Vince Staples Says Drake, Kendrick Lamar Beef Has Been Detrimental to Black Musicians: “We Deserve Higher Than That”

As Drake and Kendrick Lamar‘s drawn-out slugfest involves an in depth (we hope), Vince Staples has spoken out concerning the destructive results the meat has had on Black music. 

Staples was talking at an occasion in his hometown of Lengthy Seaside, CA, when a spectator requested him who he thought was successful the feud. After initially declining to reply, he ultimately defined in depth why Drake and Kendrick’s respective vendettas have been hurting, not serving to, Black musicians. 

He began by filling within the viewers on Common Music’s (the label he’s signed to) dominance within the trade and claiming that its ongoing campaign to convey smaller labels like Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella Information beneath its umbrella has disproportionately affected BIPOC label executives and musicians within the hip-hop and R&B genres.

“We’re getting priced out of our contracts, we’re getting priced out of our imprints, there are not any labels, principally, which might be incentivized to signal Black music,” he mentioned. “Whereas Taylor Swift is preventing for individuals to have the ability to have streaming cash, n—s is on the web arguing with one another about some rap shit.”

He continued, saying: “Personally, I feel we’re higher than that. I feel we deserve higher than that, as a result of we have been saying for many years that we would like individuals to respect Black music and Black artwork and Black individuals, and I feel for that to occur we have to respect ourselves.”

Though a number of trade bystanders have weighed in on the more and more ugly rap battle over the previous few weeks, Staples definitely has the credentials to say his piece, having logged among the finest hip-hop albums in latest reminiscence with Ramona Park Broke My Coronary heart again in 2022.

Now all that is left is for the newly minted TV star to parody the meat on a possible Season 2 of his semi-biographical Netflix sequence The Vince Staples Present.

Try a full video of Staples’s Q&A under. His two cents on Drake and Kendrick’s feud start on the 44:15 mark.