Did Drake Just Take Aim at Kendrick Lamar, LeBron James and J. Cole in a Leaked Track?
Hollywood is bracing after a Drake leak, as clips of 1 a.m. in Albany hit social media May 13 and sparked a frenzy to decode the pointed bars and name the A-listers in his sights.
Drake has a leak on his hands, and if you believe the snippets making the rounds, he’s swinging at multiple big names again. The track is called 1 a.m. in Albany, and it popped up on social feeds Wednesday, May 13. Fans immediately went full Zapruder on the lyrics, and, yeah, there’s plenty to unpack.
'Muggsy Bogues dunked for once, even I’m a bit amazed, someone give the kid a raise'
That line is what set everyone off. Muggsy Bogues was 5'3", famously the shortest player in NBA history. Kendrick Lamar is 5'5". Do the math. It reads like Drake’s latest jab in a feud that has basically defined rap discourse for years.
Why this leak matters in the long-running Drake vs. Kendrick saga
Drake and Kendrick started as friendly peers, then spent the last decade trading shots. Back in 2013, when Kendrick dropped his Control verse, Drake told Vibe he didn’t feel the need to respond and even called Kendrick a genius, but also said he stood his ground while his own album rollout got hijacked by the drama. Fast-forward and the timeline is crowded:
- Kendrick: The new Albany track seems to poke him with the Muggsy-height bar. There’s also a nerdy title detail: Kendrick put out 6:16 in L.A. in 2024, which mirrors Drake’s long-running timestamp series (5 a.m. in Toronto, 4 p.m. in Calabasas, etc.). In 2025, Kendrick headlined the Super Bowl halftime show and brought out Serena Williams during Not Like Us, another shot in the feud. Drake swiped back that same year on What Did I Miss?, rapping: 'I don’t give a f*** if you love me, I don’t give a f*** if you like me / Askin’ me, How did it feel? Can’t say it didn’t surprise me' and later, 'It’s love for my brothers and death to a traitor, let’s go / She might decide to say no to me now, but say yes to me later, let’s go.' Also worth noting: a lawsuit Drake filed over a Kendrick diss track got tossed as 'nonactionable.'
- J. Cole: In Albany, Drake reportedly singles out a 'married rapper' before pivoting to a different target. Fans read that as a Cole mention.
- LeBron James: Drake goes at LeBron for publicly siding with Kendrick during the now-viral beef. The bar is not subtle: 'I shouldn’t even be shocked to see you in that arena, because you always made your career off of switching teams up.' Then comes the double (maybe triple) entendre: 'Please stop asking what’s going on with 23 & me, I’m a real n****, and he’s not, it’s in my DNA.' That’s LeBron’s No. 23 plus a 23andMe play, capped with a wink at Kendrick’s track DNA.
Point is, this thing keeps evolving in real time, and Albany reads like Drake’s latest status update, with a couple celebrity asides for extra spice.
The release plan
Drake’s new album, Iceman, is set to drop Friday, May 15. Given how quickly these clips spread, expect a full lyric-by-lyric autopsy the second it hits streaming. Until then, the leaked bars already did their job: they got everyone talking, again.