"Not Like Us" has legs. There's been online discourse about whether the song is played out, but the results speak for themselves. Kendrick Lamar's diss has returned to the top of the Billboard charts after the release of the iconic music video. Better still, the music video inspired graphic designer Richard Branson to create a video game inspired by one of its most viral moments. Now you too can destroy Drake's OVO owls with a stick.
Branson posted a link to the "Not Like Us" video game on July 15. The game is free to play. The graphic designer made it clear that he was not aiming to profit from the song. "This game is a free love letter to video games and hip-hop," Branson wrote within the game's credits. The aim of the game is to hit as many owls as possible with a piñata stick. The premise was inspired by the piñata scene in the "Not Like Us" video. Kendrick Lamar takes down an owl meant to be satirizing Drake's logo. The text: "No OVHoes were harmed in the making of this video" is placed underneath him. No such text appears in the game, but the sense of fun certainly carries over.
The Kendrick Lamar-Inspired Game Is Free To Play
The "Not Like Us" game spread like wildfire online. Fans took to posting their results on social media. Some even broke down which levels were most difficult to play. The video game could not have come at a better time. "Not Like Us" topped the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release in May. It spent the next eight weeks shifting between spots 2 and 6, before settling at number 3. Impressively, however, the song shot back up to number one over Fourth of July. This is first time Kendrick Lamar has landed a multi-week number one as a solo artist.
The song is so inextricable from its target, that any attempts to recontextualize it have backfired. Lil Wayne tried to flip the meaning of the song during a recent Las Vegas performance. It did not work. Fans were confused by Weezy F. Baby's decision to play a Kendrick Lamar song. Many took the rapper to task for riding with Lamar over Drake, when he was trying to communicate the exact opposite. Lamar keeps winning, and Drake, well, doesn't.
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