There's no denying that the Drake and Kendrick Lamar rap feud of 2024 was the biggest in the rap game in decades. The feud included more than 8 diss tracks exchanged between the two within a month.
But at one point Drake and Kendrick were collaborators and even toured together. In fact, in 2011 Drake gave Kendrick Lamar an enormous recognition boost by featuring him on his wildly popular 2011 album, Take Care, which won Drake his first Grammy Award, winning Best Rap Album. In fact, it was Drake's idea to have Kendrick Lamar on the ‘Buried Alive Interlude‘.
In a 2011 interview with XXLmag.com (The year Kendrick was featured on XXL‘s annual freshman list) Kendrick talks about his first meeting with Drake and how he became featured.
“I did a show in Toronto. My first show in Toronto. I think it was the same night, we was going back to the hotel, and he hit my phone. 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 sh*t.“
Drake would reach out again after Kendrick dropped his debut studio album, Section.80 (which Kendrick reportedly emailed drake) and told him he loved what he did on the album and wanted Kendrick on his upcoming album. Drake followed by sending K-dot the 40 produced instrumental and told him to ‘”do whatever he wanted to do on it.”
On the song a very chill introspective Kendrick even speaks about the encounter of meeting a much more popular rapper in Drake and and his hope and suspicions that come with rising in the rap game. Listen to the song below.
Fast forward to 2024 amidst the Drake and Kendrick fued, Drake would release a “Buried Alive Interlude, Pt. 2”. Which was a remix of Kendrick Lamar's interlude of the same title, borrowing Kendrick's cadence, flow and tone from the track to mock the rapper over lines about how Drake boosted up Lamar's career through bringing him on tour.
The track was first posted by Drake to his Instagram (now deleted) as part of the promo for his third diss track towards Kendrick titled, ‘FAMILY MATTERS‘. Listen to the track below.
If you want to catch up on all of the background and timeline of the Drake and Kendrick feud, this article by V101.9 is very in depth and accurate.
