May 2nd, 2024, Christien Pheby
After more than a decade of subliminal jabs, it’s open war between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. The Toronto megastar has goaded the To Pimp a Butterfly rapper with an AI Tupac and poked fun at his height, while the Pulitzer-winning Compton MC has slammed his opponent as a scam artist and a bad father. But who’s winning the feud?
YouGov asked 652 US hip-hop fans how they’ve been following the conflict: 32% say they’ve been paying close attention, while 67% say they have not. We also asked which diss tracks fans had actually heard. “Like That” (27%), “Euphoria” (26%), and “Push Ups” (22%) got the most notice among all US hip hop fans, while “Like That” (53%), “Push Ups” (49%) and “Euphoria” (47%) came in top among fans who’ve been following the feud closely.
So if some rap fans are obsessively decoding diss tracks on Genius or sifting through Lil Yachty’s tweets, they aren’t necessarily representative of the whole.
Nevertheless, they do have opinions on who’s winning the MC melee.
Hip hop fans more likely to say Kendrick Lamar is winning the feud
Among all hip-hop fans, 26% think Kendrick Lamar is on top at the moment, with just 18% saying the same of Drake. Some 24% think neither is winning, and 32% don’t know either way.
Among fans who have been following the feud closely, 48% think Kendrick Lamar is winning, while 33% say Drake. Beyond the relative merits of “Euphoria” compared to “Taylor Made”, there is a preference for Lamar among the hip-hop fans we polled that may be influencing opinions: by 33% to 18%, they say he’s a better rapper than Drake.
47% of hip-hop fans think Drake is feuding for PR reasons – and 31% say Kendrick Lamar is doing the same
We also questioned hip-hop fans on each rapper’s motivations.
People are broadly more likely to think Drake is being insincere: 47% of hip-hop fans say he’s started feuding for self-promotional reasons, and just 11% say he sincerely dislikes him. It’s a different story with Kendrick Lamar. While 31% think he’s feuding for self-promotional reasons, 27% say he genuinely dislikes Drake.
Is the feud changing minds about either rapper?
Finally, we asked if the feud has made opinion of either rapper better or worse. Among all hip-hop fans, 18% say it has improved their opinion of Drake, and 13% say it has made it worse. For Kendrick Lamar, 21% say it has improved their opinion of him, and 8% say it has made it worse.
Among fans who have been closely following the feud, 41% say it has boosted the “Nice for What” rapper in their esteem, while 14% say they think less of him. In the same group, 43% say their opinion of Kendrick Lamar has gotten better as a result of the feud, while 6% say it has gotten worse.
Methodology
YouGov polled 2,000 US adults (of whom 652 said they were interested in hip hop) online on 1-2 May 2024. The survey was carried out through YouGov Surveys: Self-serve. Data is weighted by age, gender, race, political affiliation, education level and region. The margin of error is 2% for the overall sample. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Self-serve.