Like many other folks approaching 70, Tom Hanks found himself out of the loop when the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake dominated headlines during the first week of May. So, he reached out to his son and hip-hop enthusiast, Chet Hanks, for an explanation and got a far longer response than he expected — so much so that he apparently didn’t bother reading the reply.

Chet posted the exchange in his Instagram Stories today (May 20th), which began with his father saying, “Big Main, can you explain the Drake/Kendrick Lamar feud to me?”

In response, Chet broke down how Drake and J. Cole had long claimed they were among the “Big 3” of hip-hop alongside Kendrick Lamar, which prompted Kendrick to come after them on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That.”

He continued by referring to Drake’s short jokes on “Push Ups” before moving on to the meat of the beef on “euphoria,” saying, “Kendrick was like, you’re a dead beat dad and made fun of his Canadian accent.”

Then, Chet got into more detail than his father expected while summing up the back and forth of “Family Matters” and “Meet the Grahams,” followed by Kendrick’s victory lap on “Not Like Us” and Drake’s lackluster response with “The Heart Part 6.” He wrote:

“So Drake came back and was like, ‘oh yeah? Well I heard you beat your wife’ but literally like 30 seconds later Kendrick put out a diss overshadowing Drakes diss where he pretty much methodically dismantled Drakes entire psyche and called him a pedophile for flirting with young girls and revealing Drake had another kid he was hiding from the world, which turned out to be false, and Drake came back and was like, ‘hahaha I gotcho ass I had people give you false info to make you look stupid’ but it didn’t even matter then cuz then Kendrick just dropped another West Coast banger where he really went in labeling Drake a pedophile that was pretty much the sonic equivalent of when you took me to your high school in Oakland and we walked in on the basketball game and everybody started going nuts.”

Tom Hanks’ eyes had likely glazed over at that point, but Chet punctuated his explanation by writing, “Like if you heard it you would automatically know how to Crip walk with a stank face while clutching an Oscar in each hand with Marshawn Lynch, then dap him up and tell him “Town Bidness” which solidified the win for not only Kendrick but the entire West Coast.”

This left the elder Hanks to respond, “Holy cow! These are fighting words. People taking sides?? Who’s winning??” Realizing his breakdown went far over his father’s head, Chet replied, “Did you not just read what I said?”

Run-on sentence aside, Chet actually explained the feud pretty well. Maybe if he had broken it up into multiple messages he would’ve had a chance.

Though the beef has gone quiet for now, it’s landed Kendrick two No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Like That” and “Not Like Us.”

Meanwhile, Tom Hanks recently co-produced Apple TV’s World War II drama Masters of the Air and narrated its companion documentary, The Bloody Hundredth. Read our cover story on the series and sign up for AppleTV+ here if you’re not already a subscriber.

Tom hit him with the “I ain’t readin all that…”

— Andrew Barber (@fakeshoredrive) May 20, 2024