Jay-Z Weighs In: Is Battle Rap Still Relevant in the Age of Social Media?
Jay-Z shares his thoughts on the Drake/Kendrick Lamar feud, questioning the place of battle rap in contemporary hip-hop culture amidst social media's influence.
Jay-Z has offered his perspective on the highly publicized Kendrick Lamar and Drake beef, expressing uncertainty about whether “battling needs to be a part of the culture anymore.”
The feud, which dominated headlines in 2024 and 2025, evolved from a series of diss tracks to a heated defamation lawsuit, significantly impacting the artists' personal lives.
Jay-Z's Roc Nation played a part when Lamar’s 2025 Super Bowl halftime show featured a singalong of contentious lines from ‘Not Like Us’.
In a recent interview with GQ, Jay-Z addressed the feud, framing his viewpoint around the current state of the “four pillars of hip-hop”: breakdancing, graffiti, DJing, and battling.
He noted that breakdancing is “not at the forefront of rap anymore,” graffiti is “not part of hip-hop,” and the DJ is often unrecognized.
“And the last pillar is battling,” he added. “We love the excitement and I love the sparring, but in this day and age there’s so much negative stuff that comes with it that you almost wish it didn’t happen.”
“Now, people that like Kendrick hate Drake, no matter what he makes. It’s like an attack on his character. I don’t know if I love that. I don’t know if it’s helpful to our growth where the fallout lands, especially on social media,” he said.
He continued, “It’s too far. It’s bringing people’s kids in it. I don’t like that. I sound like the old guy wagging his finger, but I think we can achieve the same thing, as far as sparring with music, with collaborations more so than breaking the whole thing apart. It could stand it before because there was no social media. You had the battle and it was fun and then you moved on. Right now, I don’t know if it could stand it with the technology that we have.”
He concluded, expressing doubt about the current value of battling: “I don’t know if battling needs to be part of the culture anymore. We grew from breakdancing. We love graffiti. Before, the MC’s job was to bring attention to the DJ…. I want to hear what the rapper is saying. Now the last pillar is battling, and these are all the things that come with it. I hate that I have this point of view on it. I do. Because I know what it sounds like. It’s just how I feel about it.”
He clarified, “There is clearly an agenda to silence voices in our community, a heavy right-wing agenda. And the culture is happily playing along in the name of this insane thirst of Stan culture to have something on the other side. We are in a strange time. I’m curious as to how this plays out!”
In October, Drake filed an appeal to revive his defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Lamar’s diss track ‘Not Like Us’, after a federal judge ruled that the allegedly defamatory statements made in the hit song – among them that Drake was a “certified paedophile” (Drake has continually denied any wrongdoing) – qualified as “nonactionable opinion” and dismissed the suit.
Shortly after the ruling was thrown out, stats emerged showing that ‘Not Like Us’ had re-entered the iTunes and Apple Music Top 100 song charts. In the latter streamers’ case, this was across multiple countries. Similarly, the day of the ruling, the track was said to have received upwards of 1 million streams on Spotify.
As for Jay-Z, he has announced a pair of stadium shows in New York to celebrate his classic albums ‘Reasonable Doubt’ and ‘The Blueprint’. The Yankee Stadium shows will mark the 30th and 25th anniversaries respectively of the two records, on July 10 and 11.
Jay-Z is also set to co-headline the Philadelphia festival Roots Picnic with The Roots on Saturday May 30.
His most recent full headline performance was a 2019 show at New York’s Webster Hall, while he was last on stage in July 2025, when he joined his wife, Beyoncé, during her final ‘Cowboy Carter’ tour date in Las Vegas.
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