The Drake and Kendrick Lamar rap feud was the biggest in more than a decade for the rap community. The feud included more than 8 diss tracks exchanged between the two over the span of a month.
But at one point Drake and Kendrick were collaborators and even toured together. 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.
Following the success of Drake’s Take Care album, a tour of North America was planned. Joining him for opening acts on the tour included up and coming rappers Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky.
The very popular and attended 2012 concerts would aid in breaking Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky into the rap game and to an audience that might not have known them otherwise. Due to the large demand and tickets selling out in minutes in multiple locations, extra tour dates were even added to the itinerary, which included a second leg across the United States.
The tour became a commercial success, grossing $42 million in the tour’s duration. It was the highest-grossing hip-hop tour of 2012, according to Pollstar‘s annual year end tour chart.
At the Finale of the North American Club Paradise show, Drake gave Kendrick and Rocky praise and doubled down on bringing them on tour with him.
“There are people like you who are well-versed in who those guys are, but there’s people that will get out there and be like, what the f*ck was this? And maybe three years from now they’ll be like, damn, I was there for that moment. … I don’t want to do some big arena tour like, let’s go me J. Cole and Wiz Khalifa, Big Sean, cuz that’s what’s going to sell right now, those guys all have albums out. … And it’s really me giving Rocky and Kendrick a chance to say, I’m bringing you out, do with it what you will. You take it to the moon from here, congratulations, because we’ll be immortalized in this moment.“
Does this change or shift your perspective of the current feud between Kendrick and Drake now?
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.
