Tom Hanks asks son to explain Drake and Kendrick Lamar rap feud

Tom Hanks has enlisted the help of his son Chet Hanks to catch him up to speed on the rap feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar.

• READ MORE: Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s feud: the full timeline

Last night (May 20), Chet took to his Instagram Stories to share screen grabs of a text conversation with his father, in which the actor asks for Chet to explain what’s going on between the two rappers.

Tom Hanks messaged his son: “Big Main, can you explain the Drake/Kendrick Lamar feud to me?”. Chet then replied with a long block of text, explaining the situation to his father. Chet summarised the beef to his father, suggesting that he thinks Kendrick Lamar came out as the victor in the feud.

Chet Hanks said of Kendrick’s last response with ‘Not Like Us’: “That was pretty much the equivalent of when you took me to your high school in Oakland and we walked in on the basketball game and everybody was going nuts. Like if you heard it, you would just automatically know how to Crip walk with a stank face while clutching an Oscar in each hand with Marshawn Lynch, then dap him up and tell him ‘Town Bidness’, which solidified the win not only for Kendrick but for the entire West Coast.”

Guys… Chet explaining Drake vs Kendrick to Tom Hanks 😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/sbMHYp971I

— Frazier Tharpe II (@The_SummerMan) May 20, 2024

Tom Hanks responded: “Holy cow! These are fighting words. People are taking sides?? Who’s winning??”, which has since prompted jokes on social media that the elder Hanks did not read his son’s message explaining he thought Lamar won the feud.

Tom hit him with the “I ain’t readin all that…”

— Andrew Barber (@fakeshoredrive) May 20, 2024

The Kendrick-Drake beef has dominated the news over the last two months, being kindled by Kendrick’s contribution to ‘Like That’, from Metro Boomin and Future’s album ‘We Don’t Trust You’. On the track, Lamar responded to J. Cole and Drake’s ‘First Person Shooter’, where Cole called the trio “the big three”, by rapping: “Motherfuck the big three / N***, it’s just big me”.

That triggered a sequence of back-and-forth tracks: Drake’s ‘Push Ups’ and ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’, followed by Lamar’s ‘Euphoria’ and ‘6:16 In LA’. Drake hit back with ‘Family Matters’, which was swiftly followed by Lamar’s ‘Meet The Grahams’. The most recent contributions are Kendrick’s ‘Not Like Us’ and Drake’s ‘The Heart, Part 6’.

‘Not Like Us’ has since topped the Billboard Hot 100 and broken the Spotify record for the most streamed rap song in one day, while other rap luminaries have spoken out against the beef, including Vince Staples, who said the community “deserve better”, and Questlove, who called it “wrestling-match level mudslinging”.

In addition, a shooting outside Drake’s residence in Toronto on May 7 left a bodyguard seriously injured. There is no confirmation that the shooting was connected to the ongoing beef. While reporting on the story, a TV news anchor slipped up and called Drake a “raper” not a “rapper”.

A day after the shooting, a man was arrested for attempting to break into Drake’s Toronto mansion. That incident was the first of three trespassing attempts that week, which increased media presence at the home. Drake took to Instagram to ask whoever operated a news helicopter to stop flying at night so he could sleep.