Music wouldn’t be as interesting as a landscape as it has become in recent years without feuds between artists, commonly known as “beefs”. Whether these beefs are new or old, most music fans can at least say they have enjoyed at least one diss track or back-handed tweet by their favorite artist. One of the largest of these beefs in recent years was the one between Kanye “Ye” West and Drake “Drizzy” Graham.
For those not in the know about all the details of the beef between these two men, I will offer a quick recap. Drake started his career in the late 2000s, and Kanye had 4 successful albums under his belt by this point. Drake would be noticed by Mr. West, and then would help produce the track “Find Your Love” off the album “Thank Me Later”. After the beginning of this mentor-student relationship, both grew to respect each other as artists. There were minor disses for years, but the year 2018 brought the end of all positive relations between the two. In 2018, Kanye helped produce an album by Pusha-T, an artist with which Drake had a long-time beef with. Pusha-T and Drake’s beef could be the subject of a whole other article, but the result of the re-sparking of this beef was Pusha-T revealing Drake’s secret child to the whole world. After this revelation, Drake and Kanye would have nothing but hate towards each other for years.
So, two of the biggest artists of our generation hated each other and it seemed like it would stay that way for a while. This year both geared up to release their newest projects, “Donda” for Kanye and “Certified Lover Boy” for Drake. These projects would release within 2 weeks of each other, and Drake would even leak a track featuring Andre 3000 that was originally supposed to go on “Donda”. This act by Drake, releasing a song that heavily spoke about the deaths of both Andre 3000’s and Kanye’s mothers and their feelings surrounding their deaths on live radio, seemed to be just another distasteful action by one of the parties of this beef. There was no end in sight for this beef, until Kanye posted to his instagram. Kanye posting on any social media is a somewhat rare occurrence these days, but this post held something special. It was a video asking Drake to join him at a concert to help free former Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover. To most everyone’s surprises in the music industry, Drake agreed to join Kanye. The beef allegedly died, and fans now had a Kanye and Drake concert to look forward to.
The night of December 9th at the Los Angeles Coliseum, a crowd of 70,000 people awaited two of the most popular artists of all time to perform together. The event was also live-streamed for free on Amazon Prime, so a large majority of people who saw this event were probably not even in attendance that night. The crowd was buzzing, and then in one moment, silence. This silence was brought on by the sudden arrival of the Sunday Service Choir, Kanye’s choir service that he has previously used on projects like “Donda” and “Jesus is King”, who performed a series of hits censored for piety. The most odd choice of singles was the song “Easy on me” off Adele’s newest project. The choir would end their performance by singing the opening to “Ultralight Beam” by Kanye. Suddenly the crowd exploded as both men walked out of the smoke onto a dome ,where the performers would stay on for most of the performance, while “Praise God” off “Donda” played. Both of the men walked like they had something to prove, and they both probably knew just how special of an event this was going to be.
Kanye stood on the dome, and then a moment of silence fell over the crowd. Kanye simply said “Let’s take it back to day one” and the crowd erupted as “Jesus Walks” off Kanye’s first ever project “The College Drop-Out” played. Kanye stayed true to his claim of taking it back to day one, and played a song off every single one of his projects excluding “Kids See Ghost”. The Kanye that was present the night of the Free Larry Hoover was one that we haven’t seen in awhile. This year during the series of concerts hosted for Kanye’s project “Donda”, he seemed disinterested. That night, it seemed we had some of the old Kanye back. Kanye is 44 at this point, so him doing a 23 song set while moving around the whole time and trying to match the younger Drake is a herculean task. Some of the highlights of the night for me were the extra instrumentals added to tracks by live instruments, such as new ripping guitar riffs added to “Black Skinhead” and some electrifying synths added to “Stronger”.
The night wasn’t without its faults though, as Kanye would struggle with his 2nd half of the performance. Missing or mixing up lines to songs he has performed probably hundreds of times doesn’t look the best, but it was the first time Kanye has performed these songs live in almost four years. Drake’s performance was squeezed in the middle of Kanye’s performance. The pair did some songs together, and even covered some of each other’s songs. Kanye covered the previously mentioned “Find Your Love” and Drake sang the track “24”. Drake’s performance was less memorable than Kanye’s, mostly due to the fact he only did mostly newer tracks off Certified Lover Boy. Despite these minor flaws, the night was still one to remember. With the large amount of funds made off both ticket sales and merch at the show, The Free Larry Hoover movement was truly thankful for the work put in by these two artists. The concert is able to be viewed now through Amazon Prime Video, however oddly Drake’s part of the concert was edited out and minor audio changes had been made. If you wish to watch the original version, many youtube channels have re-uploaded the concert for your viewing pleasure.