Note: The Lamar in this article is not the one who throws the football.
When Pulitzer Prize winning rapper Kendrick Lamar responded to “Push Ups” by Drake, the most streamed artist of the 2010s, with “Euphoria,” the long-standing feud between the two artists escalated. (Lamar went viral again when he opened his show last night with the first-ever live performance of the song.)
The two went back and forth, dropping a collective six songs in six days. Accusations, insinuations, metaphors and deep-cut references laced through beats and melodies of the diss tracks. It took research to catch it all — so much so that Genius, a site that gives transcriptions of lyrics and provides explanations for them, crashed the day Lamar dropped “Euphoria.”
As everyone dove into the lyrics, some slowed down enough to take a closer look at the album covers.
Lamar’s first solo diss track features a screenshot of Merriam-Webster’s entry for the word euphoria. It includes the pronunciation, a link to synonyms, the definition and two examples of how to use “euphoria” in a sentence.
And at the very bottom, the final two words on the album cover say “Clifton Brown.”
Ravens fans who notice the bylines of the content they consume might recognize this name. It belongs to a Ravens staff writer.
Brown has worked for the Ravens for five years and was previously a Ravens insider for Comcast SportsNet and an NFL writer for Sporting News. He covers the day in and day out of the Ravens, attending practices, press conferences and games.
Personally, Brown tends to listen to old-school R&B and jazz, like Earth, Wind & Fire, The Isley Brothers, Walter Beasley, Boney James and Ms. Lauryn Hill (who Drake sampled in one of his hits, “Nice for what”).
But mixed in with the old-school sound are about 10-12 songs by Lamar. Brown’s son, Alex, said his father downloaded “good kid, m.A.A.d city” to connect with him. Out of the handful of songs, “Swimming Pools (Drank)” resonates most with Brown, who knows people who have struggled with alcohol.
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Drake is talented, too, he said, but he’s not as familiar with him.
A very casual fan, Brown was not keeping a close eye on the beef between the two rappers.
Lamar, 37, and Drake, 37, are contemporaries, but Drake’s ascension to fame predated Lamar’s. When Lamar came onto the scene, Drake welcomed him, bringing him on tour and collaborating with him from 2011-2012.
In 2013, a few barbs were exchanged in songs and interviews, but the beef fizzled out of the public eye, according to GQ. For 10 years, there were lyrics that might have been directed at each other, but they weren’t made official.
Then J. Cole mentioned Drake, Lamar and himself as “the big three,” and Lamar took offense and snapped back with a line in Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” saying there’s no “big three” but just “big me.”
It took about three weeks for Drake to respond with “Push Ups” on April 13.
Around 11 a.m. ET on April 30 (the song was dropped around 8:20 a.m. PT), Brown’s phone started blowing up with messages that Lamar quoted him. His first thought was that Lamar wrote a lyric about him.
“So I found ‘Euphoria,’ listened to it and was like ‘I must have missed it,’” Brown said.
There was no mention of him — as makes sense, since he doesn’t know either artist. Then he saw the album cover on YouTube:
“They had almost a week to recover from the euphoria of Tuesday’s series-winning victory...
— Clifton Brown”
Mystery solved, he then texted Alex: “There’s a new Kendrick song that came out, just read the cover.”
Alex, who was at work, was wondering “what the heck he was talking about.” He read the whole thing — and then he got to the final two words. It took him a second read before he then went to alert all his co-workers that his dad was quoted on Lamar’s “Euphoria.”
For Brown, the discovery wasn’t just about the album cover. He didn’t even know one of his articles was an example in a definition on Merriam-Webster. It also didn’t immediately strike him what article it was from, although he surmised it was from his days as an NBA writer for The New York Times since it’s talking about a “series-winning victory.”
Brown’s son-in-law did some research. The article, “Doing It Their Way, Suns Are Thriving,” was published on May 21, 1990. It was about the Phoenix Suns beating the LA Lakers 4-1 in the Western Conference Finals.
Lamar was just under 3 years old, living in a suburb of Los Angeles called Compton, at the time the article was published. Drake was 3 1/2 years old and living in Toronto Raptors territory.
Thanks to this unforeseen connection to the feud, Brown is much more familiar with the beef, although it has more layers than he — and most people — knows.
Despite his previous familiarity with Lamar, Brown didn’t have an opinion on who won.
“I saw Snoop Dog interviewed and him just saying they both had raised the game of rap to where their lyrics are really creative,” Brown said. “I agree with that. They’re both tremendously talented, and they have a voice. They’re connected to our youth, especially, and the people who listen to them, and they have a platform, which is really important.”
Lamar’s representation did not answer to requests for comment on the “Euphoria” album cover.
Although Brown hasn’t gotten money from being featured on Lamar’s album cover, he has gotten something that no money can buy a parent: clout in his children’s eyes.
“My kids think this is the coolest thing I’ve ever written,” Brown said 34 years and 21 days after the article was originally published.
In fact, the screenshot of the album cover is Alex’s wallpaper on his phone.
“[I] think it’s the coolest thing ever that a seed my dad sowed so long ago comes to fruition in a major way that’s so relevant right now,” Alex said. “... Euphoria is the best song in the feud on Kendrick’s side, in my opinion.”
Correction: This story has been updated to correct when “Euphoria” was released, the headline of Clifton Brown’s 1990 article and the duration of time between when Brown’s article was published to when he was interviewed for this story.
