A Brief History of Taylor Swift's Relationship With Kendrick Lamar and Drake

Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift and Drake Credit - Getty Images (3)

This Super Bowl Sunday, some tuned in to watch the football game, some watched for the ads, and others tuned in just to see what Taylor Swift was up to.

Not only was she in New Orleans, alongside her pal Ice Spice, to support her boyfriend Travis Kelce and his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, as they went for (and ultimately did not achieve) the elusive three-peat against the Jalen Hurts-led Philadelphia Eagles. (They would have been the first NFL team to win three consecutive titles in the modern Super Bowl era.) But she also got a chance to check out Kendrick Lamar’s much-anticipated Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show where he performed his Grammy-decorated Drake diss track “Not Like Us.”

So why would Lamar’s setlist matter to Swift? Well, only a week ago, she went viral for celebrating the track’s Record of the Year win (just one of its several new trophies) at this year’s Grammys. It wasn’t a surprise to see Swift cheering Lamar on; after all, she has been a long-time supporter of the rapper, who appeared on the 2015 remix of her 1989 track “Bad Blood.” But she’s also good friends with Drake, the object of that song’s disdain. Champagne problems indeed.

To better understand Swift’s connection to the ongoing Drake and Kendrick beef, which started in March 2024 after Lamar fired shots at Drizzy on Future’s “Like That,” we take a closer look at her relationship with the two hip-hop superstars. Let’s just say, she (and her song “Bad Blood”) probably won’t be able to exclude herself from this narrative anytime soon.

May 2015: Taylor Swift releases “Bad Blood” remix featuring Kendrick Lamar

In May 2015, Swift enlisted Kendrick Lamar to appear on the remix of “Bad Blood,” the 1989 clapback track that was reportedly aimed at Katy Perry. The collaboration wasn’t a surprise to those who had been paying attention. For months, the two had been very publicly sharing their admiration for one another.

The love fest officially started with Swift rocking out to Lamar’s 2014 Grammy performance of “m.A.A.d. city” featuring Imagine Dragons. A few months later, she told Rolling Stone that her go-to anthem was Lamar’s “Backseat Freestyle.” “I know every word,” she bragged. A claim she would confirm the following year when she posted a video of her lip-synching along to the track.

For his part, Lamar frequently made it clear that he appreciated her dedication to her craft, and loved her song “Shake It Off,” going so far as to freestyle over the 1989 hit.

Lamar and Swift’s first team-up being a diss track may now feel like foreshadowing, but the rapper wasn’t aware of that song’s underlying meaning at the time. Two years after the release of “Bad Blood,” Rolling Stone asked Lamar if his appearance on the song meant that he had taken sides in the Swift-Perry beef. “No, I wasn’t aware of that, bro. That’s a great question. No! On the record, no,” he said. “Which makes it even more funny now, for sure. That’s far beyond my concern. I have to stay away from that, for sure. That’s some real beef.”

October 2016: Drake and Taylor Swift hard launch their friendship

Three years after Drake and Taylor Swift officially met at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, the rapper made their friendship Instagram official. In 2016, Drake posted a photo of them from his star-studded 30th birthday party where guests included Swift’s friend-briefly turned enemy-now turned friend again Katy Perry and her former boyfriend John Mayer, who had inspired her 2010 track “Dear John.”

The image of the two, shot from behind, led many to wonder about what it could all mean. Were they working on music together? Were the dating rumors actually true? The answer was no to both. It seems that Drake hard launched his friendship with Swift to tease an Apple commercial that featured him singing along to “Bad Blood.”

November 2016: Drake & Taylor Swift work out to each other’s music

The first (and, as of now, only) musical collaboration between Drake and Taylor Swift was actually a pair of Apple Music commercials released in 2016. In April of that year, Swift dropped an ad that featured her running on a treadmill while rapping along to Drake and Future’s 2015 hype track “Jumpman.” Unfortunately, she gets so distracted by the song that she ends up face planting mid-verse. Though, to her credit, she keeps right on singing, which is exactly what you would expect from the artist behind “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart.”

Seven months later, Drake returned the favor by starring in an Apple Music commercial of his own. In it, he lip-syncs along to what we’ll now assume was the Kendrick-less version of “Bad Blood.” Like Swift, he gets so into the song that he commits an epic gym fail by falling off the bench press.

August 2019: Taylor Swift name-drops Drake on “I Forgot That You Existed”

On the opening track of her 2019 record, Lover, a kiss-off track allegedly aimed at her ex Calvin Harris, Swift sings, “I couldn’t get away from ya/ In my feelings more than Drake, so yeah.” That same year, she appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly wearing a Drake pin, explaining on her Tumblr that she “wanted to rep as many things/people I love on the jacket,” which also featured nods to her bestie Selena Gomez, Friends, and Sally Rooney. When asked what she admired most about Drake, she told EW, “I love his one-liners.”

April 2022: Drake hints at a possible Taylor Swift collaboration 

In 2022, Drake posted a throwback photo of himself and Swift. The caption read, “They too soft to understand the meaning of hard work.” Fans quickly deciphered that the image was from 2016, which they believed confirmed a rumor that the two had recorded music together between the releases of 1989 and Reputation. Many Swifties believe that the track will finally find a home on Reputation (Taylor's Version), which has no release date as of now despite all of the Easter eggs that seem to imply the release is imminent.

October 2023: Taylor Swift thanks Kendrick Lamar for re-recording “Bad Blood” verse

When Swift released the deluxe version of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in October 2023, it included a new version of the “Bad Blood (Remix)” featuring Kendrick Lamar. “The reality that Kendrick would go back in and re-record ‘Bad Blood’ so that I could reclaim and own this work I’m so proud of is surreal and bewildering to me,” she wrote on Instagram.

In the same post, she called the experience of watching Lamar in the studio nearly a decade earlier “one of the most inspiring experiences of my life,” writing, “I still look back on this collaboration with so much pride and gratitude, for the ways Kendrick elevated the song and the way he treats everyone around him.”

April 2024: Drake dedicates Kendrick Lamar diss track to Taylor Swift

Drake’s second Kendrick Lamar diss track, the AI-assisted “Taylor Made Freestyle,” included a shout out to Swift, who he calls the “biggest gangster in the music game right now.”

On the track, released in April 2024, Drake alleges that Lamar delayed his response to the OVO rapper’s first diss track “Push Ups” so as not to compete with Swift’s then-recently released album, The Tortured Poets Department. (Drake previously admitted on “Red Button” off 2023’s For All The Dogs Scary Hours Edition that Swift was the only artist that “could make me drop the album just a little later” for fear he’d lose out on the streams.)

This was not the first time Swift got caught in the feud’s crosshairs. On “Push Ups,” Drake raps, “Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty/ Then we need a verse for the Swifties,” which is a swipe at Lamar’s cameos on tracks from both artists. And it wouldn’t be the last either; Lamar enlisted Swift collaborator Jack Antonoff to produce one of his many responses to Drake’s “Taylor Made Freestyle,” “6:16 in LA.”

February 2025: Taylor Swift dances to “Not Like Us,” the internet goes crazy

When Kendrick Lamar won Record of the Year at this year’s Grammys for “Not Like Us,” Swift appeared to co-sign his victory, dancing and singing along to the song, which nabbed five trophies that night. She may have gone home empty handed, but with a glass of champagne in one of those otherwise empty hands, she seemed more than happy to celebrate Lamar’s big night—even at her buddy Drake’s expense. Of course, the internet had a field day with this, but let’s assume Swift will not be saying anything about the matter. Lest we forget, actions speak louder than words.

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