Days after its leak, Drake has officially released his response to Kendrick Lamar’s barbed verse on Metro Boomin and Future’s “Like That,” which took aim at him and J. Cole and is currently No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. On “Push Ups,” Drake targets not only Lamar but also the Weeknd, Rick Ross, Metro Boomin, and Cole himself. Check it out below.
The back-and-forth began in earnest with Lamar’s verse on “Like That,” itself a response to Cole’s “First Person Shooter,” in which he referred to himself, Drake, and Lamar as “the big three.” In his rebuttal, Lamar rapped, “Yeah get up with me, fuck sneak dissing/‘First Person Shooter,’ I hope they came with three switches/Motherfuck the big three, n—a, it’s just big me.”
Cole responded early this month with “7 Minute Drill,” less a diss than a series of ambivalent quibbles, before deciding the song was “the lamest shit I ever did in my fucking life” and removing it from its parent mixtape, Might Delete Later.
“Push Ups” primarily concerns itself with responding to Lamar, mocking his features (“Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty”), his shoe size (“How the fuck you big steppin’ with a size 7 mens on?”), and, ultimately, his status in rap: “Pipsqueak, pipe down/You ain’t in no big three, SZA got you wiped down/Travis got you wiped down, Savage got you wiped down/Like your label, boy, you Interscope right now.” He circles back in a verse addressing Cole: “And that fuckin’ song y’all got is not starting beef with us/This shit brewin’ in a pot, now I’m heating up/I don’t care what Cole think, that Dot shit was weak as fuck.”
Drake goes on to admonish Rick Ross, who recorded his own Drake diss, “Champagne Moments,” this week. “Can’t believe he jumpin’ in, this n—a turnin’ 50/Every song that made it on the chart, he got from Drizzy,” Drake raps, adding an apparent allusion to the ongoing investigation into Ross’ friend Sean “Diddy” Combs: “Spend that lil’ check you got and stay up out my business/Worry ’bout whatever goin’ on with you and….”
Drake’s nod to the Weeknd seemingly derides the rapper’s departure from Toronto and his features on the Metro Boomin and Future record: “Claim the 6 and boys ain’t even come from it/And when you boys got rich you had to run from it/Cash blowin’ Abel bread out here trickin’/Shit we do for bitches, he doing for n—-s.” To Metro Boomin, Drake devotes just one line: “Metro, shut your hoe ass up and make some drums.”
Unlike the original leak, the official version of “Push Ups” features an original beat credited to Boi-1da, Fierce, Coleman, and Noel Cadastre.
Read Alphonse Pierre’s article “A Power Ranking of Everyone in the Drake–Kendrick Lamar–Every Rapper Ever Battle Royale.”