Kendrick Lamar did not take long to let loose on his new album GNX, as its opening track "wacced out murals" arguably contains the project's most divisive lyric right before the beat fully kicks in. "Used to bump 'Tha Carter III,' I held my Rollie chain proud / Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down," he raps on the cut. This sparked a menacing response from Tunechi and a whole lot of conversations around why K.Dot penned this and what comes next. Matt Barns and Stephen Jackson chimed into the debate on their All The Smoke podcast, and they don't actually think that these bars constitute a full-on diss.
"I didn't even take what he said about Wayne and Snoop as a diss," Stephen Jackson expressed concerning Kendrick Lamar and Lil Wayne. "I don't think Wayne did, too. But I think he still had to respond. You know, I don't think that should end up as a beef with Kendrick and Wayne. I kind of feel like the song was dope. He kind of felt like he wanted Wayne to congratulate him too, 'cause he looked up to Wayne and he used to jam Wayne. But I feel how Wayne felt, too. 'We coming home, this is my home, I'm the best rapper to ever come from [here].' So I look at it both sides, man. I just hope it don't end up in the negative. But if Wayne did come out with a song and responded, I wouldn't be mad."
Matt Barnes & Stephen Jackson Weigh In On Kendrick Lamar's Lil Wayne Bar
"I actually heard someone tell a story about how kind of that came about," Matt Barnes said of Kendrick Lamar and Lil Wayne, agreeing with Stephen Jackson's points. "I want to say it was Jay Rock had Wayne in the studio. And they said something, like, Wayne knocked 12 singles off for a handful of different people in one night. It made Kendrick kind of reevaluate, like, 'Yo, this is how we got to work. This is how hard we got to work.' So when he said, 'My hard work let Wayne down,' I think he was paying homage to Wayne initially because Wayne gave him a different grind. It's from what I heard, so I don't really know how true the story is. But it seemed like a pretty logical reason."
Also, Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson wondered about how huge a Kendrick Lamar and Lil Wayne beef would be and how it might be even better for them to hit the Super Bowl halftime show stage together. Whether or not they end up clashing, these questions will keep fans debating for the foreseeable future.