Drake vs Kendrick: A timeline of the Scorpion artist's feud with the Not Like Us rapper
Many fans would agree that Drake and Kendrick Lamar operate in entirely different lanes. Drake entertains with summery rap-pop jams such as 'One Dance' and 'Hotline Bling', dabbling in trap, dancehall and R&B along the way, while Lamar has asserted himself as a deft lyricist capable of blending street smarts with a literary wit. Yet their once friendly relationship has descended into years of traded barbs and thinly veiled disses, fuelled by fans who clash over which one is the better artist, and finally boiling over into a full-blown feud.
Here's a look at their relationship over the years as Lamar headlines the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show with Drake's ex, SZA.
2011 – Kendrick Lamar's career beginnings and initial friendship
Lamar and Drake were once on relatively friendly terms, with the Canadian artist inviting Lamar out on his Club Paradise headline tour.
Lamar said in an early career interview that he and Drake 'clicked immediately', describing the fellow rapper as a 'genuine soul' and revealing that Drake was the first person outside of his immediate team to hear his debut album Section 80. Drake later invited K-Dot to feature on his forthcoming second album, Take Care.
2012 – Kendrick's star begins to rise, early shots are fired
Around the release of Lamar's critically acclaimed second album, Good Kid, MAAD City, on which Drake featured, tension appeared to begin brewing between the pair, seemingly in part due to their differing attitudes towards wealth and fame.
Where Lamar tends to avoid sharing details of his personal life on social media, Drake is known for sharing frequent posts about his lavish lifestyle to his millions of Instagram followers, from private jets to couture and luxury cars. Lamar discussed this openly in interviews, hinting that he believed bragging about money and fame was superficial, and his own music tackled deeper matters.
The two also seemed to grow colder towards one another as Lamar began to experience commercial and critical success, scooping major awards and receiving universal praise for Good Kid, MAAD City and being invited to star on tracks by other major artists.
In public, Drake continued to congratulate Lamar for a number of his successes, until 2013, when Lamar dropped a verse on Big Sean's track 'Control' that made it clear he considered himself above other rappers… including Drake.
While rappers such as A$AP Rocky, who was also name-checked, seemed pleased to be namechecked by Lamar at all, believing his competitive nature to be healthy for hip-hop, Drake seemed less enamoured.
'Was that real or was that just for the people?' he asked in an interview on Hot 97 after Lamar's guest verse came out. 'Those were harsh words, right? It's like, you can't just say that and then see me and be like, 'Yeah man…' pretending like nothing ever happened. That's not real, man.'
Drake doubled down on this stance in a later interview where he implied that Lamar was more about a 'moment' than creating bodies of work, questioning whether he would release something that could top Good Kid, MAAD City.
He then released his third album, 2013's Nothing Was the Same, in which he appeared to take aim at Lamar on 'The Language', rapping: 'F*** any n***a that's talking that s*** just to get a reaction.'
On the same track, he referred to himself as 'the kid with the motormouth / I am the one you should worry about.' He also seemed to mock Lamar's attitude towards wealth, rapping: 'N***as downplaying the money but that's what you do when the money down.'
On a recent episode of the What's the Dirt YouTube show, in which host Matt delves into beefs between prominent hip-hop artists, it was suggested that Drake was being contemptuous of Lamar's rapid-fire delivery, and felt that his own music had more substance.
'It's clearly about Kendrick,' he said, citing instances where Lamar appeared to laugh at Drake's expense during interviews and suggesting K-Dot might have said something behind the 'Hold On' singer's back, which later made its way to him.
Drake's resentment might have grown after Lamar seemingly mocked Drake for being 'sensitive during a freestyle with ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab Soul and Isaiah Rashad: 'Nothing's been the same since they dropped 'Control'/ And tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pyjama clothes.'
Fans were convinced he was talking about Drake, given he'd cited the title of the fellow rapper's recent album, Nothing Was the Same.
Drake then got personal a few weeks later on Future's track 'S**t', where he pointed out that Lamar played his biggest shows at the time around his hometown in Los Angeles while supporting Drake on tour in 2012: 'Took n***as out the hood like I'm from there / So you know it's all good when I come there / I hear you talk about your city like you run that / And I brought my tour to your city, you my son there, n***a.'
By the end of 2013, the relationship between the pair had grown distinctly chilly; they appeared on the same track for the last time with A$AP Rocky on 'F**kin' Problems'.
2014 – the public digs grow more frequent, even as Lamar plays down the beef
A few months after Drake appeared on Future's track, controversy erupted at the Grammy Awards when rapper Macklemore won Album of the Year over Lamar, who was nominated for Good Kid, MAAD City, now widely regarded as one of the greatest hip-hop records of all time.
Macklemore, real name Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, then shared a text on Instagram that he sent to Lamar after the win, in which he confessed that he felt the fellow rapper was 'robbed' and that he'd been rooting for Lamar to win.
Drake was unimpressed by this, calling Macklemore out in an interview with Rolling Stone where he said the apology felt 'cheap'.
If Macklemore was going to hand out apologies, Drake said, he should have offered one to other nominees: 'That s*** made me feel funny,' he said. 'No, in that case, you robbed everybody. We all need text messages!'
Lamar and Drake continued to take subtle swipes at one another on guest features, but K-Dot seemed to dismiss fan speculation and suggest they were 'digging too far' in a radio interview that aired later that year.
In What's the Dirt, the host notes that despite this, Lamar continued to make digs about what he perceived to be the difference between his artistry and Drake's, leaning into the public perception that Drake was a glorified pop artist, rather than a credible hip-hop star skilled in the art of lyricism.
'Comparing these projects makes zero sense,' Matt said, referring to Lamar's Grammy-winning album To Pimp a Butterfly and Drake's If You're Reading This It's Too Late, both released in 2015.
'Drake's project was great for club DJs, gym playlists, cruising in the car… whereas Kendrick's album touched on real-world issues, was chanted during protests, and is looked at today as one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time,' he said.
In summer that year, controversy was sparked after rapper Meek Mill accused Drake of using a ghostwriter for his guest verse on Mill's recent LP, leading to a number of barbed exchanges in diss tracks.
Drake defended himself against the allegations in September, telling The Fader: 'I need, sometimes, individuals to spark an idea so that I can take off running. Music at times can be a collaborative process, you know? Who came up with this, who came up with that – for me, it's like, I know that it takes me to execute every single thing that I've done up until this point. And I'm not ashamed.'
However, this didn't stop fans scrambling to point out that Lamar had hinted at a fellow rapper using ghostwriters in his hit single, 'King Kunta', which featured on To Pimp a Butterfly: 'I can dig rappin', but a rapper with a ghostwriter? / What the f*** happened? / I swore I wouldn't tell…'
Both artists seemed to cool down as they focused on their respective projects, with Drake dropping his fourth studio album, the Jamaican dancehall-influenced Views, in April 2016. The record spawned a number of major hits including 'One Dance', 'Hotline Bling' and 'Controlla', leading to the Canadian star becoming the most-streamed artist of the year. It also resulted in Drake achieving his first ever UK No 1 album, as it also debuted at the top of the US Billboard 200.
However, Drake couldn't resist making a few digs around that time, rapping with The Game on his track '100' about the perception of him as a pop artist: 'I would have all of your fans if I didn't go pop / And I stayed on some conscious sh**.'
A year later, Lamar released his own fourth album, DAMN, and received considerably more critical praise than Drake had for Views. Where reviews of Drake's album were mixed, critics lavished praise on DAMN, even directly pitting it against Views. 'It's Mr Lamar's version of the creeping paranoia that has become de rigueur for midcareer Drake,' Jon Caramanica wrote for the New York Times. 'And yet this is most likely Mr Lamar's most jubilant album, the one in which his rhymes are the least tangled.'
Drake seemed to try and squash any past beef, however, the month Lamar dropped DAMN, posting a comment on the Instagram page of Tidal's editorial director Elliot Wilson showing that DAMN had out-sold Drake's More Life mixtape in its opening week by 100,000 copies.
'Amazing to see our music moving!' Drake wrote, also liking a comment by a fan who suggested he, Lamar and J Cole collaborate on a track.
Three years after DAMN' s release, Lamar would become the first rapper in history to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, marking the first time a non-classical or jazz artist had won the distinguished award.
Through this time, however, Lamar goes quiet with new music releases (with the exception of the Black Panther film soundtrack in 2018, which spawned a few extra Grammy nominations including Song of the Year for 'All the Stars' with SZA).
Meanwhile, Drake continues to dominate the charts with a string of releases including his Scary Hours EP and his fifth album, 2018's Scorpion, which included the singles 'God's Plan', 'Nice for What' and 'I'm Upset'.
By this point, the public interest in comparing the two artists was so pronounced that even the then-president, Barack Obama, was asked to declare which one he favoured.
2019 – Mr Morale & the Big Steppers
While Drake has seemed to make occasional attempts to hand Lamar an olive branch, the Compton rapper remains tight-lipped unless he's taking swipes on a track. But after K-Dot took almost five years to release the follow-up to DAMN, his 2022 album Mr Morale & the Big Steppers, Drake apparently couldn't resist an opportunity to lash out.
'I know it's summertime, I've gotta give you s***!' he told fans during a show for his It's All a Blur tour in 2023. 'I don't know about these guys that go away for three, four, five years and wanna chill out and all that s***. That's not me.' Drake then announced the forthcoming release of his 2024 album, For All the Dogs.
Drake had previously been criticised by some for his relentless string of singles, EPs, mixtapes and studio albums, while Lamar is notorious for leaving long gaps between releases...
2024
...Which brings us to the present day, after Lamar made a surprise appearance on 'Like That', which appears on Future and Metro Boomin's collaborative album, We Don't Trust You.
K-Dot appeared to directly respond to J Cole's verse on 'First Person Shooter' from Drake's For All The Dogs, where Cole raps: 'Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali.'
'Motherf*** the big three, n***a, it's just big me,' Lamar raps on 'Like That'. 'N***a, bum, What? I'm really like that/And your best work is a light pack.'
Drake appeared to brush off Lamar's diss at a recent concert while on his tour with Cole, in support of It's All a Blur.
'A lot of people asking me how I'm feeling… listen, the way I'm feeling is the same way I want you to walk out of here feeling tonight about your f***ing self,' Drake told his audience, footage shared to social media on 25 March shows.
'Because you know how I'm feeling? I got my head up high, my back straight, I'm 10 f***ing toes down… and feeling like anywhere else I go… and I know no matter what, there's not a n**** on this Earth that can ever f*** with me in my life,' he shouted. 'And that's how I want y'all to walk out of here tonight…'
'But,' he continued, 'you know, you can get yourselves gassed up, riled up and move towards the future… Sometimes you've got to acknowledge the mistakes you've made in the past… right? So that's what I want you all to do. Everybody in here.'
Lamar turned to openly naming Drake in his track 'euphoria', seemingly a nod to Drake's role as a producer on the hit HBO teen drama, which he dropped on a random Tuesday, 30 April.
The six-minute track sees Lamar open fire on Drake's racial identity, alleged use of ghostwriters, and recent remarks and behaviour that have led to accusations of misogyny.
One widely discussed moment on the track has been linked to a notorious interview with late rapper DMX. Asked whether he liked Drake in the interview, he simply said, 'No.'
Pushed to elaborate, he said: 'I don't like anything about Drake. I don't like his f***ing voice, I don't like nothing he talks about. I don't like his face. I don't like the way he walks. Nothing. I don't like his haircut.'
Lamar echoes this as he raps: 'I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk/ I hate the way that you dress/ I hate the way you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it's gon' be direct.'
In other searing lines, Lamar dismisses rumours he has been looking for 'dirt' on Drake: 'Why would I try to call around and try to get dirt on you? You think my life is rap? That's ho s***. I got a son to raise. But I can see you don't know nothing 'bout that,' he raps.
The bars hark back to the now-infamous diss track from US rapper Pusha T, 'The Story of Adidon', which revealed that Drake had fathered a son with French former adult actor Sophie Brussaux. Drake confirmed he had a son, Adonis, a month later when he released his fifth album, Scorpion.
Just a few days later and before Drake had properly responded, Lamar dropped another incendiary track, '6:16 in LA', on his Instagram. The title is once again pointed as it nods to a favoured theme in Drake's work, seen in songs such as '9am in Dallas', '8am in Charlotte' and '4pm in Calabas'.
Fans have also noticed that 6/16 happens to be both Father's Day and Tupac Shakur's birthday. In another master stroke, the track was produced by Sounwave and Jack Antonoff, the latter best known for his collaborations with pop titan Taylor Swift.
Drake's last diss against Lamar was 'Taylor Made Freestyle', in which he mocked Lamar for supposedly using his collab with Swift on 2016's 'Bad Blood' to gain mainstream popularity.
With Antonoff, Lamar has ensured that his latest track is, in fact, 'Taylor Made'.
Over a lush, mellow sample of Al Green, he regales listeners with the things he is thankful for before he turns to Drake.
'Are you finally ready to play Have You Ever? Let's see/ Have you ever thought that OVO was working for me?/ Fake bully, I hate bullies, you must be a terrible person/ Everyone inside your team's whispering that you deserve it,' he raps.
Then, Lamar goes darker as he tells Drake he has moles in his camp, and that the people he views as close allies are actually working against him: 'No, you can't sleep/ These images trouble you/ No, the wires in your circle should puzzle you/ If you were street smart then you would have caught that your entourage is only to hustle you/ A hundred n****s that you cut on salary/ And 20 of 'em want you as a casualty/ And one of them is next to you...'
On Saturday (4 May), the Canadian artist released 'Family Matters', made up of three parts, in which he accuses Lamar's pro-Black activism of hypocrisy. In the track he also accuses him of alleged domestic violence, and of 'begging' the Tupac estate to sue Drake for his use of AI versions of the late rapper in a diss track.
'You the Black messiah wifin' up a mixed queen,' he says referring to Lamar's childhood sweetheart and fiancée, Whitney Alford who is of mixed heritage.
He denied ordering a cease and desist on Lamar, insisting such an order 'is for h*es'. He raps: 'You called the Tupac estate and begged 'em to sue me and get that s*** down.'
In perhaps his most controversial lyric, heard over the end of the song as the music tails off, he adds: 'They hired a crisis management team, to clean up the fact that you beat on your queen. The picture you painted ain't what it seems.'
But Lamar hit back within minutes, releasing 'Meet The Grahams' his third diss track this week, in which he accused the rapper of harbouring a secret daughter, and of having a series of addictions to gambling, alcohol, drugs, sex, and spending.
'You got gambling problems, drinking problems, pill-popping and spending problems, bad with money, whore house. Therapy's a start,' he rapped.
'You lied about your son, you lied about your daughter, huh, you lied about them other kids that's out there hoping that you come.'
The 'Humble' rapper released a new track 'Not Like Us' via YouTube on Sunday (5 May). The song has racked up over 10 million views in nearly as many hours. It features an aerial image of Drake's mansion with target symbols within.
In his new song, 'Not Like Us', the 'Humble' rapper called Drake a 'certified pedophile' as he made multiple references to his alleged interactions with younger women.
'Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young,' the 36-year-old rapper began, adding that he would struggle in jail on account of his interest. 'You better not ever go to cell block one.'
He went on to mock the 'God's Plan' artist's studio album Certified Lover Boy as he taunted, ' Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles.'
The song was released on YouTube in the early hours of Sunday morning (5 May). The artwork features an aerial shot of Drake's mansion with sex offender targets overlaid.
Drake responded quickly with a new song titled 'The Heart Part 6,' referring to Lamar's ongoing, five-part single series 'The Heart' that he began in 2010.
'And we know you're dropping 6 mins after so instead of posting my address you have a lot to address,' he wrote on Instagram.
On the track, Drake shuts down the story about him having a secret daughter, claiming that he and his team planted the fake story on purpose.
'The Pulitzer Prize winner is definitely spiralin',' Drake started off. 'The ones you getting you're stories from, they all clowns/I am a war general, seasoned in preparation/ My jacket is covered in medals, honor and decoration/You waited for this moment, overcome with the desperation/We plotted for a week and then we fed you the information/A daughter that's 11 years old, I bet he takes it,' he rapped.
Drake went on to deny Lamar's claims that he pursued underage women, writing: 'I never been with no one underage, but now I understand why this the angle that you really mess with.'
'Just for clarity, I feel disgusted / I'm too respected / If I was f***** young girls, I promise I done been arrested / I'm way too famous for the shit you just suggested, but that's not the lesson / Clearly there's a deeper message / Deep cuts that never healed and now they got infected,' Drake rapped.
24 May 2024
Lamar has yet to respond to Drake's latest diss, suggesting he might be satisfied with the fact that 'Not Like Us' was, at the time of writing, riding at the top of the US Billboard chart and, as far as his fans were concerned, the final nail in the coffin for Drake.
Drizzy, however, apparently wasn't done. On 24 May he appeared on Sexyy Red's 'U My Everything', from her new project In Sexyy We Trust. On the track, he raps over Metro Boomin's 'BBL Drizzy' beat, which the producer released online and told followers to make their own version of the song.
Metro previously featured on Kendrick's early diss 'Like That' in March. The 'BBL Drizzy' title alludes to rumours that Drake underwent a 'Brazilian Butt Lift' surgery.
'Me and the surgeon got history / I changed a lot of girls' lives for real, they need a new body, they hittin' me,' Drake raps on Sexyy Red's song, as the beach switches to Metro's 'BBL Drizzy.'
'BBL Drizzy, they want a new body, they ask me for it / The last one drunk, he did it for free 'cause I sent over so many passports for him, for real.'
Has the beef come full circle?
5 July 2024
Lamar rang in Independence Day by releasing the music video for his chart-topping 'Not Like Us' track.
Coming less than a month after the Compton rapper performed the song six times at the Pop Out concert on Juneteenth, the music video takes multiple shots at Drake and his OVO label.
'Not Like Us' starts off with a shot of Lamar doing pushups on cinder blocks, a reference to Drake's 'Push Ups' and a callback to when the photo of Lamar working out Drake used as part of the song's rollout.
Also making an appearance is Lamar's partner Whitney Alford and their two children, a callback to Drake's 'Family Matters' in which he accused Lamar of alleged domestic violence and his longtime collaborator and 'Not Like Us' director Dave Free of being the father of one of Lamar and Alford's children.
The most striking dig, however, is all the owl imagery, the bird associated with Drake's OVO label.
One scene features Lamar hitting an owl piñata, with a disclaimer at the bottom reading, 'No OVHoes were harmed during the making of this video', and the video's final shot is of an owl in a cage.
November 2024
In what seems to be an unprecedented move, Drake files two separate legal actions against Universal Music Group and Spotify, as he accuses UMG, the owner of his label Republic Records, of artificially inflating streams of 'Not Like Us'.
In allegations that UMG branded 'offensive and untrue', the filing said that UMG 'launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves with a song, 'Not Like Us', in order to make that song go viral, including by using 'bots' and pay-to-play agreements.'
It said the company and streaming giant Spotify 'have a long-standing, symbiotic business relationship' and alleges that UMG offered special licensing rates to Spotify for the song.
The petition also accused UMG of firing employees seen as loyal to Drake 'in an apparent effort to conceal its schemes'. Suffice to say, many in the hip-hop community are unimpressed.
[Lamar][ said squabble up, not lawyer up,' Charlamagne Tha God jokes on social media.
Grammy-nominated artist Rapsody, who featured on Lamar's critically adored 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly, tweets: 'Legal action over losing a rap beef. My my my. Not like us at all. #Cultureovereverything.'
On his podcast, rapper Joe Budden doesn't hold back, calling Drake 'selfish and manipulative' in an expletive-laden rant.
Despite his claims about Spotify and UMG, Drake breezes into the number two spot as the biggest global artist of the year on the streaming platform, after Taylor Swift who claims the top spot.
January 2025
Apparently not bothered about how fellow artists (or his fans) view his legal action over 'Not Like Us', Drake sues his own label, UMG, for defamation.
Drake claims in the lawsuit that Universal knew the allegations detailed in 'Not Like Us' were false but 'chose corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.' Lamar is not named in the suit.
It continues: 'In controversy, UMG saw an opportunity, seized it, and continued to fan the flames.'
The lawsuit has been filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. It claims that Universal 'approved, published, and launched a campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap track' that was 'intended to convey the specific, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal pedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response.'
February 2025
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It's classic Stone, told with utter conviction – although she did name her sister. Was her sister upset with her? 'She's refused to read my book, even though she encouraged me to write it, as did my mom, and I dedicated my book to Mom.' Did her grandfather sexually abuse her mother, too? 'Yes, of course, and all of her sisters. That's why she was removed from her home when she was nine. In her gym class, she was bleeding through the back of her uniform and her teacher brought in social services. They removed her shirt and she had been so badly beaten that her back was covered in scars and blood. 'I think the abuse is why all of her sisters went crazy. They were all treated for mental health problems. There were five of them and only my mom lived past 50. And they had a couple of other sisters who died in their early childhood.' I ask how long her grandfather abused her for. 'I got away from him by the time I was five or six, before he was super sexually abusive to me. I was a very savvy kid. I got away with much lighter abuse than other people did.' Stone knows she has upset people by exposing family secrets, but she's willing to pay the price. 'When you're the person to break the family chain, nobody likes you, right? Your family doesn't like you, your friends don't know what is happening with you. People just think you're crazy and there's something wrong with you.' Although Stone's relationship with her mother was troubled, she did observe a loving relationship between her mother and her father, Joe. Despite him being a harsh disciplinarian in her early years, Stone went on to have a wonderful relationship with Joe, a factory worker who became a tool and die manufacturer. He was a huge influence on her, telling her that if she wanted respect she had to demand it, and showing her how to assert herself in a man's world. 'My dad and I were tighter than two coats of paint.' I tell Stone I could listen to her talking about her family for ever, but we should talk about movies – particularly Nobody 2. She doesn't seem to hear, because she has moved on to the contemporary US. 'In my country, in a democracy, there is a thing that we have to respect the office of the president whether or not you agree with what's happening. When the president decides to remove democracy, does that remove our agreement to respect the office of the presidency?' That's a good question, I say. What do you think? She says she doesn't know, that she's a Buddhist and in Buddhism they call it a koan – a paradoxical riddle that invites deep thought rather than a simple answer. She talks about the way the rights of protected minorities are being removed: 'In our current administration, any disability is considered a fuck-off.' Take dyslexia, she says. Her son Roan has it 'and he is running three corporations', including Cahuenga Media Group, a production and licensing company that focuses on music, television and film-related media. Her brother Patrick, who died in 2023, had it and was a 'brilliant' master carpenter. She points out that many architects and scientists are dyslexic. 'But what we're looking at now in America, is: 'OK, no more disabilities.' Suddenly, nobody with disabilities has value. OK, we're gonna fire everyone in these scientific jobs. And guess what? France is taking all of our scientists.' Blimey! It's not easy to keep up with Stone or get a word in (evidence suggests scientists are moving from the US to France because of the government's funding cuts). She's straight on to misogyny: 'The sweetest fruit is at the end of the branch. These are the things that nature tells us, Mother Nature, Mother Gaia, Mother Earth. But if you don't like mothers and you don't like women, you're not going to get very far with creativity and expansiveness.' Does it feel like an anti-women time in the US? She removes her glasses and pins me with her glare. 'It doesn't matter, because we make you. And we care for you. And we raise you. And we feed you. And we house you. And we show you where your stuff is, because you couldn't find your fucking socks without us. So if you don't have our intrauterine tracking device to help you find your ass in a snowstorm, I don't know what you would do. So you can be as anti-women as you want to be, and you can make babies in a test tube if that's the world you want to live in – and have a good time!' I assume she's addressing Donald Trump, but it feels personal. I don't want to live in that kind of world, I protest meekly. 'Exactly! It's never meant to be that way, because birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, so the rest of this stuff is just nonsense. To me. OK? Because I am very much in league with Mother Nature, Mother Gaia.' The young Stone was exceptionally bright, as she's quick to tell me. She describes herself as 'fiercely intelligent' (two well-chosen words) and her IQ is reportedly 154 (genius level). She skipped several grades at school; at 15, she and four boys were sent to Edinboro State College in Pennsylvania as an 'experiment', three years ahead of most of their peers. She majored in English literature and excelled at golf, but left before graduating. 'My college professor was furious when I was leaving for modelling,' she says. 'He was like: 'You're throwing away your career,' because he really thought my career was in writing.' She moved to New York and became a successful model. In 1980, she made her movie debut as an extra in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories, dazzlingly Monroe-esque, planting a kiss on a train window. She moved to Hollywood and took lessons from the acting coach Roy London, who also taught Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr, Forest Whitaker and Geena Davis. Over the next decade, she played numerous forgettable parts in forgettable films and television shows. In 1990, Paul Verhoeven cast her opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the science fiction classic Total Recall. When she discovered Verhoeven's next film was about an enigmatic writer and murder suspect called Catherine Tramell, she was determined to get the part. The problem was, Verhoeven, the screenwriter, Joe Eszterhas, and the male lead, Michael Douglas, didn't want her, not least because she was largely unknown. Twelve actors (including the top choice, Michelle Pfeiffer, as well as Davis, Julia Roberts, Debra Winger and Kathleen Turner) are said to have turned down the part, which was regarded as risque and risky. Even when she started filming, Stone was convinced they were still looking for a replacement. Basic Instinct was a huge success, becoming the ninth-highest-grossing film of 1992 and taking more than $350m worldwide. More significantly, it was the talking point of the year. LGBTQ+ campaigners picketed it because they believed the depiction of Tramell was homophobic – a rare high-profile lesbian or bisexual character in a blockbuster and a sociopath at best. Critics scavenged over the film's cultural carrion. Was it exploitative tack or, as the feminist academic Camille Paglia proclaimed, a compelling exploration of sexuality and power dynamics? Paglia said Stone gave 'one of the great performances by a woman in screen history', calling Tramell 'a great vamp figure, like Mona Lisa herself, like a pagan goddess'. And then there was that image. Or, at least, the idea of it. A split-second long – too short to fully register. Yet, somehow, almost seeing her vulva as she uncrossed her legs was more scandalous than simply seeing it. Stone said she had been duped into the shot, writing in her memoir that she was asked to remove her underwear to prevent light reflection and told nothing revealing would be shown. She had no idea it would be used as it was. Appalled, she considered legal action against the film-makers, but ultimately accepted the shot because it was true to Tramell's character and artistic truth trumped personal humiliation. Basic Instinct made Sharon Stone and, to an extent, destroyed her. Astonishingly, that one image came to define her. She's still proud of the film and regards it as a great performance – one only she could have given. The problem is, she says, casting directors deliberately conflated her with Tramell. 'They said I was just like the character, like, somehow, they found someone who was just like that and she slipped into the clothes and it was magically recorded on film. Not that it was a difficult part to play and that 12 other actresses of great fame and fortune turned it down. Then, as it played everywhere on the globe for the next 20 years, people started to go: 'Do you think this really has anything to do with the fact that we thought we saw up her skirt? I think maybe it's actually a pretty good performance.' 'So it went from me being nominated for a Golden Globe and people laughing when they called my name in the room to people giving me standing ovations and making me the woman of the year. People came to recognise: she's not going away, the film's not going away, the impact of the film is not going away.' When she was named GQ Germany's woman of the year in 2019, she recreated the scene, talked about the importance of empowerment and said, devastatingly: 'There was a time when all I was was a joke.' The film didn't go away, but Stone did. After Basic Instinct, she made one great movie, turning in an outstanding performance as the damaged con artist Ginger McKenna in Martin Scorsese's Casino. And then, I begin to say … She finishes the sentence for me. 'And then I got nothing. I never got any more parts.' Why? 'I really wish you could tell me. Sometimes I think it was because I was too good.' Stone is not averse to bigging herself up. Nor is she averse to a conspiracy theory. 'Sometimes I think when you get nominated for an Academy Award and the greatest living actor on the planet doesn't, that's an imbalance in the male-female dynamic that is not great.' Does she mean Robert De Niro, her Casino co-star? She nods, before suggesting it wasn't De Niro that was upset, but the powers that be. Stone returns to the 'too good' theory, telling me about a party she was at with Hollywood's glitterati before the Oscars ceremony. 'We were in this very small room. Sidney Poitier was there, Woody Allen, everyone. Francis Coppola came up to me and he put a hand on my shoulder, like my dad used to when something really serious was about to happen. And he said: 'I need to tell you something and it's really hard.' He said: 'You're not going to win the Oscar.' And I said: 'What?' And he said: 'You're not going to win the Oscar, Sharon.' I went: 'Why?' And he went: 'I didn't win it for The Godfather and Marty didn't win it for Raging Bull and you're not going to win it for Casino.' 'I looked at him and he went: 'They can't hear opera. And when you lose, Marty and I are going to be in the room, Sharon, and we want you to know you're going to lose with us and we are there with you. But your performance will stand the test of time. Over the years, no one will remember who won and lost, but they will remember your performance.' The way she tells the story, with such po-faced gravitas, is some performance in itself. She continues, in the voice of Coppola: ''And what you have to do as an actress is remember you are not a regular actress, you are an opera singer. And not everyone will understand you, and not everyone will understand your ability. You will lose with Marty and you will lose with me, but you will always be in our losers' circle.'' She finally allows herself a smile. 'So that is what I have carried through my life – that I am a big fat loser like Marty and Francis Ford Coppola.' It's hard to know why Stone didn't get offered the roles she deserved after Casino, although, aside from the conspiracy theories, there were some other reasons. In 2000, she and her second husband, Phil Bronstein, adopted Roan and she focused on motherhood. A year later, at 43, she had a near fatal stroke. It's a miracle she survived – she says her brain bled for nine days and doctors gave her a 1% chance of survival. She had to relearn to walk, speak and read. Incredibly, she made a full recovery, but offers of work dried up. 'In those days, as a woman, if something happened to you, you were done,' she says. 'It was as though you did something bad or wrong. So even when I wanted to come back to work, it was like: 'Sure, you can do four episodes of Law and Order,' and that's it. I did everything I was allowed to do to pay my penance for getting sick.' How long did that last? 'That went on and on and on and on and I made nothing. And it just eventually became impossible to work.' When she was offered parts, she says, they were rubbish. 'I reached the point where, after my stroke, and nobody wanting me, and people wanting me to do this silly, diminished work, I decided that I'm not going to work any more.' She corrects herself. She decided not to accept roles she didn't like, which in effect meant not working. She believes she has continued to be punished for Basic Instinct by the industry and in her private life. Stone says that when she and Bronstein got divorced in 2004, the film played a significant role in her losing custody of Roan. 'They had my eight-year-old on the stand at one point, asking him if they knew his mother did sex movies.' She claims they reduced her to a soft pornography actor, then suggested that made her an unsuitable mother. She says the battle for Roan lasted 11 years, at which point she was finally given responsibility for Roan again. Nevertheless, at the end of her book, she thanks Bronstein and his wife 'for finding a path to a whole, healthy and blending family with me. There is no greater gift.' As she says, she looks for the positive. In 2005, she adopted her second son, Laird, now 20, as a single parent, followed by her third son, 19-year-old Quinn, a year later. With no quality film work coming in, she focused on the art forms she had loved as a child – writing and painting. Her gorgeous impressionist and abstract expressionist paintings now sell for tens of thousands of dollars. The titles (Quaaludes, Hoisted on My Own Petard, If We Make It) could be short stories. I ask what the painting It's My Garden, Asshole is about. 'I was with a friend who was in her early 40s and had just had her second baby after losing her first. We were discussing how her in-laws had the audacity to tell her they thought she was a little too fat from the second pregnancy when a drone flew over my back yard. I thought: so many people have a lot of opinions about what we should do with our bodies and our faces while we're delivering life on this planet, and taking care of everybody, and I was like: 'You know what, it's my garden, asshole!'' Stone also became an activist, raising millions for people with HIV. In 2016, at 58, she went back to university to get the degree she had started at 15. 'When Hillary [Clinton] was running for president and said: 'You can do anything,' I thought: that's true, I should get my degree.' Since Basic Instinct 2 in 2006 – much disparaged by critics and which she called 'a piece of shit' – Stone has made few movies of note. But things are changing. This month, she's back with Nobody 2, about a nobody, played by Bob Odenkirk, who turns out to be a top assassin. 'Now, I'm making good films. I was good in Nobody 2 and I know it.' She certainly looks as if she's having fun as the crime boss Lendina. Stone says when she was offered the part, she insisted on transforming her into a feminist hero. 'I said: 'I need this villain to be more personal to me.' I don't want to play villains unless they touch the zeitgeist. So I wanted this villain to feel as if she came out of social media, because that is the most scary thing right now.' Why is she so often cast as a villain? 'I think very beautiful, smart people are perceived in very specific ways. Because I'm a woman who is beautiful, it's easier to have me not be emotionally intelligent, not have me be deep, not have me be tender and full. People don't really believe that a beautiful woman is accessible to them.' And inaccessibility, she says, is regarded as a form of villainy. 'Men don't even ask you to date because they can't imagine you are accessible to them. Within society, we have never said a woman can be beautiful and smart. And kind. And nice. And funny. And a mom. And the breadwinner. No, no, no, no. She couldn't be all those things, because then, oh my God, she would be equal to a man! If I was beautiful and smart and nice, what would happen to society?' Five more minutes, the publicist says. Stone is on a roll. 'I could be UN person of the year, which I was [she was named the UN Correspondents Association global citizen of the year in 2023 for her humanitarian work]. I could pitch ideas to the United Nations and have them fulfilled and no one may ever know. I could be a Nobel Peace Summit award winner [in 2013 for her HIV and Aids work] and an Einstein winner [she won the Einstein Spirit of Achievement award in 2007, also for her HIV and Aids work]. I could win these awards, but we can't also have me be nice, or kind, or compassionate, because what would happen? The. World. Would. Fall. Apart.' Actually, I say, one of my favourite films of hers is one in which she is kind. In The Mighty, she plays the mother of Kieran Culkin's Freak, a 12-year-old with a terminal condition. She says it's one of her favourites, too. 'And you know why I got that film? I'll tell you exactly why I got that film. I got that film because I had a production deal with Harvey Weinstein and after years of him paying for my offices and my staff, paying for everything, he realised he wasn't getting anything he was hoping for. And he turned around and said: 'I've got this children's book and I have to produce it.'' She stops, briefly. 'But I was not going to fuck Harvey Weinstein.' Did he try it on with her? 'Well, I'm not the girl he's going to take into a hotel room naked and I'm not the girl he's going to grab. I am the girl he threw across the room at a cocktail party. And I am the girl that he hit. And I am the girl whose ass he grabbed, but I'm not the girl he's going to rape or molest and I'm not the girl he's going to ask for a massage, right? But I am the girl he's going to give a production deal to and going to get fed up with and give a children's movie to deal with.' Stone has been associated with amfAR, an Aids research foundation, for 30 years, hosting many of its fundraising galas. In 2007, Weinstein got involved with the charity. 'Harvey then put himself on the board, right? And backstage he would shove me around and yell at me and come on stage and grab the mic from me and try to make these inappropriate deals with his friends, like we're gonna take that money from that guy on this item. Then I'd take the mic from him and say: 'Harvey, get off the stage, I call the numbers, we're not taking that deal.' 'I'd come off the stage and he'd shove me across the room and go: 'Don't humiliate me,' and I'd go: 'You're a crook, Harvey, get your fucking hands off me.' He did not try to fuck me, but he was definitely physically violent with me. He slapped me, he threw me across the room, he shoved me around countless times.' Last question please, the publicist says. Perhaps she's as exhausted as I am. Stone is over the top, a little unreliable, thoroughly immodest and rather magnificent. But it feels as if she has barely started. There is so much more to talk about. She has not even mentioned the time the producer Robert Evans advised her to have sex with her Sliver co-star, William Baldwin, to save the film and get a better performance out of him. (She was appalled and refused.) Or the time she had her breasts reconstructed after having benign tumours removed and the surgeon gave her a nonconsensual breast enlargement because he thought she would be grateful. A couple of days before our interview, it was announced that Eszterhas, the Basic Instinct writer, was planning a reboot. Would she take part in it? She laughs. 'There's not going to be a Basic Instinct reboot. I hate to break it to you, but Joe Eszterhas couldn't write himself out of a Walgreens drug store.' It's 20 minutes since the publicist told me to wrap up. I'm beginning to feel guilty, but Stone is still happily talking about empty nest syndrome, now that her youngest boys have left for college, and her plans for the future. She says she may lease out her home because she has so many projects on the go in so many places. She mentions her part in the new series of Euphoria and 'a beautiful film' called In Memoriam that she has already completed. It sounds like you're in a good place, I say. 'I'm having a fun time. All of a sudden, the kids are out and I'm like: now what am I going to do? I think going back to work is what's happening.' Despite everything – the abuse, the stroke, the fallout from Basic Instinct, the losses – she says she has always been a glass-half-full kind of gal. Actually, she says, even an empty glass can have its positives. 'It can get refilled, right? Sometimes an empty glass is what you need.' Nobody 2 is in cinemas in Australia from 14 August and the UK, the US and Ireland from 15 August
The National
a day ago
- The National
The 'Korean wave' has hit Scotland's shores
From the record-breaking final season of Squid Game, which amassed more than 130 million views on Netflix, or the chart-topping KPop Demon Hunters to high-street Korean restaurants, the 'Korean Wave' has hit Scottish shores and has embedded itself into mainstream culture and everyday life. The phenomenon is referred to as the 'Hallyu' – a collective term for the global spread and growing popularity of South Korean culture. One of the biggest contributing factors to the global popularity of K-culture is K-pop which has been popularised by groups such as BTS and EXO. READ MORE: 'Absolutely crazy': Scottish jazz artist scores new film by Hollywood director The popularity of K-pop is constantly reaching new heights across the UK as artists such as Stray Kids and Blackpink have headlined BST Hyde Park in recent years, with the latter due to perform two nights at the 90,000-capacity Wembley Stadium in August. Another significant milestone saw animated group HUNTR/X – from Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters – hit number one in the UK charts – the first Korean hit since PSY's Gangnam Style in 2012. The global genre has proved popular across Scotland too, with growing demand for events and concerts in the country. SeoulRush – a K-pop events company based in Glasgow – has witnessed this surge in demand first-hand too, as it has hosted K-pop club nights across the city since 2012. 'We've always tried our best to create an environment where people can come and enjoy K-pop. It has never been about money, or blowing up, or virality. So, we are just glad people still come to our events 13 years later,' said David Skelley of SeoulRush. 'We love to see that there are more and more K-Pop and dance societies growing each year at universities. We love working with students and trying to give them a place to showcase their talents.' However, despite the growing fan bases in Scotland, K-pop groups don't typically perform in the country as part of their world tours. With concerts such as Kiss Of Life at O2 Academy Glasgow, fans have shown there's an appetite for more, but these events are few and far between. 'I honestly feel that you can't beat the passion of fans for anything in Scotland. We love hard. So, where it is tragic that a lot of these companies overlook Scotland for their events, the recent Kiss Of Life concert in Glasgow shows that people will be there. We just need that opportunity,' said Skelley. Ahead of the release of season two of Squid Game, Just Eat conducted a poll to explore how the Korean Wave is impacting the takeaway industry in the UK as well. The research showed that 53% of those polled have been motivated by Korean music and TV to try Korean food and products. Leigh Phillipson, UK sales director of Just Eat, said: 'Cultural trends increasingly influence everything from what we eat to how we take care of ourselves, and the K-wave is testament to this – orders of Korean food on Just Eat have grown 23% in the past year.' READ MORE: 'F***ing slags': Oasis take aim at Edinburgh Council chiefs in first Murrayfield gig The spread of Korean culture across Scotland goes beyond K-pop, K-dramas and cuisine as the demand for Korean beauty products also continues to boom. K-beauty became popular among Western consumers in the 2010s, but re-emerged through social media platforms such as TikTok as influencers promoted the benefits of the products. The demand for K-beauty products can also be seen in Scotland, as Wee Ghost Beauty (pictured) recently became the first Korean skincare shop in Scotland when it opened its doors in Glasgow in June. Founder of Wee Ghost Beauty and Scottish skincare expert Lauren Miller became obsessed with Korean skincare products and declared it like 'unlocking the secrets to glowing, healthy skin that I never knew existed'. She added that Korean skincare focuses on 'achieving healthy, radiant skin through ultimate hydration'. K-beauty is not just a trend but is seen as the future of the cosmetics industry, as it's expected to grow rapidly from being worth $113 billion in 2025 to more than $212bn in 2032. It's difficult to predict where this Korean Wave will lead, but Scotland has undoubtedly embraced K-culture and taken it into their hearts. It's an exciting cultural moment to watch closely and Scotland could hopefully have more of a part to play in it. SeoulRush's Skelley believes that it won't be too long before we see 'the first Scottish K-Pop idol [as] we are a very culturally diverse country'.
