Joe Budden, known for his candid opinions on Drake, recently expressed his thoughts on the rapper’s track “Family Matters” during a December 19 episode of The Joe Budden Podcast. Reflecting on the song, Budden praised it for aging well, declaring, “That record ends the rest of y’all. That song, it does the job to the field. It’s aged well. … That record is hard y’all.” He went on to say that Drake should have maintained that same energy during his rap battle with Kendrick Lamar.
On the track, Drake rapped lines like, “Good kid, m.A.A.d city van, we’ll pop the latch and let the door slide/ Tears runnin’ down my cheek, laughin’ at you p**sies dyin’, it’s a war cry.” He also took aim at Rick Ross, ASAP Rocky, The Weeknd, and Metro Boomin, and even made an allusion to Kendrick Lamar’s business partner Dave Free being the secret father of one of Lamar’s children.
Fans were divided on the battle, with one user arguing, “Drake has never been barred up in a beef. The only thing they’ve ever had going for them is shock value, but bar for bar Drake has held his own.” Another fan countered, saying, “It’s a good battle when you look back at it, one of the best, but Kendrick got the edge with ‘Not Like Us’ because none of Drake’s songs were heavily replayable. If he had a song like ‘Summer Sixteen’ that could get played over and over, then he’d have an argument.”
In other news, Drake is currently involved in legal proceedings against Universal Music Group (UMG) and Spotify. A recent report from Variety revealed that only one of Spotify’s promotional tools, Marquee, was used to promote Drake’s song “Not Like Us” in France for €500. Marquee is a visual ad displayed as a Sponsored Recommendation. UMG also denied any misconduct in the promotion of the track.
However, 50 Cent, during an interview on Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant podcast, voiced support for Drake, claiming, “Everything he said [UMG] did in that lawsuit, they did it.”