Kendrick Lamar is celebrating his latest album, GNX, on the biggest stage in American music. But everyone wants to know if he’s bringing the beef. NPR’s Sidney Madden and Stephen Thompson explain. This episode was produced by Travis Larchuk, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Peter Balonon-Rosen and Victoria Chamberlin, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members A handmade t-shirt celebrating Kendrick Lamar's hit song "They Not Like Us." Photo by Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened after Kendrick Lamar's last episode?
Today Explained does not bring you the story of Not Like Us today. We did that back in May when it was the biggest story in music. But a lot has happened since then. Shortly after our episode aired, Kendrick Lamar closed out a Juneteenth concert by playing the Drake diss track six consecutive times. In September, we found out Kendrick would be headlining the Super Bowl halftime show.
Chapter 2: How did Kendrick Lamar's song become an anthem?
The song became the anthem for the Dodgers championship season. It got played at Harris rallies. Remember Kamala? Then in November, it got nominated for five Grammys. It would go on to win all of them on Sunday. That's a record for any song ever. But also in November, Drake took this beef to court. That's never really happened in a rap beef before.
Chapter 3: What legal actions have been taken in the rap beef?
Just a few weeks ago, Drake sued Kendrick's label over Not Like Us. There's pending litigation over this song heading into Kendrick's performance this Super Bowl Sunday, and that's what we're going to explain on the show today.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the lawsuit involving Drake?
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I got, I got, I got, I got. Today Explained.
Sydney Madden has been following the Drake-Kendrick story for months for NPR, and she's here to tell you about how this historic rap beef became a historic legal battle.
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Chapter 5: How has the beef affected Kendrick Lamar's success?
So back in November, in the midst of, honestly, Kendrick dropping his sixth studio album and taking a big victory lap off the beef, Drake filed a legal action alleging that his label, his parent company, Universal Music Group, colluded with the streaming giant Spotify in order to boost Not Like Us to become this streaming darling and one of the most streamed songs of 2024.
And debuting in the number one spot is Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us.
All right, 2024 has been a great year for Kendrick as he lands on top of the Billboard charts.
It's Lamar's first ever number one on the year-end global songs chart. And really became this undeniable hit and propelled it to be such a cultural force. And... I think the merits of that were questioned because we heard that song at high school graduations, at bar mitzvahs.
They don't even like drink at the bar mitzvahs.
At weddings. As walkout songs at sporting events.
Number nine.
Spotify didn't do any of that. You know, people have autonomy and that song bumps. Like, let's be honest.
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Chapter 6: Why is Drake suing his own label?
They not like us. They not like you.
So that legal action was later withdrawn. And this new lawsuit that really replaced it, it goes at Universal Music Group specifically. And it's not about the song itself. It's not about the merits of the song or how popular the song was, but it's about how UMG
used all of its power in the music industry to mobilize the song and further the accusation that Kendrick makes in the track, which is that Drake is allegedly a pedophile. Drake denies the claim that he's a pedophile or a child groomer of any kind, but it details the amount of real world harm that's been caused by the accusations in the song.
Now, we should say here that UMG is Kendrick Lamar's label, but it also happens to be Drake's label, right?
Exactly. I mean, that's just the way the music industry works now. Everything becomes a conglomerate. So, yeah, this is both artists' parent label.
When Drake took this legal action on this song back in the fall of last year, I remember seeing conjecture that part of the reason he was doing this was to maybe put himself in a stronger bargaining position for his contract negotiation at UMG. Did you see that? Do you think that might have been part of what was going on here?
I am not a member of Drake's legal team, so I can't say indefinitely what the strategy was. But in the January lawsuit, the argument that's being set up is that UMG went after Drake by way of promoting the song so heavily. Mm-hmm. What we know about Drake, Drake is one of the top artists in the world. He's the most streamed artist outside of Taylor Swift.
Drake has continued to dominate the Billboard charts in the 2020s with four number one albums.
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Chapter 7: What are the stakes for Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl?
Highly anticipated would be an understatement. Drake's new album, Certified Lover Boy, became Spotify's most streamed album in a single day.
Drake commemorated toppling multiple chart records that were long held by the Beatles with an Abbey Road-inspired tattoo of the Fab Four.
He makes UMG a lot of money and with money comes power. So he has a lot of bargaining power. But if your reputation is so tarnished by this claim that you're allegedly a pedophile, obviously that's going to lower your stock. So if you were going to resign to that company, they'd have more leverage.
The lawsuit names vloggers, YouTubers, Twitch streamers, and even established news outlets as sources that, according to his lawyers, ran with the narrative and the accusation of him being a pedophile and really defamed him and his life and livelihood. I should say NPR is mentioned in the lawsuit. I myself am even mentioned in the lawsuit as one of the journalists.
So Drake reads your work, we can assume, or what?
Or his lawyers do. I don't know. But the lawsuit also shares photos of flyers that were posted around his neighborhood in Toronto alleging that he was a sexual predator. And the lawsuit also details that the ridicule and that the threats were getting so bad around him that he had to pull his child out of school.
Someone shot at his house, right?
Yes, that there have been break-ins that have happened at his house since May that he thinks are connected to the song and promotion of the song. And yes, a member of his team, one of his bodyguards was even shot and injured during one of those break-ins.
So these are all the pieces of evidence they're putting forward in furtherance of the argument that this song has done real harm to him and it's UMG's fault.
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Chapter 8: Will Kendrick perform 'Not Like Us' at the Super Bowl?
Why isn't Drake just suing Kendrick or going after Kendrick specifically? Is it because that would be a worse look for him in hip hop?
I don't know about looks because in the court of public opinion and in the culture, the look is not that great already. But it is a good question that's been floating around a lot. And one thing that Charles said in a past episode of Today Explained that I want to underline is there's no rules in rap beef, period.
The thing that people have to understand about rap beef is rap beef is not about truth that much. Rap beef is about who is the funniest or who will go low and will punch you the hardest.
Drake also went at Kendrick a lot during this rap beef, and he accused Kendrick of abusing his wife. And he alleged that one of Kendrick's children was fathered by another man. So if he were to go after Kendrick directly, he could potentially open himself up to a countersuit there. There was a lot of mudslinging back and forth. But what is it that Jay-Z says? He says, I'm not a businessman.
I'm a business man.
Like, both Kendrick and Drake are businesses. They are corporations in their own right. Hip-hop is also, in many senses, a business. And in Drake's lawsuit against UMG, they make it very clear that this is not about a war of words between two artists, and it makes no claims against Kendrick for that. It's about UMG as the publisher and the exclusive rights holder of their music,
making this, quote, malicious decision to promote one of the songs so heavily over others that have come out in the context of the beef.
So for everyone who thinks Drake just keeps taking L's, there is something to be said for what they're not seeing, which is behind the scenes Drake protecting what Drake cares about most, which is his bottom line.
Period. He knows that culturally speaking, unequivocally, he lost this rap beef, right? But he's gonna get his lick back one way or another. And when it comes to his pockets, that's a great way to look at it. Kendrick and Drake are part of the Mount Rushmore of hip hop. And that comes with setting new precedents in hip hop and taking hip hop to new levels. And that includes monetarily speaking.
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