Kendrick Lamar hasn't dropped an album in two years, he's dropped very few features and very few singles... and yet a rap battle took him to the top. Moreover, he recently won Best Male Hip-Hop Artist at the 2024 BET Awards last night (Sunday, June 30) and got some additional shoutouts. The ceremony's host, Taraji P. Henson, parodied the smash hit Drake diss "Not Like Us" at the very start of it, and even U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris quoted the song in a Joe Biden presidential campaign ad with Henson during the show. "The majority of us believe in freedom and equality. But these extremists, as they say, they not like us," Harris remarked.
Overall, it's a pretty curious homage while Kendrick Lamar's beef ally Rick Ross faces the consequences of playing with Drake in his country. Award shows aren't the definitive authority on the culture, but this certainly carries a bit more contextual weight than, say, the Grammys... someone go hand him one right now. Whether or not you think the Compton lyricist deserves this award with his limited material, he's certainly earned it. As the perceived victor of the biggest pop culture event to happen in rap music in recent memory, it's understandable that his dominance and astonishments took him far in this regard, and that political powers would want to capitalize on the moment and attempt to curry favor with audiences they often neglect with their policies.
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Kamala Harris Quotes Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us"
Elsewhere, Kendrick Lamar fans instead focused these days on his other Drake diss "6:16 In LA," which got some very interesting recent theories. But "Not Like Us" continues to captivate and electrify. Of course, K.Dot has some more work to do with this beef, namely the Compton music video for this track that should drop any day now. Hopefully that's his last move and he moves onto his next endeavor.
Meanwhile, Drake is still referencing the beef in trolling, mostly cheeky ways, but they don't remove the shroud of bitterness and insecurity that many fans perceive. It's clear that the whole Kendrick Lamar situation got to his head. Still, he just released new summer bops with Camila Cabello, so we'll be right back to our regularly scheduled program in no time. Nevertheless, congrats to Kendrick on his BET dubs: he has the most wins in the Best Male Hip-Hop Artist category and nabbed it for the third year in a row in 2024.
