It hasn’t been a great year for Drake. His beef with Kendrick Lamar ended badly for the Canadian rapper. How badly? Lamar won five Grammys for his diss track “Not Like Us” and then performed it during his headline set at the Super Bowl halftime show, where tens of thousands of fans in the stadium sang lyrics alleging that Drake is a pedophile (with Drake ex Serena Williams helping pile on), while 120 million-plus viewers watched at home. Drake literally sued over how much that song hurt his reputation. Now, Drake has released a new album with PartyNextDoor, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U. Does the album stand a chance at the Grammys against Lamar’s GNX, released last fall? Will Drake even submit it for consideration?
The Weeknd famously boycotted the Grammys after his album After Hours and record-breaking single “Blinding Lights” were shut out of the nominations in 2021, but they have since made up, culminating in The Weeknd’s surprise performance during the 2025 telecast. But Drake has had a complex relationship with the awards too. “All you incredible artists remember this show isn’t the facts — it’s just the opinion of a group of people whose names are kept a secret,” Drake wrote on his Instagram Stories in 2024. “Literally. You can Google it. Congrats to anybody winning anything for hip-hop, but this show doesn’t dictate s–t in our world.”
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Before that he declined the Grammys altogether, pulling his album Certified Lover Boy out of contention in 2021 after it received nominations for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Performance (“Way 2 Sexy” featuring Future and Young Thug). He didn’t even submit his next album, Honestly, Nevermind, for consideration in 2023. He did submit his joint album Her Loss with 21 Savage, which earned noms in 2024 for Best Rap Album, Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song (“Rich Flex”) and Best Melodic Rap Performance (“Spin Bout U”), but he lost in every category.
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“I’m a Black artist, I’m apparently a rapper, even though ‘Hotline Bling’ is not a rap song,” Drake said on DJ Semtex‘s radio show in 2017 the day after he won two Grammys for “Hotline Bling”: Best Rap/Sung Performance and Best Rap Song. “The only category that they can manage to fit me in is in a rap category, maybe because I’ve rapped in the past or because I’m Black.” Altogether Drake has won five Grammys over the course of his career: Best Rap Album for Take Care in 2013, the aforementioned prizes for “Hotline Bling,” Best Rap Song for “God’s Plan” in 2018, and Best Melodic Rap Performance for “Wait for U” in 2023.
Lamar has had much better luck. Counting his five victories this year, he has claimed 22 trophies from the Recording Academy, making him the third most awarded rapper in Grammy history, behind Jay-Z and Kanye West who are tied at 24. Like Drake, he was typically relegated to rap categories, but that changed with “Not Like Us,” which claimed Record of the Year and Song of the Year, making it only the second rap song to win those awards, following “This Is America” by Childish Gambino. Now he’s aiming for Album of the Year for GNX. He has been nominated six times before in the category without a win, but he is the early favorite based on Gold Derby odds.
But can Drake potentially stand in Lamar’s way? Drake too has been nominated for Album of the Year six times, including once as a featured artist on Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. But it’s hard to deny that voters prefer Lamar to Drake, even before they voted for Lamar’s Drake takedown five times this year. With that in mind, perhaps, Drake will simply decide to take his ball and go home again.
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