At the Annual Policy on Pop Culture debate meeting, chaos descended after the Lexington High School Policy Debate team released the debate topic for the 2024-2025 season: Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake.

The debate topic, which was released this past Friday, initially received mixed reactions from the debate team. While some thought the topic was too personal for the students at LHS, others had already begun to celebrate the choice.

“Finally!” exclaimed Marvino Roomes, a self proclaimed Drake fan. “I’m so sick of all the Kendrick glaze. The reason why this ‘beef’ is famous is because of Drake.”

After the initial buzz calmed down, questions were answered from the crowd. At first, people asked about the start of the season, tournaments, and evidence citation, but an inflammatory question soon brought the meeting into– well, a heated debate, as some overly zealous debate kids do. Jay Coal, the student who started it all, recalls how his remark erupted into a fully fledged dispute.

“I remember saying, ‘I’m not so sure about this, I mean, didn’t Kendrick already win?’” Coal said. “After that, I only remember hearing someone shout, ‘Oh Marvino gon’ take care of you!’”

The rest is the matter of piecing together various eye-witness accounts. All seem to agree on the following: there was a disagreement, leading to a debate between two student bodies that eventually heated to the point a teacher intervened. 

“I’m really torn,” Poe Atic-Justis, a senior at LHS, said. “Both of them are fire rappers so I really don’t know.”

Atic-Justis went on to illustrate the scene– Drizzy’s on one side, Kdot’s on the other– with the former citing Drake’s twenty-one songs with over a billion streams in comparison to Kendrick’s seven. 

“Come on, people. How can Kendrick say he’s above Drake? He can barely see over his head,” Roomes said, citing the music mogul’s height of 5’ 5”.

The response from the Kdot’s was quick, underscoring above all that by popular consensus Kendrick actually won the feud, which just made him that much better. 

“Drake’s shade against Lamar fell short on even a catchy level- if anything, he simply established Lamar as a level above him,” said one die-hard Kendrick fan, Youph Oria.

After hours of debate, keeping a growing crowd in rapt, it became clear the argument was running out of steam, if not passion, as evidence began to degrade into personal disses.

“I remember some kid pointing out that I was only an inch taller than Kendrick. I honestly thought that was quite uncalled for,” Roomes said. “Can you imagine the audacity?!”

After a few minutes more of insults flying and multiple requests for a verdict on who the true winner was, an anonymous LHS teacher broke up the meeting and sent the students home. 

Reports of friendship breakups and impromptu rap competitions can be followed through the posts of the newly made LHSLamar and LHSDrake Instagram accounts. As to why LHS students simply can’t support the other side, many have given the same answer.

“They’re simply just not like us,” Oria said.