Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us': Unpacking the Lyrical Genius Behind the Diss

yo yo yo yo yo yo Yoo yo yo big Kish back up in here we about to go over anatomy of a lyrical murder done by rap critic you know what I'm saying he be putting them putting them edits together you know what I'm saying you know I'm like holding Y without further Ado let's get get get it so in the end it was this emotional game of saying well if you go low I go lower but what's considered going low is subjective so I can use this line Crossing as the reason for why I had to push you which was your reason to stab me which was my reason to shoot back do we have a h Huh oh us us Sr what up y'all rap critic here and you know despite living in a world full of division uncertainty and a social climate where people are just never able to agree on the facts of the reality we live in it would seem that all of our multiverses converged at a Nexus point to universally agree on one thing Kendrick definitely [ __ ] Drake up it was the rap battle heard around the world and it unfolded like a legendary epic being written in real time with a back and forth of song responses at a speed never before seen in Dis Track history ending with the success of today's song Not Like Us serving as the nail in the coffin for Drake's loss to Kendrick at the end of it all but you know in cultural moments like this it could be easy to just hand the W over to whichever guy had the most people in his corner and with Kendrick clearly seen as the respected lyrical rapper against Drake's super pop star status that makes it even easier but did Drake really lose the Battle of lyrics or did the momentum of Kendrick's back toback tracks just snowball things in his favor well yes but also yes regardless I still think it's important to catalog how we got got to this moment because before the great diss track war of 24 got started while there surely may have been some stewing animosity in the background the most it ever amounted to were sneak dises and the general chest puffing [ __ ] that rappers are known for always doing anyways I could dig a With a Ghost Rider what the [ __ ] happened however when the accusations of D bro they be throwing shots man hey I think this why this battle has been going for so long because I think fans were so tired of them just throwing shots at each other it's like yo we want the real deal you know what I mean like having ghost riters started making the rounds this lyric was Kendrick drawing a firm line about artistic credibility and which side he was standing on and from how we understand Drake's music versus Kendricks the story writes itself in terms of how one is the artist who values this pin game and how it got him to where he is while the other is the rap Superstar who can rest on his Laurels cuz he's got the pop hit so he can Coast on his brand pumping out underwhelming music that's too big to ever fail due to the sheer momentum of his popularity and while it's clear at this point just how much heat Kendrick had stored up for a rapper Who's essentially the poster child for the vapid disposable music of the era am I the only one who noticed that Kendrick didn't initially go as hard at him on those first two diss tracks no for real think about the first two joints Euphoria and 616 in LA and just how tame they sound compared to the scathing shots delivered on Beat the Gams and not like us this was on Euphoria I hate the way that you walk the way that you talk I hate the way that you dress I even hate when you say the word [ __ ] but that's just me I guess some [ __ ] just cringeworthy ain't even got to be deep I guess looking back that's just him bullshitting and joking on Drake the character after Drake dropped family matters though that's when it became you are hiding another child and are also trolling for high school girls like sure K do goes in about the things we all know about him in the first two tracks Euphoria in 616 in LA but content wise it's nothing that deep the dude's essentially running the dozens on the guy and picking him apart from a purely aesthetic level cut B you got [ __ ] twisted what is it the breaks I hurt your feeling you w work for me no more okay so as much as we want to treat how nasty this battle got as a foregone conclusion now when I listen back to the first two tracks I hear a guy who's actively trying to tell Drake not to push the line if he doesn't want the same energy returned know you're a master manipulator no I disagree I think kendri went hard manit liar too but don't tell no lie about me and I won't tell truth about you see even with that illusion to the chorus of the Heart part 4 don't tell AE on me I won't tell the truth about you I'd wager that the first track Euphoria was still him treating it like a friendly game of baseball but by the second track 616 in La it legit comes off like a cal before the storm and a bit of a warning that Kendrick was aware of Drake trying to [ __ ] sling and hide his hand it was fun until you start to put money in the streets they lost money they came back with no receipts you playing dirty with propaganda hit blow up on you it's time that you look around on who's around you before you figure that you're not alone ask what Mike would do and well because of what we ended up with the jaw-dropping accusations and not like us and meet the grams it's easy to frame this as a thing where Kendrick had planned to air out his dirty laundry from the beginning but while you certainly can't have made the songs he ended up releasing without having a burning pit of hatred that's been slow cooking for years I don't think he was initially going to empty the full clip on dude cuz in addition to the contrast and severity from the first two tracks to the last two it just rewind and put things in context the whole reason this round of disses popped off is because Kendrick's initial response to a line by Jay Cole on Drake's first-person shooter track when they argue hard is it K is it me we The Big Three like we started a Le but right now feel like mamed Al and it was intended as a that was so corny when when he did that it's like he was listening to somebody in the background okay Drake do the punches Ry thing like shouting out the success of guys he considered friends but even still Cole ends it by Framing himself as the boxer who called himself the greatest of all time right but like do you really think that was him exposing some real rivalry he had at Kendrick or Drake No it's just what you're supposed to do as a rapper you can't be like I'm a top five rapper but you know I'm cool with being like number three or four in people's no you're supposed to say some [ __ ] like [ __ ] The Big Three [ __ ] it's just big me well like that so when I first heard this lyric I wasn't thinking like oh man jcole and Kendrick are really at odds about who they think is the best like come on let's drop the kayfabe here this is all a lyrical dick measuring contest where the point is to prove your case as being the best he even frames it as such in the first diss track yeah Co and I know I'm a selfish [ __ ] the crown is heavy I pray they my real friends if not Hawai w m we ain't got to get person though this a friendly F you should keep it that way I took it the same way as when Kendrick featured on Big Sean's control like 9 years ago where he essentially had the same sentiment of calling out the biggest names in the industry usually home boys with the same [ __ ] I'm rhing with but this is hip hop and them [ __ ] should know what time it is and that go for Co B crit W push your te me meals ASAP Rocky Drake I got love for you all but I'm trying to murder you [ __ ] trying to make sure your Corp fans never heard of you [ __ ] it clearly wasn't out of a spirit of hatred but to light a fire under I know I'm getting copyright claim I know I I got all types of [ __ ] playing the game in general and snap people out of the popularity contest of rappers just vying for the hottest song to bring the focus back to who's bringing the dopest rhym in wordplay and that's what made me sort of peeve that J.Cole made a whole diss track to K Dot and then just retracted it and pulled it from streaming services like first off you already made it and it wasn't even that bad anyways but secondly it's like come on it's not like anyone is really thinking Kendrick and J Cole of all people have some beef to air out it is just entertainment so when he deleted it and people were acting like Kendrick was going to flame on Cole the way he ended up flaming on Drake I don't think it was ever going to get too real on that front now of course with Drake it's a slightly different matter cuz yeah there is that looming antagonism in terms of their approach to music but in Euphoria and 616 in La while you can hear the hostility and Kendrick's words there's still a level of restraint that is not present in the latter two dis tracks like despite the animosity I could see world where they just kept it to light Jabs and it didn't go any further however many people point to Drake's Track Family Matters being the song that kick things into high gear by bringing family Into The Fray at the end of the track by accusing him of being an abuser they h a crisis management team and clean up the that you beat on your queen lobbing a pretty heavy claim as a shot to even the odds now I've seen people cite this line as the reason things got as ugly as they did despite that though I feel like people forgot about this set of lines on euphoria that actually bring up family first I got a on the but I see you up and Drake specifically brings up that that's the reason why he goes personal on this track you mention my SE I deal with his dad I got to go bad I got to go bad now granted Kendrick's talking about what's common knowledge about Drake at this point so maybe he didn't consider it as low of a blow and even so technically Kendrick's pulling an I'm not touching you Moment by talking about his own son here but you know what the point is supposed to be I'm a responsible father and you're not to go Drake and antagonize him about the last major beef Drake had that led to the information about him having a son leaking that said you could say he's really only talking about his son indirect relation to talking about Drake being a dead beat but hey in that same vein you could also say that it was fair game for him to bring up the abuse allegations cuz that's not really talking about her it's talking about Kendrick's character in relation to her so in the end it was this emotional game of saying well if you go low I go lower but what's considered going low as subjective so I can use this line Crossing as the reason for why I had to push you which was your reason to stab me which was my reason to shoot back we have a h h DJ Vlad man you better respect it bro you better respect it man for real bro this man this is classic right here bro oh us USR but honestly that's kind of the problem with a rap battle like this cuz even though it started as friendly competition well since there aren't really any rules some [ __ ] that started as a game can tunnel out of control once egos that don't want to take a loss get too invested so hey I maybe it was smart for jcole to bow out when he did but I don't know maybe we could have contacted each other instead of some ground rules before things got started okay you two I want to see some good clean bars no Jabs at family members or unrounded allegations now fight cuz I still think the idea of doing a rap battle of the biggest names in hip-hop but purely for hey y'all let me know if y'all remember celebrity deathmatch man that you hey that used to be my joint man on MTV sport is a fine idea on its own it's just that when there's clear lurking resentments behind HMC that spills out as soon as things get heated yeah it changes the mood cuz again who says where the line is maybe to Kendrick bringing up Drake's well-known dead beat dad claims were fair game while Drake thought referencing family in any capacity is grounds for taking the gloves off so drudging up unconfirmed family issues on Kendrick's end was his only route for matching his energy to try to take the win although hey it's too late now the tracks are out so it's up to the people to see who really got who now of course there's the people that would ask well is any of what they said actually true but honestly it feels weird treating a rat battle like some serious calculation of the weight of one man's sins against anothers cuz the reality is we're not these rappers friends and we're not private investigators whose job is to know the exact truth of things at the end of the day this is a performance of a battle of egos where two guys have a reason to exaggerate the truth to win and yes while of course using elements of the truth like common knowledge about the opponent certainly helps your case in terms of making a claim more digestible as an audience member in this Coliseum of lyrics is just our job to be swayed by a convincing Entertainer now as far as I can tell there isn't evidence for Drake's claims but hey that's the point of him specifically mentioning the crisis management team right it's supposed to be the sort of well even if I can't prove it it's just cuz your team is hiding it so well that's probably what made it his best framed attack from Drake's side because it functioned with the absence of knowledge we have about Kendrick as a seed of doubt that could have gotten more traction if if Kendrick's response wasn't as Swift as it was now on the other hand there is proof of Drake kissing the 17-year-old on stage but even with that truth on Kendrick's side he still could have dropped the ball on addressing it or worded it in a way that didn't make enough of an impact but uh TR to Strike A and A [Applause] [Music] Min yeah I I think he got the job done like if you go back to that beef between Jay-Z and Cameron I thought he stepped on the nine before he he skipped that nine yo he skipped a six and a nine where Cam kept upping Jay-Z's age as a way to insult him you talking about you a 80s baby you 37 years old you was born in 1968 and I open the Daily News how's the King of New York rocking sandals with jeans how's the King of New York rocking sandals with jeans and he 42 years old it's not about what his age actually was it was about joking on Jay-Z for his age to needle at the way people were having tensions at the time about him being an older MC still trying to hang in the game with younger cats cuz in general a rap battle is about being able to poke at those weak spots more than the other MC can do it to you now of course things were a little more lopsided against Drake her what with the fact that him being the public pop star makes his flaws and slip UPS easier to keep track of but balancing that out was the reality of the fact that Drake is still a huge pop star who despite having his flaws pointed out in previous battles has been able to maneuver through the black eyes and pummeled weak spots and who knows in an alternate universe Drake focused on making a really solid pop song with some really slick cutting words to K do and maybe we could have had a more balanced fight in terms of who took the win but honestly the way Drake fouled this up was so spectacularly bad the man all but polished his spot on my wor first lyrics list this year so we we don't even have time to get into how badly he [ __ ] that up and it's funny cuz if you cast your mind back to late April this didn't start off feeling like it was automatically going to be a Kendrick win right when this whole thing blew up it was Drake who dropped two joints in a row essentially taunting Kendrick with the fact that he could drop a track whenever he wanted to and that was the initial game Drake was playing with Kendrick so as much as you could say Kendrick was sort of skirting the line of fairness with dropping the Adonis reference in his initial disc I also got to give some side eye to Drake Over the game he was trying to play with Kenny cuz come on let's be real we all know why you were able to put out those tracks so quickly Bro you've got a team of Ghost Riders of course you can drop a track whenever you want so Drake was doing all this taunting secured in the fact that he'd be able to nip right on Kendrick's heels with any response he had with the modern internet attention game being oh oh if you took too long well The Battle Belongs to the other guy cuz he was able to act on the momentum sooner and capture all the heat however when not even a half hour after Family Matters music video was uploaded Kendrick dropped meet the grams that blew things right in his favor cuz now the audience could see oh [ __ ] Kendrick could drop a disc when he wanted to he definitively beat Drake's initial gamut to manipulate the audience with the speed of output so Kendrick could match Drake's turnover time and what's more we know he's writing it all himself and so with that side of the battle addressed by Kendrick we now strictly have to focus on the actual content of the songs and well when everyone heard how cornrow Kenny crafted meet the grams with this scathing but intricately woven narrative it seemed like all he needed to do to turn corro KY the tide of battle but then when he hit the over kill switch and dropped another track not even a full day later with not like us demonstrating that he could pull a back to back the next [ __ ] day with lyrics that were just as vicious if not more so oh this [ __ ] was over or should I say o or o o over over you get the idea even so though I always like to really root through the lyrics of a diss track to really see if the opponent got God cuz sometimes things like this have a way of building up culturally so that it becomes assumed to be accepted as the conclusion before people really think for themselves about how it went that said that is definitely not the case here quite honestly this this might be the greatest rap disc of all time like this man really was short Debo lyrically tormenting Drake with each searing attack you [ __ ] a get a wedgie be flipped over your boxes over your the fashion option [ __ ] even this line that isn't even really that deep but it still perfectly illustrates Kendrick as being the school bully hanging Drake by his proverbial draws at his locker and picking on his click's name the fashion option [ __ ] despite the cutesy name calling though it is not a game for this guy he starts this track saying he's about to lyrically crucify this [ __ ] and he did not make that threat lightly tell [ __ ] to the Cross walk around like and more than just the accusations LED it's the way he delivers the message that makes it sting so hard where you can all but see Kendrick doing the DreamWork face at you while he's saying it say Drake I hear you like I'm young to any [ __ ] that talk to him and love just make sure you H your little sister from him it's not just that he pulls up these dark allegations against him it's the timing and the delivery he uses to craft the perfect joke moment out of it [Music] only bro he he he rapping like nonchalant like ain't nothing phasing him at all that's the part that's that's what it is like he not it's like it's like he know he's going to win it's like bro I got this and I'm about to swag it out with it like got a weird case why is he around certified lover boys certified pedophiles that [ __ ] him up and what's hilarious about it is he's doing this while undercutting Drake's Reliance on memes to ease way through the last couple beefs which you could see him starting to do before the public perception really set in why youing like [ __ ] TI stri a minor like this line is a [ __ ] Master stroke of Genius actively nullifying Drake's playing card of trying to control the narrative with memes while also using it to serve as the lead in for his own devastatingly quotable word play the not the how you they not slow just the way he expertly cuts Drake off at the pass here pretty much putting a roadblock in the way of Drake's attempts to reframe things by predicting it as his next move and adding to that feeling of Kendrick's words holding weight now you could say he's being manipulative to control the narrative himself but you know you could just as easily say what are you going to do not try to do that against someone who you think is going to do it to you plus he makes it pretty clear that this isn't all the info he might have on him go further promise but honestly the amount of shitty drudges up on this track alone is more than enough to bury the guy [ __ ] no way he was in jail that's then get his face tatted like a [ __ ] apologizing your homeboy needs a Peno that Predator moving FL that name got to be registered in place neighborhood watch all right but just to make it clear that I'm not just trying to Coast this review on a wave of uncritical Praise that everyone else is doing anyways I actually do have a couple of notes on lyrics that hit a little odd for me ass the watching and I get the point of this lyric but it still strikes me a little odd like sure it's nah we good on that uh yeah y'all let me know what y'all think about the video appreciate you rap critic for all uh your editing and all that but yeah we straight on uh that uh but yeah big kid signing out y'all go uh subscribe and like comment y'all get them like sub too man let's get to a th you know what I mean gone