’ flex on her tonight… I won’t say it like y’all said it, but fuck that young lady.”
Women are allowed to leave relationships, and they don’t deserve punishment or public shaming for making that choice. And yet… here we have this random man, Drake and a stadium full of fans participating in exactly that type of behaviour. That’s incel shit.
On the flip side, Kendrick’s approach to this conversation feels like it aligns with this other thing I’ve been seeing, both in real life and media. While I can’t think of many examples where male artists have used their work to publicly and explicitly call out other men for their misogyny, there have been some really interesting conversations happening among male hip-hop fans, who have been grappling with their favourites’ toxic masculinity, homophobia, transphobia and sexism for years—even while new generations of rappers double down on that type of language and behaviour. One recent example is a 2023 episode of NPR’s Louder Than A Riot where hosts Rodney Carmichael and Sidney Madden talk about misogyny through the lens of fatherhood alongside writer and Rice University prof Kiese Laymon. As Carmichael, who has been introducing his toddler son to Biggie, put it, “ain't no way to truly interrogate misogynoir in hip-hop without men taking some accountability for the past but especially for the future so we don't turn our sons into survivors and perpetrators of the same ill fate.” Over the course of 53 minutes, these men delve into the vile things the rappers they grew up on said about women, the degrading ways they portrayed women, how they normalized rape culture and the lessons they imparted about masculinity, which largely revolved around suppressing vulnerability and acting hard.
I don’t want to give Lamar too much credit (it really was just a few lines), but his ability to recognize Drake’s misogyny, classify it as bad and use it against him feels new, and like it is at least adjacent to this conversation, even if the podcast is far more thoughtful, honest and reflective.
But, let’s not get too excited
However! I’m being very measured for a reason. First, Lamar isn’t immune to the same sexism, transphobia and homophobia that rears its head throughout hip-hop. The track “Humble,” from 2017’s DAMN., is not so different from Drake’s own earlier soft misogyny, for example. I love that song, but not the way he opines on ‘real’ womanhood (please note, every way of being a woman is valid), using his own desires and preferences as a barometer… which means he’s just centring himself. Also, elsewhere on that album, he still refers to women as bitches and hoes and characterizes them as a vice, as opposed to, you know, real, three-dimensional people. And there’s valid criticism of his song “Auntie Lessons,” from his 2022 album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. The song is meant to be the story of his journey toward acceptance for his trans uncle and cousin, but he makes the artistic decision to use homophobic slurs, and deadnames and misgenders his relatives when talking about them pre-transition. I think this is why the ‘real women’ line in “Euphoria” has inspired some confusion, and/or outright speculation that it might be transphobic, though based on the context of the line, I personally don’t think he’s referencing trans-ness. I think he’s saying the same shit: some women are ‘good’ (the kind that wear their hair natural and have stretch marks, because they’re ‘real’ and by extension not consumerist or vain) and some are bad (the kind that fuck Drake)—and we already know why that’s a mess.
Also, this could just be a a savvy business move. This week, Defector’s Israel Daramola explained the tension between Lamar and Drake (and various background characters) as “rap's millennial class… airing out beef as they go through their midlife crises… This version of rap Wrestlemania is just a bunch of guys pushing 40, hoping to maintain relevance, and it feels like everyone involved can feel their mortality within the confines of their success and are trying to revitalize themselves. There are no stakes here. A lot of it just sounds like the way you would fight with a friend that you're mad at. Everyone has found a way to benefit from inserting themselves into this ordeal, so it's clearly been good for business and it's the closest we've come to a monoculture moment in music that doesn't involve Beyoncé or Taylor Swift.” The idea that 40 is ancient is rude and I don’t like it, but aside from that… we probably do have to acknowledge that Lamar could just be saying shit to say shit, the same way Drake made claims to feminism in “Nice for What” to sell albums to female fans.
But perhaps most importantly, we’re in a weird moment for this genre at large. We’re having more and more conversations about the abusive, predatory, exploitative behaviour that (male) hip-hop icons have historically leveraged against the women in their orbits, whether that’s R. Kelly or Russell Simmons or Diddy or Trey Songz or Dr. Dre or, or, or. And yet, we haven’t really seen a #MeToo-style reckoning in this space (though a lot of people are now wondering if R&B singer Cassie’s recent lawsuit against Diddy will spark one). A few lines on one song isn’t really enough to offset that reality.
So, this is likely more a bright spot in a grim landscape than a true sign of turning tides. But, I’m here for it nonetheless.
Not Bad For Some Immigrants, Episode 4: Uh... Do We All Have 'Eldest Immigrant Daughter Syndrome'?
Technically, ‘Eldest Immigrant Daughter Syndrome’ is not a diagnosable medical condition, but as all immigrant daughters know, it’s definitely a real thing. So, in the fourth episode of Friday Talks: Not Bad For Some Immigrants, I’m chatting with Caroline Mangosing, the founder and creative director of Filipiniana fashion brand Vinta Gallery, and filmmaker v.t. nayani about the obligations and expectations immigrant families place on their daughters, the ones we place on ourselves and why this ‘syndrome’ is common across cultures. Watch now!
And Did You Hear About…
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes’ monologue about pro-Palestine student protests, and how the obsession with (often literally) policing their behaviour distracts from the actual point of the protests: Israel’s genocide in Palestine. (It’s an excellent counterpoint to CNN’s Dana Bash, who recently said… this.)
This thought-provoking op-ed on the fast fashion morality debate, written to mark the 11th anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster, when a Bangladesh factory collapsed, killing more than 1,000 people, many of them garment workers who made clothes for companies including Benetton, Joe Fresh, Zara and Walmart.
Relatedly, this Atlantic piece about why we’re not yet at ‘peak stuff.’
Dirt’s investigation on the ideal level of fame. (And actually, everything else they publish. The recent real writer money diaries was so good, and this essay from last year is one of my favourites.)
This fascinating Cut feature on the ‘90s fertility manual that has become politicized in the battle between pro-bodily autonomy liberals and anti-birth control conservatives.
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