Drake, Kendrick, and the McRib: The Business of New Media and Culture
Photo by Dorel Gnatiuc on Unsplash
Just about everything about the Drake Kendrick feud amplifies why we love hip-hop; the pageantry, the dramatism, the authenticity, and above all else, the love for the game.
We’ve witnessed two heavyweights duking it out, two mid-career greats at the peak of their creative abilities, leaving it all on the table, a la Ali - Frazier, Bird - Magic, Federer - Nadal, Venus - Serena. And yet, an understated takeaway about the entire ordeal is how it exemplifies the best of modern media and what perfect innovation in this industry can look like. It also highlights a few trends and shifts in our relationship with media that will have a resounding impact on the business of entertainment.
But before we nerd out on all of the above, let’s underscore how important this moment is, to the music industry, to hip-hop, to LA, Toronto, and in between, and to the business of media and entertainment, an industry that continues to be disrupted, and shifted, at a dizzying pace. With all the existential dread that lingers over the industry right now, from a rapid decline in music artist fees, lukewarm box office numbers, cord-cutting, and the resulting decline of pay TV, we can count on a rap feud to give us just one reason to celebrate. Let’s commence this by raising a glass to the culture.
In this essay, I’m going to touch on how innovation and well-crafted products from creative and management teams behind Kendrick and Drake collided with changing market trends of the modern media landscape, and evolving digital media platforms, creating a storm big enough to bring us one of most defining moments of hip-hop this century.
The Business of the Drake Kendrick Beef
How we Consume Media and Content is Changing
I touched on it a little bit above with the fears and failures that hover over the industry, but there’s a pretty evident changing relationship with how we (consumers) consume media (see YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.), how it’s created (see iPhone’s), who makes it (see the democratization of the industry, via crowd-sourcing, like Patreon, and the rise of the creator), and who it’s being made for.
To a large degree, the music industry, specifically, isn’t immune to these disruptions.
Kendrick Lamar & Drake Have Found Historic Commercial Success
There’s no better evidence of the shift in our media consumption patterns than this feud.
To illustrate, let’s take it back to some old-school hip-hop feuds. No Vaseline, the iconic 1991 West Coast diss track from Ice Cube against his former N.W.A. peers, never charted on the Billboard Top 100. Neither did Hit ‘Em Up, the infamous, heavy-hitting 2Pac diss against Biggie and his Bad Boyz peers, or Ether by Nas, Who Shot Ya, by Biggie, or Supa Ugly, by Jay-Z. It’s worth noting that there’s a heavier emphasis on streaming numbers and chart pushing in today’s music scene; charting criteria were different in the ‘90s and early 2000s, and album sales took precedence over single sales. And this isn’t meant to diminish the impact of any of the above tracks.
If anything, it’s the opposite: these are some of the most heavily impactful hip-hop tracks of all time, despite their lack of commercial success.
Instead, it should emphasize:
How far hip-hop culture has come in crossing over into mainstream culture.
How commercially successful this particular feud has been, in the context of its peers.
Not Like Us, Kendrick’s hit single from the battle became his first Billboard Top 100 #1 hit in the U.S., South Africa, and the Global Top 200 list. euphoria peaked at #4 globally, and #3 in the U.S., and Meet the Grahams hit #17 globally, and #12 in the U.S.
Drake’s biggest hit, Family Matters, peaked at #6, and Push Ups at #10 on the U.S. charts. Count that five out of the nine total records released during the feud landed on the top 20 of Billboard’s Top 100 U.S. charts over the course of only about a month, not including (arguably) the first domino to fall on the feud, the single from Future and Metro Boomin, featuring Kendrick, Like That (peaking at #1 in the U.S., Canada, Greece, and the U.K.).
Even when you take into account the differences in chart criteria and streaming dominance with more modern comparisons, the Kendrick/ Drake feud still dominates commercially. Back to Back, the 2015 Drake diss track leveled against Meek Mill, charted at #1 on the U.S. Rap charts but only 21 on the overall U.S. Top 100 charts. And 2018’s No I.D. produced The Story of Adidon by Pusha T, a part of a series of diss tracks within the Kanye West vs. Drake feud (please try and follow along here), was the highest charting single of that squirmish, hitting #1 on the U.S. Billboard top 100.
To underscore how big this moment was, both Kendrick Lamar and Drake individually surpassed Taylor Swift, who’s embarking on another international leg of The Eras Tour, in Google search interest the week following the release of Family Matters, Meet the Grahams, and Not Like Us in early May.
And The Pop Out: Ken and Friends, an event produced by AEG on Juneteenth, may go down in West Coast hip-hop lore, celebrating the rich hip-hop culture of Los Angeles, with performances from Tommy the Clown, YG, Tyler, the Creator, Dr. Dre, and Kendrick’s own circle, Black Hippy (Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul). The livestream on Amazon Prime Video set the record for the most minutes watched of any Amazon Music Production ever. The actual event at the Kia Forum in Inglewood sold out within a few hours of its pre-sale launch. Pitchfork’s Paul Thompson called it “one of the most electric concerts in hip hop history.”
And when Kendrick Lamar dropped the visuals for Not Like Us, ceremoniously on Independence Day, it garnered nearly a million views on YouTube within the first hour.
Fans outside the Kia Forum for The Pop Out: Ken and Friends on Juneteenth 2024 (Photo by Greg Jackson).
It’s Not Just You, the Hits Are Bigger Today
We toss “cultural phenomenon” around a little more liberally these days.
The hits, and moments, are getting bigger and bigger, across all mediums of media and entertainment. The metaphorical upper tail of the bell curve on media consumption is more steepened than ever, but it’s also slimmer: our consumption patterns are increasingly more concentrated, and it actually reflects a strength in modern monoculture within media.
Media across all mediums underscores this theory.
Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour grossed half a billion dollars in 2023, across nearly 50 shows. Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour grossed just over a billion dollars, across nearly 93 shows in 2023. Local economies publicly touted the economic impact of both tours around the globe.
Mr. Beast, the popular multi-hyphenate creator, reported last year that he earns nearly $700M a year, on his own name, image and likeness, across all of his ventures. (Related: less than 0.25% of YouTube channels actually make any money at all.)
The NFL delivered the most watched Super Bowl in history this year, with 123.4 million viewers across all platforms, and 93 out of the top 100 TV programs in 2023 were NFL games. Believe it or not, we used to have a lot more variety to our TV viewing habits.
Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto V, and Fortnite, annually pass around the crown for most popular video game, across PC and console, and all three titles are five years older, or more.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour shows us that cultural moments are only getting bigger (Photo by Stephen Mease on Unsplash).
Infinite Content + Limited Time = Concentration
So, what does all of this mean, really?
Indulge me for a second: let’s go to the Cheesecake Factory.
Any patron of one of this fine American establishment, where Monte Carlo effortlessly meets the Renaissance fair, has likely experienced the uniquely phenomenon of decision paralysis, while pondering 30 varieties of pasta, 10+ steaks, 20+ different salads, however many burger options, and multiple arrangements of pizza (for gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan diners). There are infinite choices, and we haven’t even gotten to the Skinnylicious menu yet. So when I go to the Cheesecake Factory, like many of you, I just go with the Cajun Chicken Pasta. It’s familiar to me, it’s familiar to a lot of folks I know, and I know the quality will be consistent. Why read the 30 pages of pasta, salads, steaks, milkshakes, cheesecakes, skinnylicious sandwiches, and gluten-free pizzas when I can just order the Cajun Chicken Pasta without pause, like so many other people I know?
Access to infinite choices leads consumers to collectively narrow their selections on the same things. We call that concentration.
Whether it’s Cheesecake Factory, Mr. Beast, Beyonce, or your family group text, we actually have too much to pay attention to, and not enough time. We may have actually reached our limit on how much media we can consume, i.e. we really don’t have more time to collectively spend on our phones or TVs or AirPods, etc. Since the pandemic, we’ve actually plateaued at around 13 hours a day, on our average time spent with all forms of media, per day.
And there's too much content for this limited amount of time. There’s a modern psychological theory that our brains are responding to an increase in media exposure with a decrease in engagement overall, across games, television, film, social media, news, etc. Effectively, the more content and media that we have access to, the less our brains want to engage with it. Which leads us to be a lot more judicious about what we choose to and don’t choose to consume.
And with limited time, and infinite choices, we let the culture curate our media patterns for us.
A rap feud of this magnitude is the Cajun Chicken Pasta of entertainment. I’d argue we’re actually working with more of the McRib, one of the few products that can match the gravity of this moment; a product so scarce, unpredictable, controversial and a little bit messy. And even consumers who haven’t stepped foot into a McDonald’s in ages will take the pilgrimage to their local shop to at least try the McRib when it drops, with little notice, and plenty of hype, because everyone else is, right? And we don’t even need to look at the rest of the menu. We know exactly what we want.
Why choose to spend our time sifting through infinite libraries of content, from niche to mildly popular, when just about half of my TikTok feed is Not Like Us mash-ups, reaction videos, clips from the live stream, or commentaries crowning New Ho King, the Toronto Chinatown staple, the real winner of the feud?
The McRib’s scarcity model makes it a culture moment, even if you hate McDonald’s (image generated by Leonardo.ai).
Concentration is Good for (some) Business
And when Ken and Friends: The Pop Out streamed live on Prime Video, we were seated. We couldn’t miss a thing, no matter what else was happening on Juneteenth.
The McRib is good for business. And so is this feud.
Advertisers, Amazon Music, AEG, Universal Music Group know that. And with both record labels removing their copyright claims on most of the tracks, it cleared the way for creators to get in on the business, leading to their reaction videos, commentaries, and skits being eligible for monetization across platforms.
As streamer “No Life Shaq” said about it, “Everyone is able to eat off this beef.” Or should I say, McRib?
How New Media Escalated the Drake Kendrick Fued
I am old enough to remember having mixtapes on a CD-ROM. We would rip the music from our libraries on our computers onto CDs, if you were lucky enough to have a desktop or laptop that could rip. And we’d ride around, bumping that one track or playlist, for weeks.
Family Matters was originally released on May 3rd. It’s Drake at his finest. Every bar, meticulously placed, with a flow and cadence that called back to his Comeback Season days. A carefully constructed diss track, and a catchy beat, accompanied by visuals, all launched simultaneously on YouTube at first, and subsequently on all streaming platforms globally.
And less than an hour later, before we even had the proper time to dissect it, Kendrick’s verified X (formerly Twitter) handle posted a link to “meet the grahams,” an immediate response to Drake, via YouTube. For six-plus minutes, Kendrick matched each and every bar in Family Matters. Within minutes, Twitch streamers pivoted from sharing their live reactions to Family Matters, to streaming jaw-dropping responses to Kendrick’s immediate response. Putting aside the intel that allowed Kendrick to have a response ready to within minutes, the ability for tens of millions of users, globally, to hear his response within that hour, is a markedly profound case for how Silicon Valley can foster universality, and shared experiences, in media.
And no matter which side you stood on, you had a digital community to share your love, (or misery) with.
I’ll put a few points to bring this all to life:
Creatives can instantaneously distribute to more eyeballs than ever before. YouTube, which is already gaining market share in the TV/ streaming wars (pulling further ahead of Netflix, and blowing past Disney+ and Peacock), was undoubtedly the platform of choice for this feud. What’s a more effective platform to reach over 100 million people, globally, instantaneously? Points for YouTube in this battle. And some question marks for their music streaming rivals, who might still be asking why they weren’t the platforms of choice here.
The algorithms algorithm’d, and seized the moment. Half the fun of a rap feud is enjoying it with friends (see Supa Hot Fire for a dramatization). Algorithms have gotten good enough to recognize that’s all we really care about, and creators know their audiences. It’s the perfect storm, and a recognition of the power of new media: audiences have a demand to co-react with their communities. Creators, embedded in those communities, understand the culture, and the speed at which it moves. And distribution platforms (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch) with the savviest of algorithms, serve them up to us, over and over.
Technology, at its best, brings people together. Live events are exactly what streaming platforms do best. Technology being able to distribute a monocultural moment, live, globally, in this case to millions of users, is exactly the boardroom pitch that gives Netflix and Prime Video their wings. We’re going to continue to see more live events on streaming platforms. (see Netflix x WWE, Netflix x NFL Christmas games, or Peacock and the Paris Summer Olympics). And as the tech keeps getting better, so will the experiences.
What would a section on tech be without a guest feature from AI? Millions of creatives flooded Soundcloud (3.3M streams within the first week alone) to add their flavor to the Metro Boomin produced beat, “BBL DRIZZY,” which samples an AI generated track made with Udio, an AI music tool. Crowd sourcing a diss track has got to be a first, and it probably signals a really fascinating, and likely tumultuous future for the role of generative AI in music, (as well the lasting, and likely growing relevance of UGC-based streaming platforms like SoundCloud). And like everything with AI, we’re not out of the water without some controversy, the companies behind Udio are being sued by major record labels citing “en masse copyright infringement.”
You Can’t Boardroom the Culture
I’ll start off by saying, the point of me writing this isn’t to highlight any type of best practice. This isn’t a case study. It’s hardly a blueprint. In fact, if anything, I think recreating what’s been done here is nearly impossible. You don’t artificially create cultural moments.
Every marketer dreams of a day when they can sell a product without hints of commercialism behind the go-to-market strategy. And yet, here we are, a ridiculously successful commercial and cultural moment, with not a lick of it rotted by the obvious stink of marketing, record labels, or brands.
But looking at it from that angle, and admittedly the ones I outlined above, overlooks the most important takeaway from this entire thing: it’s about the culture.
Not just any artist could have made Not Like Us; rarely can a song galvanize the country’s second-biggest market like this one has.
“We been f*cked up since Nipsey died. We been f*cked up since Kobe died…This is unity at its finest. We done lost a lot of homies to this music sh*t, to this street sh*t. For all of us to be together on stage, that sh*t is special.” Kendrick didn’t mince words with how much this moment meant for LA, hip-hop, or music.
You can’t just wake up and create moments like that.
You don’t just open your eyes one day, and decide to conjure up some culture. But what you can do is invest in it when you see it; you can nurture it, you can give opportunities and resources to the right creatives (and creators), and make the right strategic choices so that you have the right bottle lined up, directly under where lightning is about to strike, and you have your lid ready to capture it.
So my takeaway here is that the business doesn’t matter? And the tech doesn’t (really) matter? And all that matters is the culture, and how Black creatives continue to raise the bar, and that Los Angeles hip hop is essential to music, culture, and beyond, and that showcasing peace and unity amongst historically violent communities/ factions on a global stage is an immeasurable act of healing, and that in order to foster more moments like these, you just need to invest in diverse voices and creatives, and make the right strategic decisions, and ensure that media brands have equally diverse voices in the room making decisions?
Well…yes.
