One of the most fascinating public confrontations of 2024 so far is the “beef” between the rappers Kendrick Lamar (06/17/1987, Gemini Rabbit) and Drake (10/24/1986, Scorpio Tiger). The two have traded intense and seemingly highly personal attacks, which as GQ summarized have involved, “[T]he unrestrained chaos of dropping long diss tracks, densely loaded with viciously personal power punches, within an hour of each other.”

However, Lamar and Drake have not always shared a combative relationship. In 2011, Lamar told XXL:

Sometimes you like a person’s music but you definitely don’t like the actual artist when you sit down and you talk to them. That’s a real good dude. [Drake’s] got a real genuine soul. We clicked immediately…For him to actually reach out and say come to this spot where we at to chill out, that was a move by itself. A lot of people will talk to you on the phone or text you, but when it’s actually time to sit down and work, you never catch ’em. I thought it was dope on his behalf to even reach out.

Friendly relations between the two men continued for a time, with Lamar featuring on Drake’s album, Take Care (2011), and Drake contributing to the track “Poetic Justice” on Lamar’s breakthrough, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012). Lamar also opened for Drake’s Club Paradise through 2012, and the two performed together on “F—’ Problems” by A$AP Rocky (10/03/1988, Libra Dragon) (with 2 Chainz (09/12/1977, Virgo Snake)). 

Bearing in mind the respective combined signs of Lamar and Drake, and the energy match between them, their initially amicable relationship appears to have been par for the course. The nobility and aptitude for leadership of Drake’s Tiger sign seem to have been perfectly suited to the role of elder statesman that he occupied when Lamar was establishing himself early in his career. Lamar’s Rabbit sign is one of the most naturally artistic and responsive of the Chinese signs, capable of singular devotion to their chosen craft, but with an innately diplomatic instinct. The deferential tone of Lamar’s comments above speaks to a kind of mutual collaboration that may be familiar to many Tiger/Rabbit pairings.

Indeed, it is fascinating to note that Lamar’s longtime collaborator Dave Free (11/14/1986) is similar in age to Drake and shares the Scorpio Tiger combined sign. Free and Lamar reportedly share a longstanding and supportive friendship, including as co-founders of the creative communications company, PGLang. The two are seemingly so close that Drake has even name-dropped Free as part of his current beef with Lamar (although there appears to be no factual basis for Drake’s specific allegations). 

More broadly, many relationships have leveraged the Tiger/Rabbit combination into apparently successful outcomes in various contexts. Notable examples include married couple Victoria Beckham (04/17/1974, Aries Tiger) and David Beckham (05/02/1975, Taurus Rabbit), Meg White (12/10/1974, Sagittarius Tiger) and Jack White (07/09/1975, Cancer Rabbit) of The White Stripes, and real-life best friends, podcast hosts, and former Scrubs co-stars, Donald Faison (06/22/1974, Cancer Tiger) and Zach Braff (04/06/1975, Aries Rabbit).

Nevertheless, tensions can become hard to manage, especially in contexts where one sign or the other—usually (though not always) the more sensitive Rabbit—is reluctant or unwilling to play second fiddle. The famous Tiger/Rabbit marriage between actor Marilyn Monroe (06/01/1926, Gemini Tiger) and playwright Arthur Miller (10/17/1915, Libra Rabbit) famously struggled in the face of their respective public profiles. And of course, in recent years the conflict and courtroom dramas between Amber Heard (04/22/1986, Taurus Tiger) and Johnny Depp (06/09/1963, Gemini Rabbit) have become the very definition of a relationship gone wrong.

For Lamar, it appears there was never any question of him accepting a secondary role to Drake. Lamar made headlines for name-checking several rappers including Drake in his 2013 track, “Control”, where he rapped, “I got love for you all, but I’m trying to murder you. Trying to make sure your core fans never heard of you.” In retrospect, Drake seemed to bridle in his brief response: “I know good and well that Kendrick’s not murdering me, at all, in any platform.” Commentators have speculated that this episode marked the beginning of the current conflict.

With this in mind, it seems that the explosive intensity of recent exchanges between Lamar and Drake may be explained by the Western Quincunx energy between them. 

Lamar’s Gemini sign is essentially dualistic, the caring and charming side of their personality often counterbalanced by a needling or compulsive fury when roused. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the combination of Gemini with the usually considerate, artistic temperament of the Rabbit—though frequently leading to spectacular achievements, as the Pulitzer-prize winning Lamar himself has repeatedly demonstrated—can be particularly vulnerable to both inner and outward disturbance. Many of the most famous Gemini Rabbit individuals, such as Angelina Jolie (06/04/1975) and Johnny Depp (06/09/1963), have become embroiled in stunning public disputes. Famous tennis player, Novak Djokovic (05/22/1987), also a Gemini Rabbit, has been involved in several noteworthy public clashes—including with Roger Federer (08/08/1981, Leo Rooster) early in his career, and more recently with Ben Shelton (10/09/2002, Libra Horse). One of the greatest novelists in history, Nobel prize-winning Saul Bellow (06/10/1915, Gemini Rabbit) was described by a longtime girlfriend as, “[living] on turbulence”. Bellow’s son Daniel suggested:

[During arguments he] liked to dig a pit and cover it with branches so you’d come walking along, whistling away, and fall right in it. Then he would stand at the edge and watch you as you sort of thrashed around. He liked that.

Drake’s Scorpio sign represents a far less flexible, more resolute kind of energy. Where Lamar’s Gemini sign is Mutable, directed towards implications and consequences, Scorpio’s Fixed energy pushes them to achieve tangible, real-world results. Combined with the majestic but sometimes reckless energy of the Tiger on the Chinese side, Drake personifies an uncompromising approach to leadership and achievement. Like Drake himself, other notable Scorpio Tigers have demonstrated a tendency to bring the world to them, rather than the other way around. Celebrated examples include Leonardo DiCaprio (11/11/1974), Jodie Foster (11/19/1962), Joaquin Phoenix (10/28/1974), Chloë Sevigny (11/18/1974), Emilia Clarke (10/23/1986), and Anthony Kiedis (11/01/1962). The poet Dylan Thomas arguably expressed the eternal determination of his Scorpio Tiger sign with the immortal words, written to his dying father,

And you, my father, there on the sad height, / Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. / Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Lamar is a late Gemini, almost on the cusp with Cancer, while Drake is an early Scorpio, on the cusp with Libra. Cusp energy almost always carries with it the potential for attention-grabbing, rebellious assertiveness, so there is an undeniably combustible quality to their shared energy. And while their Quincunx combination offers great potential for tenderness and creative collaboration in the right circumstances, the respective elements of Air and Water can be confusing to reconcile. Perhaps most tellingly, conventional wisdom has always held that Quincunx energy requires problems to be addressed as and when they arise, because of the danger that unresolved tensions may fester and turn nasty. If it is true, as seems likely, that the recent confrontation between Lamar and Drake has origins going back to 2013, their explosive outpourings may have been simmering for some time.

It is important to remember that “[D]eploying clever and pointed wordplay in order to outduel an opponent remain a staple of rap music.” The zealous confrontations between Lamar and Drake have prompted sensationalist comparisons to the mid–1990s East Coast/West Coast rivalry, and the tragic deaths of Notorious B.I.G. (05/21/1972, Gemini Rat) and Tupac Shakur (06/16/1971, Gemini Pig), who both shared Lamar’s Gemini sign. But on another view, Lamar and Drake are simply artists at the height of their powers, challenging one another in no-holds-barred feats of verbal jousting. Perhaps when the dust settles, it may still prove possible for them to rediscover the significant potential for camaraderie that exists in their shared energy.