Kendrick Lamar, winner of the Record Of The Year, Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song, Best Music Video, and Song Of The Year awards, poses in the press room during the 67th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 2.Mike Blake/Reuters
For the first time in the Super Bowl’s 58-year history, there will be two losers on Sunday at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. One will either be the Kansas City Chiefs or the Philadelphia Eagles. The other will be Drake.
Because his nemesis, Kendrick Lamar, is the halftime performer. The American rapper will almost assuredly perform Not Like Us, a snappy hater anthem that just won five Grammy Awards, including best song and best record. The diss track from the summer savaged Drake and ended the hip hop titans’ ruthless back-and-forth battle of disrespectful songs.
When Not Like Us won Record of the Year at Sunday’s Grammys in Lamar’s hometown of Los Angeles, the star-studded crowd sang along to the eviscerating number’s scandalous lyrics. The size of the television audience for the Grammys will be dwarfed by the anticipated 100 million or more viewers watching Lamar take his victory lap at the Super Bowl, when Drake will be half a world away, giving a concert in Australia.
If during the halftime show the camera pans to Chiefs fan Taylor Swift in a luxury box singing “tell the pop star quit hidin’,” Drake may never recover.
In an interview with fashion designer Recho Omondi on her podcast The Cutting Room Floor that took place months before Drake lost his rhyme duel with Lamar, the hip hop legend Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) wondered how long Drake’s commercial dominance could last. “What happens when this thing collapses?” he asked. “Are we not in some early stage of that at this present hour? Are we seeing the collapse of the empire?”
If Drake’s empire isn’t on fire, Nero is at least looking for his fiddle. For the Canadian this was no ordinary rap-beef trouncing. Lamar’s outrageous characterization of Drake’s sexual habits in Not Like Us is one thing, but the song straight up questions his cultural identity. It’s right in the title: Lamar is telling the Black American hip hop community that the biracial, bicultural dual citizen Drake is not like us.
Lamar is a Pulitzer Prize-winning artist who raps about Black issues. Accepting his Song of the Year trophy at the Grammys, he said there was “nothing more powerful than rap music,” and that “we are the culture.” He and others see Drake’s commercial brand of apolitical rap as unserious pop music.
Aubrey (Drake) Graham is the son of a Jewish Canadian mother (Sandra Graham) and an African American drummer from Memphis (Dennis Graham). His father’s half-brother is Larry Graham, former bass player with Sly and the Family Stone. (That’s him singing, “I’m gonna add some bottom,” on Dance to the Music.) Early in his career, Drake was mentored by influential American rapper Lil Wayne.
“Drake is still very much an enigma in the minds of most American hip hop enthusiasts,” says Dalton Higgins, author of the 2012 Drake biography Far from Over. “They’re scratching their heads, wondering how this former child actor who grew up in Forest Hill, one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Canada, can dominate rap. What Kendrick is doing is peeling back some of the layers, but in attack mode.”
At a star-studded televised concert in L.A.’s Kia Forum this summer, Lamar triumphantly performed Not Like Us five times. It happened on June 19 – Juneteenth, the annual commemoration of the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans in 1865. On stage for the multiple renditions were a crowd of rappers including Dr. Dre, along with former Toronto Raptor DeMar DeRozan. They were as much as voting Drake out of the tribe.
Lamar casts Drake off as an outsider on Not Like Us – “not a colleague,” but a “colonizer.” The hip hop memorabilia-collecting Drake purchased a ring that belonged to Tupac Shakur for more than $1-million at a Sotheby’s auction in 2023. To Drake’s detractors, this is akin to the British looting of cultural artifacts from India.
It remains to be seen if Drake can come back from his public takedown. In a piece written for Hazlitt magazine, Canadian rapper Rollie Pemberton (a.k.a. Cadence Weapon) admits that it “hits differently when you hear Drake’s songs in the club now.”
Drake’s recently filed lawsuit against his record label isn’t going to help in his rehabilitation. He alleges Universal Music Group helped spread a “false and malicious” narrative about him when it promoted and released Not Like Us by label-mate Lamar.
He loses a rap beef and complains to Judge Judy? Social media pundits had a field day in reaction to the court filing. Los Angeles-based comedian Kevin Fredericks remarked on X: “Drake filing a lawsuit feels like he don’t understand Black culture. Like how could you not understand this would be perceived?”
It is a question many other people are asking.
A popular Super Bowl gamble is the over-under wager on points scored. My advice? Bet on Kendrick Lamar – Drake is over.
