RZA Compares Kendrick Lamar and Drake as Lyricists, Says One Is ‘Natural,’ the Other Is ‘Trained’

RZA has praised both Kendrick Lamar and Drake in the past, but has now suggested that K Dot had the edge in their beef.

In an interview with Jordan Rose for Complex, RZA was asked if he thought the two rappers could reconcile following the blows they traded earlier this year on tracks like "Family Matters" and "Not Like Us."

The Wu-tang legend answered by comparing the two rappers as lyricists.

"First of all, Kendrick is the natural lyricist, and Drake is a trained lyricist," he explained. "You could train a fighter and he could be good, then you got those natural fighters who also then go through training. So that's a different chamber there. And while Drake got bars forever, Kendrick’s bars’ potency was stronger."

While he respecte Drake, RZA believes that he might not have been ready for a lyrical battle against someone like K Dot. "The battle bar-for-bar was something that was just not good advising on Drake's camp in the sense of just getting in that fight without really taking some more training for that," he continued. "When Kendrick wrote the letter to his son or his daughter and to his [mother], Kendrick is going to come like that. Nas, Kendrick, Eminem, Raekwon, certain people are going to break your shit down to the element."

RZA described Drake as "a powerful artist in our culture," who has done a lot for hip-hop. "He expanded it with his melodies and he raised a generation too, and you can't take that away from him. And these two were at the top of the pinnacle at the end of the day," he said. "Nas and Jay-Z, that's another good example, but it was tough. It took years for them to swallow that pill and then come and shake hands on it. So hopefully it is not the same. Hopefully this generation can take it as fun like how the beginning generation took it more for fun."

The beef has remained somewhat dormant in recent months, at least when it comes to disses on record. K Dot did drop an untitled track on Instagram last month, but it didn't address Drake so much as the state of hip-hop culture and the response to the announcement he'll perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show next year.

Elsewhere in the chat for Complex, RZA spoke on the evolution of New York rap and suggested that the scene has lost some of its originality over the years.

"It's almost natural that that's going to happen because before, we didn't hear nothing else. There was no other renditions," he said. "It's like when you go back and as a scientist and you study Dr. Dre and you listen to him taking his early production for N.W.A., you still hear that the breakbeats of New York is still the foundation, but eventually as he's getting better and better and he's incorporating instrumentation, those instrumentations then come back to us."