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| After Drake battle, Kendrick Lamar turns victory lap concert into LA unity celebration |
After defeating fellow rap icon Drake, Kendrick Lamar wasn't happy to just celebrate his victory. Instead, he used his Juneteenth "Pop Out" performance at the Forum to create a cathartic livestreamed celebration of Los Angeles togetherness.
A combination of rising LA rappers and celebrities, like as Tyler, The Creator, Steve Lacy, and YG, performed during the three-hour event that Lamar organised. When it was his turn to play, the 37-year-old rapper dominated a performance alongside other Black Hippy artists Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, and Jay Rock. He also dropped his Drake diss tracks, "Euphoria" and "6:16 in LA," before Dr. Dre joined him on stage.
After performing "Still D.R.E." and "California Love," the two legendary West Coast artists declared Kendrick Lamar "one of the greatest that ever did it." Dre then asked for a minute of silence from the boisterous audience. It was a miscommunication. Then he sang the line from "Sixth Sense" that begins Kendrick Lamar's smash hit song "Not Like Us": "I see dead people."
The Weeknd, LeBron James, Ayo Edebiri, and Rick Ross were among the 17,000 spectators who rapped along to the stinging yet joyous DJ Mustard song, which Kendrick Lamar repeated twice after the first verse and performed four times in total.
Shuffling, frolicking, dancing and spinning around him as Lamar strode the stage in a red hoodie: NBA stars Russell Westbrook and DeMar DeRozan, Mustard, rapper Roddy Ricch and even a teenage dance troupe led by the krumping innovator Tommy the Clown.
Lamar reveled in the moment: “Y’all ain’t gon’ let nobody disrespect the West Coast. Y’all ain’t gon’ let nobody imitate our legends, huh,” he said, referring to Drake’s use of an AI tool to mimic 2Pac’s voice on one of his diss records. He also added a line to “Euphoria” referencing Drake’s purchase of 2Pac’s jewelry: “Give me 2Pac ring back and I might give you a little respect.”
But the Compton native had more on his mind, calling out to specific men and women to join him on-stage for a group photo.
“Let the world see this,” he said. “You ain’t seen this many sections on one stage keeping it together and having peace. ... For all of us to be on this stage together, unity, from East side ... LA, Crips, Bloods, Piru — this ... is special, man. We put this ... together just for ya’ll.
“This ... ain’t got nothing to do with no song at this point, ain’t got nothing to do with no back and forth records, it’s got everything to do with this moment right here. That’s what this ... was about, to bring all of us together.”
After the final song, Lamar exited, saying “I promise you this won’t be the last of us.” The stabbing horns of the “Not Like Us” instrumental kicked in once again and the crowd rapped the lyrics without Lamar as they filed through hallways out to the parking lot. The Twitch and Prime Video livestream concluded.
The rivalry that had energised hip-hop fans in recent months had long been akin to a cold war, with defamatory remarks interwoven throughout some of the two rappers' greatest singles from the previous ten years, including as "Energy," "All The Stars," and "HUMBLE." It all started with Kendrick Lamar's eye-catching line on Big Sean's 2013 song "Control," when he expressed his desire to surpass Drake and other prominent rappers. The rapper-turned-actor from Canada was personally offended since he was the greater star and had personally chosen Lamar to join his second headlining tour a year prior.
After then, the two's careers took quite different turns and prospered in parallel. In order to consistently release club-ready tunes, Drake collaborates with emerging musicians, posts jokey memes and pictures of his fortune online, and incorporates popular culture's hottest hip-hop and pop songs. Lamar frequently takes long sabbaticals from the public spotlight to work on incredibly personal concept albums with mostly only his own voice on them, all the while keeping a low profile on social media.
Drake’s taste-making ability mostly kept him on top of the rap world, with an approach that matched the direction of pop music as a whole. But as his hit-making consistency diminished, an opening emerged. Lamar, Future and Metro Boomin kicked off their direct assault on Toronto’s king in March with “Like That.”
Lamar made his disdain clear: He sees Drake as a talented outsider who enjoys and profits from hip-hop culture but didn’t grow up in it, code-switching his way into the mainstream without a core identity or authenticity. His nail-in-the-coffin final verse on “Not Like Us” sums up his view: “You run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars / No, you not a colleague, you a ... colonizer.”
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