Would Oakland really be Drake’s ‘last stop’? What a huge cultural moment says about the city’s hip-hop scene

How did Oakland find itself in the middle of hip-hop’s “great war” — the breathless, vicious feud that fascinated the public as it raged this past month between Drake and Kendrick Lamar?

In the show-stopping single “Not Like Us,” which last week debuted at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, Compton native Lamar suggested that a future Drake concert in Oakland would be the Toronto rapper’s “last stop,” implying Drake was no longer welcome here.

That’s because Drake, in a previous diss track targeting Lamar...