Kendrick Lamar might be having the best seven-day stretch in hip-hop history. A sweep at the Grammy Awards, including five wins for “Not Like Us,” an epic showing at the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show. Both of which seemed to come at Drake’s expense. After K-Dot’s grand power moves, can the beef officially be over now?
K-Dot became the first solo rapper to headline the halftime show of the Big Game on Sunday (Feb. 9), and dissapoint he did not. During a pre-Super Bowl interview with Apple Music on Feb. 6, Dot said fans could expect “storytelling” from his show. The Compton, Calif. rapper followed through with a theme of The Great American Game, which featured narration from actor Samuel L. Jackson dressed up like Uncle Sam, an ensemble of dancers dressed in red, white and blue and a set akin to a game controller pad.
Kendrick got the function jumping with the GNX theme song, “Squabble Up,” “Humble” and DNA.” Then the Drake eulogy started.
K-Dot slid the Drake diss song “Euphoria” into the medley before addressing the woolly mammoth in the closet.
“I wanna perform they favorite song,” Kendrick told the crowd, referencing “Not Like Us.” “But you know they love to sue. Yeah that song. You know what, I’ll think about it.”
Three songs later, Kendrick the dropped bomb, performing an abridged version of “Not Like Us,” complete with Drake callouts, to 120 million fans worldwide.
“Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young/You better not ever go to cell block one,” he rapped.
K-Dot censored the “certified lover boy, certified pedophile” line, but the damage was done. Adding insult to injury, Serena Williams was onstage Crip-walking and seemingly 70,000 fans at the Caesars Super Dome in New Orleans joined in unison to scream “A-minoooooooooor.”
Hip-hop is hailing the show as masterful. Drake has again become the butt of jokes on social media.
There’s nothing else K-Dot can do to crush Drake’s soul at this point. We are 11 months into the public beef between the two rap megastars, which started last March when Kendrick dissed Drake on the track “Like That.” And post “Not Like Us,” K-Dot has been doing nothing but put numbers on the boards while Drake can seemingly only watch from the sideline. His only defense being to beg the ref for a flagrant foul in the form of a lawsuit.
In a recent interview, Ye opined that Kendrick Lamar killed Drake on the heels of Dot’s big night at the Grammys. He also warned that Drake shouldn’t be counted out. “You can’t ever count out Steph Curry. That man might get 200 points in one song for something,” Ye said.
It might be too late for that. At least in this clash of the titans.
Kendrick closed his show by seemingly breaking the fourth wall with a knowing nod. The words “Game Over” were displayed in lights. It was a fitting ending to what should officially put a nail in the coffin on the Drake beef.
