Pop Culture

Seth Rogen Gives His Take on Drake and Kendrick, Says Fellow Canadian 'Lost the Rap Battle'

"I would say as soon as you are asserting in a rap song that you should not be a registered sex offender, you’ve lost the rap battle," Rogen said during this week's Netflix Is a Joke festival.

Two men at an event; one holding a glass and smiling, the other walking and looking forward
Images via Getty/Vivien Killilea/Kahala Mgmt. & Getty/Prince Williams/Wireimage

Seth Rogen has stepped into the Drake and Kendrick Lamar assessment arena, and it does indeed sound like he believes his fellow Canadian was decidedly not the victor in the artists’ meticulously covered back-and-forth.

Amid this month’s Netflix Is a Joke proceedings, which also saw Rogen lighting a giant bong in front of the crowd, the Dumb Money actor noted that "things are good" for rap fans at the moment. From there, Rogen launched into a recap, of sorts, of the events of the past few months. While things "started slow" and encompassed some "pretty tame" digs, Rogen said, the tone of the beef shifted as it went on.

"It did not stop there," Rogen told the audience, as seen in clips making the rounds on Wednesday. "After that, things got pretty mean. Kendrick, he was like, after 'you don’t dress good,' he came back and he said to Drake, 'You’re a bad father and you should be a registered sex offender.' … You can see Drake was not expecting that either. That changed the tone of the whole conversation pretty dramatically."

As Rogen pointed out, the 6 God was arguably "caught off guard" by certain elements of the ensuing disses, which he says resulted in a more "defensive" perspective from the For All the Dogs artist.

"You don’t hear defensive rapping that often," Rogen, a known rap head, said. "Rapping’s usually pretty aggressive. You don’t hear rap that’s like, 'I am a good father. I should not be a registered sex offender.' I would say as soon as you are asserting in a rap song that you should not be a registered sex offender, you’ve lost the rap battle. That’s not a good sign."

Rogen then found the humor in the inherently public nature of Drake and Kendrick's extended back-and-forth, joking that the hit songs from both sides have now become algorithm fodder for people including his mother, who might very well see the tracks recommended to her "while working out." The writer and comedian also compared the 2024 rap war to Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill run in the mid-90s. The singer's "You Oughta Know," of. course, is widely rumored (but never directly confirmed) to be a diss track aimed at Dave Coulier.

This summer, Rogen and company are expanding the Sausage Party universe with the animated Foodtopia series on Prime Video. Rogen is joined in the voice cast by Michael Cera, Kristen Wiig, and more.

As for Drake, he last delivered "The Heart Part 6," a detailed breakdown of which can be found here.

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