What would Kendrick Lamar do? The California hip hop artist shows how to beat Drake, Trump and other hegemons
This column is co-published with Zócalo Public Square. Photo credit: Wikimedia and Pulitzer Prizes, CC BY-SA 4.0
Squabble up, California.
“Squabble up” is Los Angeles slang. It’s also the title of the second track on GNX, the new album from California’s greatest living hip-hop artist, Kendrick Lamar.
“Squabble up” has a double meaning. The first: “let’s fight” The second: “let’s dance.” Lamar’s raps—on a track that samples very California music forms (G-funk, hyphy and mariachi)—blend both meanings. And why not? A big, nasty fight is a lot like a great dance.
Which is why “squabble up” may be the right slogan, and Lamar’s song the right anthem, for the Golden State’s upcoming fight-dance with the incoming Trump administration.
For certain, Californians need something livelier and more action-oriented than the all-too-defensive “resistance” banner under which we opposed Trump during his first term.
Lamar is a natural source of inspiration. After all, rap and politics are both games about using attack and insult to increase your status and power while diminishing your rivals. And, in recent times, the Compton rapper is the only Californian not on the Dodgers’ World Series roster to defeat a major opponent in a high-stakes campaign. Lamar absolutely demolished Drake, the superstar Canadian who used to sit atop the rap world, in a feud that consumed the cultural world for most of this year.
The spectacular rout offers a difficult but vital lesson for besting Trump. A fight against an arrogant tyrant is not about keeping yourself morally clean or protecting your own righteousness. It’s about taking the fight to the enemy. Which means it’s time to retire rhetoric about “saving the soul of the country” (Joe Biden) and “when they go low, we go high” (Michelle Obama).
Ruler-demagogues, like Drake and Trump, stay on top of power structures through constant attacks. In essence, they offer so many jibes, insults, and social media assaults that they become omnipresent. This cultural dominance overwhelms potential challengers, who find it impossible to defend against all the different blasts.
The hard truth is that a civil war, within the rap world or within a country, requires an aggressive offense, as Lamar well knows.
For years, Drake slighted Lamar on social media and his songs, while Lamar ignored the jibes. Among them was a fall 2023 track featuring fellow star rapper J. Cole on which Drake announced that he leads a “big three” league of top rappers.
This March, Lamar pounced. “Motherf—ck the big three,” he declared on a collaboration with two other artists. “It’s just big me.” The rhyme launched a spectacular feud, during which Lamar followed two strategies.
First, he used his rhymes and social media to protect vulnerable allies Drake had attacked—Lamar’s musical collaborators, family and children. In so doing, Lamar kept his own team unified, as he noted in “wacced out murals” (a track that also refers to Trump’s Project 2025).
Most tellingly, Lamar did not ignore or dismiss Drake’s constant attacks, as Californians have done with Trump’s anti-California broadsides in the past. Instead, he launched a barrage of disses that were bigger, harsher, and more overwhelming. In this he channeled Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” advice, “To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.”
So last spring, when Drake released a diss track attacking Lamar as a husband and father, Lamar answered not just by questioning the Toronto rapper’s family leadership, but by suggesting Drake was guilty of sex crimes (Say Drake, I hear you like ’em young / You better not ever go to cell block one). Lamar also successfully goaded Drake into separating himself from some of his creative collaborators by hinting that Drake’s supposed friends were feeding Lamar inside information. (Have you ever thought that OVO is workin’ for me?). Eventually, J. Cole apologized for attacking Lamar.
Lamar explained the strategy in that “squabble up” track from the new album.
I got friends, I got foes, but they all sitting ducks.
Hit his turf and get crackin’, double back like a deluxe.
In responding to attacks with even tougher rebuttals, speed matters. Lamar answered one major Drake volley with a new diss track within 24 hours. He also didn’t wait for his opponent’s response before continuing the attack. Lamar’s best-known work from his Drake battle, “Not Like Us,” was a second blast immediately following Lamar’s own track.
The industry can hate me, f—k ’em all and they mama…
Beat your ass and hide the Bible if God watchin’
Sometimes you gotta pop out and show n---s[EB1]
Certified boogeyman, I’m the one that up the score with ‘em
His point: Squabbling up isn’t a popularity contest. It’s about winning the fight.
Trump’s power derives from his ability to sow fear—fear that his administration will steal away our immigrant neighbors (and perhaps their citizen family members), arrest those of us who oppose him, attack the rights of LGBTQ+ people, ban vaccines, roll back laws that protect us from climate disaster, and command the military to invade cities that don’t support him.
Lamar’s argument is that you beat fearmongers by making them even more afraid of you. But will California buy it?
It’s concerning that the initial response to Trump has been so unthreatening, with state leaders emphasizing that they want to work with the new president if possible. Maybe that’s justifiable—part of the preliminary dance—with Trump not yet in office. But Trump has threatened revenge against our state, and pledged to be a dictator and terminate the Constitution. Let’s not pretend that we’re going to be partners, as Lamar sings in “wacced out murals.”
I never peaced it up, that s--t don’t sit well with me.
Before I take a truce, I’ll take ’em to Hell with me.
As I’ve written here in recent weeks, confronting Trump this time will require building internal unity and global coalitions. But collaboration and coalition won’t be enough unless we’re willing to play offense and pursue all non-violent means to sap Trump of his power and will to damage us.
Californians will only know we have bested Trump when he’s complaining that we are too nasty and too mean, and when he seems fearful of our state. That’s not easy; Trump has survived prosecutions and assassinations attempts. But squabbling up is about making your opponent so fearful and powerless that all he can do is whine.
Those who seek conciliation with Trump are not reading the country correctly. The United States is not a nation that likes moral righteousness—we just elected a convicted fraudster, an adjudged rapist, an attempted election stealer, and a serial liar as president. This is a country that likes winning. Period.
“Against all odds, I squabbled up for them dividends,” Lamar raps. And if you think his tactics are too tough for the American mainstream, think again. California’s leading rapper-strategist is headlining the Super Bowl halftime show in February.
