Meet the Grahams
At the highest level, I believe that all rappers are more or less the same when it comes to music making skill. If you take out the wizards like Eminem and Wayne—and realistically, we now know that wordplay and technique alone aren't even that impressive to fans anyway—what we are left with are poets who are also performing a character outside of their music to reinforce the lyrics into real-life moments.
Today, for example, you cannot separate Ye's music from the Twitter rants. Kendrick was able to close the biggest hip-hop battle of our age without question by deploying some psychological witchcraft in Meet the Grahams because Kendrick knew that he wasn't battling Drake the artist. It wasn't a competition of who makes better music because that is impossible to judge, but the competition was rather, can I convince your fans that you're an idiot? That is why I was sad when Cole coward out. He would have changed Kendrick's strategy entirely. To me, Kendrick's whole approach was a direct response to Drake's line on The Game's "100": "I would have all of your fans if I didn't go pop and I stayed on some conscious shit."
That is why the pop song from the battle comes directly after the dark, Freudian psychoanalysis song, Meet the Grahams. Kendrick wasn't analyzing Drake; he was asking the Drake fan to look into themselves and really ask whether they want to consider themselves a fan of such a terrible person. So he showed Drake from multiple perspectives; the parents, child, and imaginary child. Unlike his other songs in the battle that were intended for social listening, reactions, and analysis, this was not a social song. It was intentionally simple, dark, and almost kind of culturally white. This is the bait. Just to introduce a little doubt into the mind of the mindless Drake listener: "I like Drake's music, but do I like Drake?" And so when some hours later the pop song drops with wild accusations and political hyperbole, the battle is settled. It is Kendrick stating, "I would have all your fans if I didn't go conscious and I stayed on some pop shit."
So when Jay-Z piled on by giving Kendrick the Super Bowl, there was no more room left for Drake in hip-hop.
