On March 22, 2024, Kendrick Lamar shook the hip-hop world with his verse on Metro Boomin and Future’s song ‘Like That’. The scathing diss directed towards fellow rappers, J Cole and Drake, brought back attention to the fading culture of battles between MCs. However, platinum-selling artist and NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal believes that the Big 3 rappers should have taken the WWE route to make the most out of their feud.
On the recent episode of ‘The Big Podcast with Shaq’, the big fella said that we have unfortunately moved away from the core elements of hip-hop. Shaq believes that battles and artistic back and forth are the foundation of hip-hop, but the new generation of artists doesn’t like to engage in the war of words.
To their credit, the most iconic kinds of beef in this genre of music originated from the hate that artists like Tupac Shakur, The Notorious BIG, and Nas and Jay-Z had for one another. Whereas, Kendrick and Cole don’t have the same animosity between them.
Even though Shaq seemed disappointed with the way this beef has panned out so far, one redeeming factor is still untapped. Shaq said, “If they were smart, they would’ve WWE’d it. Like hey, I’m gonna say something, then you say something, then we’re gonna come out and do a show.”
The big fella believes that if they planned their act behind the scenes, they could’ve made a lot of money with the ongoing beef. However, the authenticity of hip-hop artists is often seen as their biggest advantage, and doing what Shaq proposed would have run the risk of hurting their reputation.
J Cole retracted his diss on Kendrick Lamar
Two weeks after K-Dot belittled Cole and Drake on the song and claimed that the hip-hop throne belongs to him, Cole responded with a diss track titled ‘7 Minute Drill’. The ‘Folgers Crystals’ rapper replied with, “Lord, don’t make me have to smoke this ni**a ’cause I f**k with him. But push come to shove, on this mic, I will humble him.”
He also warned Kendrick that this is a “warning shot” and if he continues to come at him, Cole wouldn’t hesitate in doubling down against him. However, only a few days after the release of this diss track, Cole was at his Dreamville Festival where he admitted on stage that he hasn’t been feeling well about saying those things against Kendrick.
He said, “The past two days felt terrible. It let me know how good I’ve been sleeping for the past 10 years.” Cole has had an image of an unproblematic rapper since the beginning, and he doesn’t like to bring hate and animosity into the mix with his craft. In the wake of this realization, he also announced that he would take down the diss track from all streaming platforms which he did only a few days ago.
