André 3000 has weighed in on the Drake and Kendrick Lamar feud. Three Stacks shared he was disheartened when looking back at the aftermath of the battle’s carnage.
“I got a little sad, at a certain point,” he told Crack Magazine in a new interview. “In early rap battles, you had kids in the park rapping against each other. But it’s not just people rapping now. You got people with 100 employees. You have livelihoods, empires, companies, deals — all of it can be jeopardized.”
With rappers serving as brands — and in Drake and Kendrick’s case, worth hundreds of millions of dollars — the Outkast legend questions whether the juice is worth the squeeze with that much at stake in battle. “If you don’t have anything to lose, sure, go for it,” he said. “But if I already made it, I’m not sure it’s even worth it any more”
Drake expressed a similar sentiment on “4PM in Calabasas,” which arrived in 2016 and saw Drizzy sniping at Joe Budden, Diddy and more. “I got a lot to lose ’cause in every situation I’m the bigger artist/ Always gotta play it smarter,” he shrewdly raps about being militant in battle.
Elsewhere in the Crack profile, André 3000 gave his reaction to receiving a shout-out from Kendrick Lamar on the explosive “Like That” with Future and Metro Boomin. “If he walk around with that stick, it ain’t André 3K,” K. Dot rhymes.
“As a 49-year-old rapper, you’re just happy to get a shout-out,” the Atlanta artist responded. “But as a rapper, I’ve noticed myself walking around with this stick. So it was a line for me, too, and I was trying to find a way to use it. But Kendrick used it, so I had to say ‘Yeah, he got it.’”
A trio of records Lamar was involved with that were integral parts of the battle with Drake are still holding strong on the Billboard Hot 100. K. Dot’s “Not Like Us” sits at No. 3, while “Like That” is in the top 20 at No. 18. Even the unnerving “Euphoria” is still on the chart at No. 78.
As for Three Stacks, he’ll be performing nine sets across three days at the Blue Note Jazz Festival’s Black Radio Experience 2024, which is going down in the Estate Wine Cave at The Meritage Resort & Spa in Napa, Calif., happening Aug. 30-Sept. 1.
