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In his latest Kendrick Lamar diss track “The Heart Part 6”, Drake mentioned R&B singer-songwriter R Kelly.
The Toronto rapper alluded to Spotify’s 2018 misconduct policy where they pulled artists like R Kelly, Tay-K, and XXXTentacion’s music from the platform. However, the policy faced a strong revolt from Lamar and other musicians, eventually leading the streaming service to drop it altogether.
Antony Tiffith, the CEO of the record label representing Kendrick Lamar at the time, confirmed to Billboard that he threatened Spotify to pull the rapper’s music from the platform if the policy was kept intact.
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Top Dawg Entertainment reached out to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and its head of artist relations Troy Carter regarding the same.
In "The Heart Part 6", hinting at the 2018 incident, Drake rapped:
"I don't wanna fight with a woman beater, it feeds your nature/ If you still bumping R. Kelly, you could thank the Savior/ Said if they deleted his music then your music is going too, a hypocrite"
Drake calls out Kendrick Lamar for R Kelly support in 2018
In May 2018, Spotify’s new policy about hateful conduct and hate content set out to remove artists’ playlists from its platform that engage in hate speech. It also applied to artists who were accused or convicted of misconduct. The policy noted:
“When an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful (for example, violence against children and sexual violence), it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator.”
R Kelly, one of the singers whose music was pulled from the streaming service initially, was accused of gro*ming a 14-year-old girl in a BBC documentary in March of that year.
In July 2018, the singer released a song “I Admit”, refuting claims of s*xual abuse, p*dophilia and cult leading.
Kelly separately addressed the allegations saying he was heartbroken by the claims and described himself as a God-fearing man and a father. He said that the media had manipulated these false accusations in an attempt to distort his character and destroy the legacy he had worked hard to build.
As Top Dawg Entertainment’s CEO Anthony Tiffith protested against Spotify’s policy on behalf of Kendrick Lamar, he told Billboard:
“I don’t think it’s right for artists to be censored, especially in our culture. How did they just pick those (artists) out? How come they didn’t pick out any others from any other genres or any other different cultures?
"There (are) so many other artists that have different things going on, and they could’ve picked anybody. But it seems to me that they’re constantly picking on hip-hop culture.”
Anthony added that he told Daniel Ek:
“My whole thing with them was, we gotta fix this situation, and if it can’t be fixed, then there’s gonna be a real problem, we’re gonna have to start pulling our music from the site.”
Drake mentioned R Kelly in "The Heart Part 6" in mockery about Kendrick Lamar. He suggested if Kelly's music got pulled from Spotify, Lamar's playlist should have met a similar fate for the same reason.
His suggestion was backed by the claim in the line before where he accused Kendrick Lamar of domestic violence against the latter's fiancée Whitney Alford.
