Universal Music Group has denied reports that it requested that Kendrick Lamar and Drake end their much-publicised feud.
Over the past month, Lamar and Drake have been trading blows over a constant back-and-forth of diss tracks. Earlier this week, Drake dropped his new diss track ‘The Heart Part 6’, on which the Canadian rapper suggested that Lamar’s disses are based on false information fed to him by Drake’s team. He also denied allegations of paedophilia lobbied against him by Kendrick Lamar on ‘Meet The Grahams’.
The feud stems from Lamar’s verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s ‘Like That‘ back in March. In the verse, he responded to J. Cole, who claimed “Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the big three like we started a league” on his guest spot on Drake’s track ‘First Person Shooter’.
Lamar fired at Cole and Drake on his ‘Like That’ verse: “Motherfuck the big three, n****, it’s just big me”. Cole would go on to respond with his own diss, ‘7 Minute Drill’, but later apologised for it and pulled it from streaming.
Drake fired back with two tracks ‘Push Ups’ and ‘Taylor Made Freestyle‘. Drake’s use of AI to emulate Tupac‘s vocals in the latter track led to the late rapper’s estate threatening legal action. He subsequently removed the diss from streaming. Lamar then responded with ‘Euphoria‘ on May 1, following it up quickly the following day with ‘6:16 in LA’.
Drake’s ‘The Heart Part 6’ is the latest salvo in the back-and-forth feud between the two rappers. Prior to this, Kendrick Lamar dropped ‘Not Like Us’. The day before, both rappers released disses an hour apart from each other. Drake released ‘Family Matters’, and Lamar swiftly responded with ‘Meet The Grahams’.
Now, a supposedly leaked document has surfaced online which said that UMG had intervened in the matter fearing that Drake was “losing” the pair’s war of words. It mentioned Zoom meetings with the artists’ respective labels, claiming that Drake’s paedophile allegations was losing them money.
“Drake is losing the beef in UMG’s eyes,” the document read. “So from UMG’s perspective, the sooner than this beef ends the better.”
Representatives from UMG confirmed to TMZ that the label had never considered getting involved in the rappers’ feud.
“Kendrick and Drake’s beef is between them and completely separate from the business side of things,” TMZ reported [via HotNewHipHop]. “And UMG just doesn’t think it’s their place to step in either way.”
Meanwhile, a news anchorman made the awkward blunder of accidentally calling Drake a “raper” instead of a “rapper” while on live television.