One is a chart-dominating artist who pops streaming records as frequently as he does champagne bottles; the other is possibly the greatest rapper of all time, with multiple Grammy wins and a Pulitzer Prize to his name.

Many fans would agree that Drake and Kendrick Lamar operate in entirely different lanes. Drake entertains with summery rap-pop jams such as “One Dance” and “Hotline Bling”, dabbling in trap, dancehall and R&B along the way, while Lamar has asserted himself as a deft lyricist capable of blending street smarts with a literary wit. Yet their once friendly relationship has descended into years of traded barbs and thinly veiled disses, fuelled by fans who clash over which one is the better artist.

In March, Lamar managed to spark a fan frenzy with his latest rap feature on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That”, in which he directly responds to a verse by fellow rapper J Cole on Drake’s 2023 song, “First Person Shooter”.

Then, Cole rapped: “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, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali.” (K-Dot is a nickname given to Lamar, while Drake’s birth name is Aubrey Drake Graham.)

On “Like That”, Lamar appeared to dismiss Cole’s suggestion that they are on the same level as artists: “Motherf*** the big three, n***a, it’s just big me,” he rapped. “N***a, bum, what? I’m really like that / And your best work is a light pack.”

Meanwhile, as Drake compared his commercial success to that of Michael Jackson, Lamar referenced the historic beef between the King of Pop and Prince during the Eighties: “N***a, Prince outlived Mike Jack.”

Lamar dropping not one but two diss tracks in the space of a week (”euphoria” and “6:16 in LA”) then fully ignited an all-out feud between the two hip-hop titans, after they initially started out on friendly terms.