Dissect - "Not Like Us" by Kendrick Lamar - A Comprehensive Analysis

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

The most comprehensive analysis of Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" to date. Join Dissect host Cole Cuchna as he unpacks every reference and easter egg in the song and music video, dissects the new music snippet at the video's start, and draws some final conclusions from the Drake and Kendrick battle as a whole. Follow @dissectpodcast on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Host: Cole Cuchna Audio Editing: Kevin Pooler Theme Music: Birocratic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you had to choose just one song to define your favorite artist, what would it be? I'm Cole Kushner from Dyshe. And I'm Charles Holmes from The Midnight Boys, and on Tuesday, July 9th, Colin, I are dropping season three of Last Song Standing, the show we were you determined an artist's single greatest song by debating our way through their entire catalog. Our first two seasons covered Kendrick Lamar and Frank Ocean, and for season three, the L-W-S boys are revisiting one of the most creative, influential duos of all time, Outcast. We're talking every album, including Aquam and I, A-T, A-T, L-Ele, and stankonia, speakerbox to love below, and even the loose season features. The third season of Last Song Standing will publish right here on the Dysect feed,

so join us every Tuesday beginning July 9th. Welcome everyone to a special episode of Dysect. I'm your host, Kul Kushner. On today's episode, we are dissecting Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us song and video, and I'll be sharing some final takeaway, some final thoughts about the battle as a whole. Now, I thought about doing this episode for a couple weeks, essentially since Not Like Us came out. A lot of you have been requesting it, thank you.

But I was a little torn, mostly because there's been so much analysis on this song and now this video. A ton of videos and TikToks and YouTube breakdowns. I didn't know how much doing a full episode would add. I did some videos. I talked about it online a little bit. And that is until now, because I think I found some stuff specifically in the video that no one's really talking about. a narrative that I think is pretty clear once it's pointed out to you. So I did want to break that down because I haven't seen anyone really talking about it at all.

And I also have some final thoughts now, especially after seeing the pop-out show and the video of why Kendrick even engaged in this entire battle in the first place. Because I remember when, like that dropped, the Metro and Future song with the Kendrick disverse, of course, that started this whole thing off. I remember being kind of confused. post Mr. Moral, Kendrick Lamar. I was not sure where Kendrick was going to go in his artistry and being a working musician in the public eye.

I was kind of wondering if he was still interested in that. If you listened to the last song on Mr. Morale, at least in the moment it felt kind of like a goodbye. You know, he says on that song, run away from the culture to follow my heart. And again, in the moment, I at least interpreted that as is Mr. Moral kind of the final act in Kendrick's catalog, or at least I guess some version of Kendrick.

I was very curious to see if he was going to put out music, or maybe he was going to start PG-Lang and doing film and experimenting with different mediums a laudre 300, kind of coming back here and there for features, helping produce baby Keem, etc. So I just didn't know where he was going. And since then, since Moral, he did the Mr. Moral tour, he did hillbillies with baby Keem, he featured on Beyonce, but not a lot. So when he popped up on like that,

I was surprised. I was like, oh, he's engaging. Clearly, he wants to battle and he wants to do it on the grand stage. He wants to once and for all decide who wears the crown of hip-hop of the 2010s or whatever, this era of hip-hop. Like he said on Euphoria, there's three goats left, him, J. Cole, Drake. These are, if you want to view it within the context of the control verse, all those people from his era that he called out on control, three are left standing. Three that you could argue is the king of this era, Kendrick, J. Cole, or Drake. And clearly, Kendrick wanted to once and for all settle this debate by doing so in a battle. So we all know what has transpired since that moment, but in the moment I was slightly confused. And I think I have an opinion on why Kendrick chose to do this.

larger symbolism of him winning the battle, and I think it was very important to him that he won for symbolic historical reasons. That's what I'm going to talk about at the end, because that point has only been made clear to me since Not Like Us, the pop out, and the video helps to tell that story. So I'm going to leave that as a cliffhanger. We'll come back to this point of why Kendrick engaged and what the symbolism I think of him winning this battle really, really means and why it's important. Okay, so not like us. Let's start with the song. In the moment, it was released on May 4th, which was less than 24 hours after both Family Matters and Meet the Grams dropped. If you remember, that day was kicked off with 616 in LA on Instagram. It was followed by

Family Matters that night, the video, and less than an hour after that, Kendrick drops meet the grams. I'm bringing this up because in the moment, Not Like Us, was a brilliant, brilliant chess move. We talked about this a little bit on the reaction episode that we dropped. If you haven't listened to that, go listen to it after this, where we break down the entire timeline of the beef. But strategically brilliant, because I don't know what you remember about that night, Family Matters and Meet the Grams dropped, but it got dark. The accusations, the video, Meet the Grams, of course, the beat and everything that was being accused on both sides, I was left feeling kind of gross and just

in the moment, not really sure where this beef was going if these accusations were true. I hope they're just in the spirit of the battle still. But yeah, in the moment, it was dark. But then next day, Kendrick drops this dance bop to kind of brighten the mood and also, I think, to get back on the offensive position. So since euphoria, Kendrick was waiting to see what Drake did to see what angle he was going to take to see if he was going to play dirty if he was going to bring the family into it and he did and so kendrick was forced to drop meet the grams i don't think he would have dropped that song if if drake didn't center whitney and his children and day free as his main angle so he drops the darkest kind of bombshell track and that bombshell track was

defensive, right? It absorbed the nuclear bomb, the red button that Drake was attempting to drop. It neutralized it immediately, strategically brilliant, but defensive. Not like us dropping the next day before Drake drops anything, puts Kendrick back on offense, just like a great boxer kind of taking control of the match and never letting his opponent dictate the tempo or the tone of the battle. So just strategically as Kendrick has been throughout this entire thing, absolutely brilliant. And it was a bop, it was a hit from day one. Now, let's jump forward exactly two months later on July 4th, and we get the Not Like Us music video. And in the moment, Drake fans were kind of accusing Kendrick of dragging this thing on,

trying to milk this victory. But I think Kendrick had the right to make a video. Drake made a video for Family Matters. And if you now look at the offerings from both sides, It's exactly even. So quickly, here's just a list of the offerings from both sides. Push-ups and Euphoria are two songs that go on streaming without videos. 616 in LA and Taylor-made freestyle are both IG exclusive.

Again, don't hit streaming, but they are compatible, both IG exclusives. Then you have Family Matters music video and now Not Like Us music video. And then you also have Meet the Grams and Harms. part six, both songs that go to streaming. So the offering sheet on both sides, exactly even. So there's not a disparity between the offerings, which I think makes it a clean judgment, right? And you might be thinking, what about like that? Well, like that was a response to first person shooter. Kendrick took first person shooter as a diss song. I talked about this in the euphoria episode. So I won't belabor the point too much, but like that was a response to first person

shooter, so offering to me still even. But let's now jump into the music video proper, starting with the opening shot, which is also the thumbnail, importantly, the thumbnail for the video. It is an exterior shot, a still exterior shot of the Compton Courthouse. We also see the Martin Luther King sculpture. It's kind of an abstract representation of a mountain. It's supposed to depict the mountaintop from Martin Luther King Jr.'s. final speech, I've been to the mountaintop. So we see these two structures. And in filmmaking, this is what's called an establishing shot. An establishing shot is usually an exterior scene, a long shot from far away that's held for a couple of seconds to convey to the audience where we are

and where the subsequent scenes are going to take place. Usually you'll see an exterior establishing shot and then you'll jump inside. So if you see a building where you see a house, exterior shot of a house or a building, the next shot, if you're inside somewhere, you just assume because of the establishing shot that you're now inside that thing that was just shown you from the outside. So the opening shot to me is very clearly an establishing shot. And so in the subsequent scenes, when we go inside, I think we're supposed to assume we are now inside a courthouse. Obviously, it's not the actual courthouse. It's an abstract kind of symbolic representation of a courtroom, but I think there's a lot of evidence to interpret it this way, which I'll get to

in just a moment. And also I'll point out that the Compton Courthouse and the sculpture are both white, very clearly pure, solid white. That will become important in a second. So directly after this establishing shot, we are put inside an all-white hallway. And a new Kendrick Lamar snippet is played. It's fucking phenomenal. I hope it's a full song. We'll see if it actually is a full song if it gets released, but God damn, it's great. In the moment, I was hyped. I know people were hyped. It sounds great. It sounds West Coast. Hopefully that's what the album sounds like. We'll talk about that more in a second. So let's talk about this snippet. And then we'll talk about Kendrick in the hallway.

Reincarnate it. I was stargazing. Life goes on. I need all my babies. Get, yeah, yeah. Woke up, looking for the Bocle. High key. Keep a horn on me. That's my seat. IP. On the shit, the blueprint is by me.

Mr. Get Off. I get off. I get off at my feet. All right, let's do a quick beat breakdown. The sample comes from a 1983 song called When I Hear Music by Debbie Deb. You might have heard this song. It was definitely big in the 80s. Let's hear the section that they grabbed from this song. All right, so that's where the sample comes from.

It's definitely a lot faster in the original. And so the producer of the track, Scott Bridgeway, grabs that sample, isolates the bass from it, and he times stretches it, essentially slows it down to 104 beats per minute. So let's hear the loop that he created. All right, so that's the loop. Of course, then we get some drums. Now let's add the sample, and we got the basis of the beat. So great stuff, great beat.

Not going to spend too much time on it, but did want to acknowledge the beat and the sample. Again, produced by Scott Bridgeway. Lyrically, Kendrick starts with the phrase, I am. The full line will become I am reincarnated, but he says I am separate from reincarnated. This caught my attention right away because if you guys remember in the Hart Part 5 music video that came out before Mr. Morrell dropped, it begins with the title card. And on the title card it says, I am, period, all of us. So same delineation here. I am, period, all of us.

there's a separation between I am and the rest of the sentence. You can read it, I am all of us, but there's a period there. And it's signed by OK Lama. So if you guys remember, we did a video about OK Lama and its meaning, Femioluteade, who I worked with on the Dam Kendrick Amar season five. But he found, I think, what OK Lama means. Go watch the video for the full details, but in short, in the Choctaw translation of the Bible,

you can deduce that okay llama means my people again go watch the video for the full details but we think it means my people which makes sense i am all of us there's centering of community of culture and kendrick being not a part of it but one with it that the community is kind of one entity and kendrick is kind of just the spokesperson for this community this will come back in the pop-out show this will come back in the final shot of the not like us video But here in the opening of the Not Like Us video, he is saying I am, and my mind goes straight to the Okala, Lama, pseudonym, and this idea of community. But the full line becomes, I am reincarnated. In the moment of the battle, we might think about this as kind of being reborn after the beef and moving on, starting a new life after the beef.

But also I have to mention that in Mr. Moral, this idea of reincarnation comes up a lot, this idea of a universal consciousness, comes up a lot, again, tying into this idea of I Am All of Us. Also on Mr. Morale, he talks about having past lives that affect his current life. So tying in with a lot of the stuff Kendrick has been talking about since Mr. Morale, he continues with, I was stargazing. This, I feel like, is pretty clearly a play on Drake being a pop star, but also kind of continuing this reincarnation, this astrology, this spiritual thread. We might see it as a callback to six 16 when he said, I live in circadian rhythms of a shooting star, the mannerisms of Raphael, I can heal and give you art. Maybe Kendrick's getting into astrology. Maybe that's a Whitney

influence, I'm not sure. But he continues saying, life goes on. I need all my babies. Now, life goes on again seems to be another clear acknowledgement of kind of this is the end of the battle and we're moving on after this. All my babies obviously ties into this idea of reincarnation. a baby would signify a new life. Saying he needs all his babies seems to allude to his creations, which is going to be more clear once he gets to the IP ownership stuff,

but essentially his babies, his creations, he needs to own those. Hence him starting PG-Lang, hence him leaving TDE and owning his masters, owning his IP. And then this kind of moving on and rebirth is,

even in the next line, woke up looking for some broccoli. Again, woke up, reincarnation starting over new day it's all this motif is running through the verse uh looking for some broccoli interesting so i think he's talking about money which will become clear in the next couple lines it's also slang for weed which i you know knowing kendrick i don't think that he's talking about all right so he continues high key keep a horn on me that kumasi i love this line so keep a horn on me is gun wordplay recalls to me the mr morrow cover it's probably

a metaphor about kind of a lyrical, having a lyrical sword, that classic kind of hip-hop boast. But he's also calling out Kamasi Washington. Kamasi Washington is a jazz saxophone player. He played on Tipa Bucy butterfly. He's also from Los Angeles. With that motif in mind, high key comes a play on key signature, musical key signature. Horn obviously shouts out the saxophone and Kamasi, Kamasi Washington, again, from the west coast. IP ownership, the blueprint is by me.

So if Broccoli meant money, IP ownership means he owns his intellectual property. He's in control of his not only his artistic ambitions, but also his cash flow. The blueprint, again, he's writing his own lyrics. He's doing, he's directing his own music videos. He has complete artistic freedom. Might be a shot at Drake using ghostwriters, but again, centralizing this idea of post-mistroids. moral, post reincarnation, post-ego death. I own my music going forward. I'm no longer signed to a major label. I do licensing agreements with major labels, but I own my masters. I receive the

publishing. So just a flex there. And then he says, Mr. Get Off. I get off. I get off and mop feet. I don't know if this is a direct callback to whooping feet, but mop is slaying for a gun. So calling back to the horn reference. Getting off, I think, within this reference is something like unloading, like unloading your gun and just cleaning up the competition. I'm not exactly sure about that. Some people are speculating Mr. Getoff is the name of the next album. I mean, who knows? I would personally highly doubt that.

Kendrick's not that obvious. But yeah, great snippet. I hope we get the full track, but it does seem to acknowledge the beef directly. And after realizing that, I'm a little less hopeful we'll get the full song. If there is a full song, unfortunately, hopefully I'm wrong. but it does seem like he's kind of putting a nice little end cap on the beef, acknowledging that it's over, that he's moving on, hopefully to a new album that sounds like this.

And if Kendrick gives us a full album of West Coast hits like this, I might actually cream my pants. But moving on. Oh, but the visuals during this part. Kendrick's dressed in all white, the same outfit he's going to have in the next scene, and the hallway is all white as well. So in my interpretation of this and the narrative I'm about, to uncover, I think. He's essentially just, he's walking to the courtroom. The next thing that we see

is a knock at a door. The P-Phole opens up. We see Tommy the clown asked for a password. And so let's talk about this. The knock. So there's a great video, viral video about this and the history of this specific knock. Okay, this rhythm, this knock is called shave and a haircut two bits. shave in a haircut two bits So this melody which then transformed into a rhythm Which then transformed into a knock The origin of it comes from Charles Hale's 1899 minstrel song Called At a Darktown Cakewalk

So Darktown refers to a black neighborhood in Atlanta And although cakewalk is now mostly used to refer to like an easy victory Like oh it was a cakewalk It was actually originated as a racist term used to refer to dance competitions that enslaved Africans were forced to perform on plantations for the white owners. And the cake was the prize of this dance competition. And so the cake walk became a dance that slaves would perform at these competitions that openly mocked the mannerisms of their masters.

The masters were clueless. They didn't understand it, but this was a way for the enslaved to kind of poke their nose at their masters. and they kind of over-exaggerate the white people's mannerisms. And so the video contends that this relates to the third verse of Not Like Us, where he's centering Atlanta, centering colonizers. And it also fits the theme of Drake being a colonizer, but also mocking him, which Kendrick is going to do multiple times in the video. So pretty brilliant detail if you buy that it's intentional.

I tend to think that it is. This video was very, very well thought out, as you'll see, with some of the things I'm going to point out, that others have pointed out. But let's talk about the password. The password, of course, is I See Dead People, which is also on the actual song. So a couple of layers here. Most directly calls back to the euphoria reference that Kendrick made when he compared himself to the childhood star in the movie Sixth Sense and the famous kind of catchphrase that has stood the test of time from that movie is I See Dead People. But I also think it's a response

to the end of Family Matters. So at the end of Family Matters, the last line, The last thing Drake says is, you're dead. And this ties into the whole red button thing. Also on that little IG trailer that he dropped, he talks about burying Kendrick. So I see dead people. He's referring to himself. He's supposed to be dead, but here he is with another hit, another disc track. A crisis management team to clean up the fact that you beat on your queen.

The picture you paint, it ain't what it seen. So a pretty cool connection when you play them back to back, right? That flows right into it, a direct response. Also, I should point out that some people, have speculated the I see dead people was also a reference to the game West Coast rapper the game he actually says it on a 2005 song and he specifically says dr. day I see dead people of course referring to dr. Dre there's some history about that song about him and dr. Dre some beef involving 50 cent it's a little bit of a rabbit hole I didn't want to go into it it would

take way too long to try to explain and I don't know if it's entirely relevant or even purposeful but if you are interested in it, go check it out. Just go research the game. The song is called It's Okay, One Blood. Mostly I just wanted to acknowledge it. And again, if you are interested, just go Google. But let's talk about the more important thing here, the knock and the password. This room that Kendrick is entering is gate kept. Not just anyone is allowed in. Kendrick needed to know a password and a special knock to get inside. That's going to be important here in a second. So we're allowed entrance into the room. This room is entirely, empty, save for some chairs, a table with a record player on it. But other than that, it's completely

empty and it's all white. So here's where I'll start to lay out my theory. I don't even know if I should call it a theory because I'm pretty convinced on it. I hope you will be too after laying it out. So we had the establishing shot of the courthouse and all white courthouse. If we're using film logic, we should now assume that we are inside that courthouse. More evidence for this in interpretation comes in the number of chairs that we see inside the room. There are 12 chairs in total, which is the standard number of jury members in a trial in California, and they are aligned. They are situated exactly like a jury is, two rows of six chairs. So again, if we're using film logic, and we also have this motif of white that's going to be consistent in the video,

we should assume that we are now inside the courthouse and that this is a trial. Essentially, the A story of the music video, which is going to be binded by all white backgrounds, is Drake's trial. He's being tried for crimes not against humanity, but crimes against the culture. So let's talk about those chairs. Again, they're aligned exactly like a jury booth. And sitting in the chairs are crumper's dancers from L.A. This is Tommy the Clown's dance group called The T-Squod.

If you don't know who Tommy the Clown is, he is a pretty, influential and important figure on the West Coast, but specifically in L.A. He uses dance to help the youth to keep them off the streets, to build community. There's a documentary on him called Rise that you should check out. But that's who we see in the chairs are the crumper's, the dancers. And Tommy the clown, I think, is playing the judge. So Tommy the Clown is positioned at the head of the room where the judge would traditionally sit in front of a desk that has a record player. And I'll talk about it in the second. But he's also wearing a referee shirt, which to me, in my mind, relates to being a judge.

A referee judge is a game, calls fouls, a judge, judges, referees, a courtroom, and the trial proceedings. So I know he also wears that referee shirt regularly, but within the context of this narrative, I think it works. So we have, tell me the clown as the judge, the crumper's, as the jury. and also Kendrick as a jury member as well. So the other interpretation I considered for this was a classroom. I think the most compelling case for this theory is that within this room, the five elements of hip-hop are present. So you have the MC, obviously represented by Kendrick.

You have the DJ, which in this interpretation is played by Tommy the Clown. You have the break dancers who are represented by the T-squad. You have the graffiti art, which is represented on the T-Squad. Squad t-shirts that say not like us in the classic West Coast airbrush graffiti style. And then the fifth element of hip-hop is knowledge. So understanding the history, where the genre comes from. And this would be represented by the classroom itself. So it is a pretty compelling theory.

I think the reason why I side with the courtroom interpretation is that it ties into a larger narrative and there's more evidence throughout the video that that's what it is. whereas if it is a classroom, it feels a little more isolated and not tied to this larger theme and narrative that I think is very clearly running throughout the video. So I didn't want to at least acknowledge that interpretation, although I will be kind of continuing on with the classroom theory. Now, let's talk about why this room is so empty. So admittedly, this next theory, I think, is more speculative. If I'm 99% sure that this is the courtroom, I'm maybe 85% sure about this next theory.

So what I think the symbolism of this courtroom being empty, I think it's evoking what are called a white room or a clean room. So imagine in your mind like a laboratory, right? Usually laboratories and specifically white rooms or clean rooms are all white because the lab workers wear all white lab coats. Whites use because you can easily detect spills or contaminants in the space. And specifically white rooms and clean rooms are controlled, sterilized facilities that have to undergo inspection to get certain certifications. But they are designed to limit contaminants in a space. And so my interpretation of this courtroom dressed as a white room or a clean room is that this courtroom is uncontaminated and that this room is pure unadulterated culture.

So think about it. You have Kendrick, L.A. native. You have the crumper's, Tommy the Clown, symbols of pure L.A. culture. And in this trial story of Drake, the us and not like us, is putting Drake on trial for his crimes against the culture. Again, not everyone's allowed in this room. You have to know things. You have to know the password. You have to know the knock.

And once inside, it's very controlled. It's clean. There's no contaminants. This is pure culture. I'm, hopefully I'm making the case for it because I feel pretty confident and just go Google a white room or a clean room. It's obviously not going to be exactly looking like the video, but in my mind, they're evoking that idea and it fits perfectly into this idea of not like us, us being pure culture, the creators of this culture that we love and consume and that Drake has abused over the years through disrespecting people like Farrell, buying his jewelry, imitating Tupac,

just doing a bunch of no-nows and playing around with the culture like it's his. So with that interpretation laid out, the next shot that we see is not like us, starts to play from a record player that's at the table,

at the head of the room. My interpretation of this is that this song is evidence. It's being played as evidence. And for me, this is playing off a motif that's written throughout the entire song where Kedrick uses specifically courtroom vernacular or courtroom vocabulary lines like might write this for the docket your homeboy

needs subpoena baca got a weird case you better not ever go to sell block one you know oftentimes in music videos they take these little motifs in the song and they build stories around it and that's i'm pretty convinced that's what they're doing here so not like us what's said and not like us the revelations in the song are all evidence being played to the jury now we have to talk about the outfits that both Kendrick is wearing and the crumper's are wearing because this establishes a secondary color motif. So we have the all white background. We have the white courthouse. White is going to be used to convey the trial narrative. So all the scenes in the video, if you go watch, have to do with the trial narrative. Now, the dancers are wearing white t-shirts that have like

the classic West Coast graffiti style that say, not like us. It's red and blue text. And if you look at specifically like the belts that they're wearing, they're wearing belts made out of red and blue bandanas. So we get this secondary color motif that's going to come up later in the video throughout the video of red and blue. And combined with the white, we get red, white, and blue as the main colors of this entire video. Watch the video with that in mind and it's clear as day.

You're going to see red, white, and blue almost in every single scene, aside from a few. vignettes that we'll talk about. So why red, white, and blue? Pretty obvious here. So one red and blue together, especially the bandanas, symbolizing the unity of the West Coast. If you watch the pop-out show, this was essentially the main takeaway

of the entire show of an entire coast, Bloods and Crips, Pyrus, coming together in unity and celebration of this victory, that again, we're going to talk about this later, not about Kendrick, it's about the West Coast and more broadly pure culture. But also red wine blue of course evokes the American flag

and this video was dropped on 4th of July and one of the main angles Kendrick has taken throughout all the distrax is that Drake is a foreigner, he's Canadian, and that he's coming to America to exploit its culture, to claim it as his own and play with it as his own and disrespect it as if he owns it. And so Fourth of July dropped, the American flag. This is about black American culture, the creators of hip-hop, right?

So we're getting like this, it's not patriotism per se, but it's him using the colors of the American flag and the union of the West Coast to point out to Drake and the entire world that hip-hop, this culture that we love is a black American export. And of course, this point is emphasized with who, are wearing these colors. You know, I don't think there's a white person in this video. It's making very clear the creators of this culture, not only for Drake, but for all of us. So, brilliant filmmaking here, right? Like Dave Free, Kendrick Lamar, they are into film. Go watch all the Dave Free directed videos. Go watch Element. Go watch all the morale videos. These guys have been getting heavy into film language. It's very clear. My prediction is that Dave Free is going to direct feature film one day. I think that's inevitable. You know, you're already seeing them team up with

the creators of South Park to make a feature film together. But anyways, the color motifs are very thought out. Watch the video with those in mind. You'll see it's very clear as day. So the entire first half of the first verse takes place in this courtroom clean house. So let's get into the lyrics. We'll come back to the visuals when they change. Also, let me acknowledge that I know we've talked however long this episode has been, and we haven't even got to a single lyric in the song yet, but things will go faster now. There was a lot to establish in the beginning, but let's hear some of the song. Hey, must a hundred be ho, deep-bo. Any rat, nigga, he a freak-tho, man, damn, call her emper lambs, tell him breathe, bro. Nell a nigga to the cross. He walk around like Tizo.

What's up with these gropony-ass niggas niggas, niggas trying to see Compton? The industry can hate me, fuck them all in they, mama. How many options you really got? I mean, it's too many options. I'm fin the pass on this body. I'm John Stockton. All right, so we hear the now iconic introduction. Great, great, great sample produced by DJ Mustard, of course, featured throughout the video. The sample comes from a 1968 track called I Believe to My Soul by Monk Higgins. Let's hear the two snippets that mustard samples for this beat. All right, so obviously mustard speeds these up, puts a great beat behind it.

It's a classic West Coast sounding beat. That's very intentional. obviously mustard's from the West Coast. He's a legendary West Coast producer. He came up with YG, which I think is pretty important since Drake tried to align himself with YG in the Family Matters video. And YG shows up in this video later. YG was at the pop-out show. So obviously, undermining Drake's claim there. But then we hear his classic tag, mustard on the beat ho, and then Kendrick repeats the tag as the opening line of his verse. He follows by saying Debo and he rap inward, he a free throw. So this is kind of a classic Kendrick flip at this point because he did a similar thing on nostalgia.

And I think he did it. I can't remember the song off the top of my head, but he's done it, I think, a few times. So Debo is the bully in the classic movie Friday, which is set in Los Angeles, of course. So Kendrick, comparing himself to Debo and saying that any rapper is a free throw means that he'll demolish them easily. as easily as a free throw. Debo, though, is also the nickname of Damar de Rosen. Damar de Rosen is going to be called out by name later in the song. He's a friend of Kendrick's. Demar de Rosen recently said that Kendrick is like family to him. They've known each other for a long time. They grew up in the same neighborhood. Kendrick has a song called Black Boy Fly that

has to do with Demarda Rosen. So there's a lot of history there. Of course, Damar de Rosen's an NBA player. So free throw obviously connects there. Fun fact, Damar de Rosen is a great free throw shooter, so the metaphor works even technically. And Damar de Rosen just signed to the Sacramento Kings, which is I'm from Sacramento. I live here. I'm so excited that he's here. But onward, man down, calling Amber Lambs, tell him breathe, bro. So a lot of layers in this bar too.

Man down is something you say when someone's injured. Amber lamps or ambulance is called for that person down. And telling someone to breathe is, you know, what a paramedic might say. to someone that's injured. But, and I did make a little TikTok about this when the song came out. There's a viral video that came out. I mean, this must be like 10 years ago. This guy getting in a fight on the bus and he gets punched pretty badly and he starts

bleeding from his nose and he says, call on Amber Lambs. And just that clip went viral. But that viral video took place in Oakland on the West Coast. So there's a connection there. And so that's a reference to. a meme and then he references another meme in breathe bro. So this could actually apply to one of two memes or both simultaneously. So there's a video of Drake that went viral a few years ago of him saying breathe, bro, breathe.

We can play it here. What do you mean breathe, breathe? Don't tell me to breathe. I can be, yo, bring me a shot. Bring me a shot. And this was Drake recording himself after I believe the Raptors, the Toronto Raptors, won the NBA championship. So this works perfectly with the previous line because DeMarter Rosen used to play for many,

many, many years for the Toronto Raptors. And Demar de Rosen was traded, the year was traded for Kauai Leonard. And Kauai Leonard and the Raptors that same year went on to win the championship without DeMardar de Rosen. And at the time, it felt kind of fucked up because DeMarda Rosen was so loyal and such an essential part of getting the Raptors to that point, but then didn't get to enjoy the spoils of the championship. And Kendrick is going to allude to this fact when he cites to Rosen again later in the song. So that's one meme, Breathe Bro referring to the Drake viral video. There's

another viral video that applies as well. So this one went big on TikTok. It shows in fast motion, it looks like it's not really clear in the video. I think the sound went viral more than the video itself, but essentially someone, it looks like, gets shot. I don't know if it's real or not. And immediately you see someone looking over him saying, breathe bro, breathe bro. But the voice is like sped up.

So again, this one works too because he says, man down, calling Amber Lambs, tell him breathe bro. This guy in this video gets shot, and then immediately someone's telling him, breathe bro, breathe. So just a fucking, the first two lines are just so good, so layered, they connect. Perfect. Next line, nail an inward to the cross. He walk around like Tizo. So playing on this death, a man down, breathing, he passes. He's put on the cross like crucifixion as a sacrifice. But the wordplay about nail to the cross and Tizo refers to Tizo touchdown.

who is an artist that you should definitely check out if you don't know him. But famously, his thing is that he wears nails in his hair, like tons of nails in his hair. And so it works just as clever wordplay, but there is more to it. Drake featured Tizo Touchdown, as he often does feature these up-and-coming artists early in their career, which you could see as helping their career. And in many cases, that's probably the case. but Drake has also been known to kind of attach himself to these rising stars early so that he keeps himself relevant and that many people feel like in a lot of these cases it's a

selfish act. Drake also stole Tizo touchdown style on his most recent tour. Drake wearing the football padding outfits. That is what Tizo touchdown did first. Drake took the style just like he took Shmino's style, just like he's taken a lot of people's style and looks over the years. years. This is just another case. So Kendrick bringing up Tizo touchdown works on that level two. And then the third layer, the triple entendre, is that Tizo is a homophone for the watch brand Tizo.

And their logo is a cross. So we have nail an Nward to the cross, walk around like Tizo. It works Tizo touchdown, nails in the head. Tezo watch cross logo. Brilliant. So three lines in. It's a perfect verse. Okay, next line. What's up with these? Jabroni asked NWords trying to see Compton. So the obvious play here is that Drake is an outsider trying to align himself with Compton by association. He started Family Matters by listing YG, listing the game, listing Chris Brown, all these people from Compton, from the West Coast, who were gang affiliated and saying, these are my friends and implying that Kendrick is not like them. He's not a affiliated. He doesn't actually bang a set is what Drake said in the video. Not the best strategy. It didn't really pan out, but this feels like a response to that. Also, great wordplay with drabroni, which is a word that actually was invented by the wrestler Iron Sheik, but then popularized by the

Rock. So if you grew up watching WWF like I did, you know the Rock used to say druboni all the time. And it kind of took on the meaning of just being a stupid, clueless kind of person. But the origin of the word is really interesting because Gibroni is also known as a jobber. And a Gibroni or a jobber is what's called enhancement talent. This is a wrestler whose job it is to lose, to lose to establish wrestlers so that those wrestlers look good in the process enhancing their popularity. So whether Kendrick was doing this intentionally or not, the history of the word supports kind of everything else he's saying about Drake here. It's an easy win. and he's going to look good in the process.

He's going to make it look sexy, as he said on Element. All right, next line is, the industry can hate me, fuck them all in a mama. So the industry is actually mentioned in every single one of Kendrick's disc tracks. On Euphoria, he said, whoever that's fucking with him, fuck you, and fuck the industry too. On 616, he says,

I know this type of power going cost, but I live in circadian rhythms of a shooting star, the mannerisms of Raphael, I can heal and give you art, but the industry's cooked as I picked the carcass apart. And then on Meet the Grams, there's a longer passage that starts with, I've been in this industry 12 years, and I'm going to tell you one little secret. There's some weird shit going on, and some of these artists be here to police it. And then he goes on to lay out kind of an R. Kelly, puff daddy situation happening at the embassy, which is Drake's house, saying that the embassy he's about to get rated too. And so all these shots at the industry, I feel, are very purposeful

and are built into Kendrick's position in this beef. Drake is the poster child or was the poster child of the industry right now. He's one of the most streamed artists in the world. He signed a $400 million deal with Universal. He definitely plays the game. And Kendrick now owning his IP, having his own record label, kind of detangling himself from the industry. so to speak, understands that going against Drake might have consequences for him, but that he doesn't care, right? And he brings this up time and time again, fuck the industry. I don't care what the repercussions of this might be. If I'm going to be an industry outcast, so be it. Doesn't sound like that's going to happen, but he was ready to take that sacrifice in order to dismantle Drake. So we get that

here in Nightlike Us as well. So the final line in this part of the verse is how many options you really got, I mean, it's too many options. When I pass on this body, I'm John Stockton. Such a great line. In the moment, hearing it for the first time, you get what he was saying, so clever, and then you get the beat switch into that kind of celebratory part of the song. It's just a perfect moment. So we get this great wordplay between ops and options.

This is referring to kind of the 20V1 aspect of this beef. I pointed out the fact that why are all these people turning on Drake? Why Metro, Future, Rick Ross, like go down the list of the people, the weekend, all these people and prominent figures in the industry, why are so many of them willing to diss Drake, willing to go on record, align themselves against this guy? What is Drake doing behind the scenes that is upsetting so many people? Drake fans might say, oh, he's the biggest artist, so they're jealous. Other people might say that he has a history of sleeping with people's girlfriends, maybe the most famous of which. which is going to be called out specifically later in the song when Drake slept with Lil Wayne's girlfriend or wife. I'm not sure when Lil Wayne was in jail. So it's stuff like

that. It sounds like him in Metro's beef is about a girl. Drake doesn't have the best track record with this. And every time he gets in a beef with someone, he's following their girlfriend or he's following their wife on Instagram or commenting on the wife's photo, you know, just petty stuff that involves women. Anyways, so Drake is making all these enemies. and Kendrick's pointing it out here. So meaning he can pass on the body that there's more ops willing to do damage to the body. And it's great wordplay with John Stockton.

So another NBA player, so that motif established at the start of the verse with Demarta Rosen is called back to here on the end of the verse. John Stockton famously is the all-time leader in the NBA for assists. And so when he says pass on the body, I'm John Stockton. He's playing on that pass-assist motif,

but there is more. Of course there's more, it's Kendrick. John Stockton famously played with Karam Malone his entire career on the Utah Jazz. The vast majority of John Stockton's assists are to Karam Malone. Why is Karamlone relevant? Well, infamously, Karamlone impregnated a 13-year-old girl when he was 20 years old. He tried to deny that it was his. He was taken to court for a paternity test.

It was his. He refused to have a relationship with the child. He hid the child from the public. Never met his son until he was 17. And so there's clear parallels between this and Kendrick's accusation that will later surface that Drake likes them young. Also, Drake famously hit a child from the public. And the cherry on top is that Caram alone was Drake's neighbor.

And Drake has posted a picture of them together hanging out on Instagram. He has since deleted it. But that's not a good look. right so just another brilliant bar infused with so many layers that apply all without sacrificing the sound and accessibility of this hit record perfect verse so far i hope you're as impressed as i am let's take a quick break and we'll continue the analysis beat your ass and hot the bible of god watch you sometimes you gotta pop out and show niggas certified buggy man i'm the one that up to school with him walking down whole time i know he got some hoaring him pole on him extort shit

All right, so we get the first instrumental interlude, and at the end of that, Kendrick says, beat your ass and hide the Bible if God watching. It's super funny, super clever. It also reminded me of the song Element when he said, put the Bible down and go eye for an eye for this shit. And go listen to Element post beef, and it will hit you a certain way because it is certainly aimed at Drake. Just like Hart Part 4 was aimed at Drake, all this stuff has been brewing for years. there's a tie there between putting the Bible down, hiding the Bible, while Kendrick sins, I guess. So then we get the second half of the first verse, which starts with Kendrick saying, sometimes you've got to pop out and show N-words, certified boogeyman, I'm the one that up the score with him.

So when I first heard this line, this was pretty funny to me because it's so clear that Kendrick is online, as much as maybe he takes breaks from it or doesn't interact with it directly. He knows the perception of him. I mean, he seems to have a very close watch on things like being nicknamed the boogeyman and him kind of acknowledging that fan-given nickname I thought was super clever here. He also says certified boogeyman, which is going to be set up for a couple of lines just after this. So again, I was reminded of element. In element, he says, say my name and I promise you'll see Candyman.

Candyman, Boogieman, kind of being these mysterious kind of supernatural figures in the public consciousness. It's also a response to what Drake said on Taylor Made Freestyle in Tupac's voice when he said, you're supposed to be the boogeyman, go do what you do. So clearly trying to taunt Kendrick kind of blows up in Drake's face because Kendrick did pop out and made a number one hit all about him being a pedophile. So also I've seen some people interpret this pop out and show. Obviously he's acknowledging his interaction with this beef that he's proving himself in front of the entire world. but also that he can make a pop hit.

Some people have proposed that him specifically saying pop out was referring to not like us being a pop hit. I'm not quite sure I buy that, but wanted to bring it up. This line has one of the best vignettes in the entire video. Things go black and white for the first time. And we see Kendrick kind of just standing there unbothered. Someone in a Baklava face covering comes up behind him like he was going to do harm to him

and that person gets kind of supernaturally pulled back into the darkness. and next to Kendrick is someone in a Compton hat like dancing, crippling next to him. And so very cool here because the aesthetic stylings of this shot are mimicking the second part of Family Matters music video where it's black and white, very dark tone, almost exactly like this vignette. So he's calling back to that moment. The actor in the Baklava face cover is stylized like Drake on the cover of the Dark Lanes demo, where he's also wearing that same Baklava mask.

So obviously this is a play on Drake sneaking up on Kendrick, the boogeyman, and getting supernaturally pulled back into the darkness because Kendrick is untouchable because the spirit of Compton is by his side, that he has an entire city, an entire coast, kind of protecting him. Interestingly, that the specific Compton hat that dancer is wearing is the one that EasyE famously wore throughout his life. and EZE, of course, has passed away, but from Compton. So the supernatural, spiritual theme is all right there in the scene. Super clever, very effective. One of my favorite moments in the entire video. So next line, walk him down whole time. I know he got some ho in him, pull on him, extort shit, bully death row on him.

So this calls back to Euphoria when Kendrick says, Have you ever walked your enemy down like with a poker face, essentially talking about walking up on someone with a gun? before you shoot them. Pull is slaying for gun. But also I thought this was interesting in boxing. Walking down an opponent actually refers to a fighter constantly applying pressure by moving towards the opponent that's trying to maintain a distance. And so I read this walk him down as again Kendrick playing offense with this song, dropping it less than 24 hours after his previous disc track and Meet the Grams. And also in a moment he's going to

to allude to having five more disc tracks ready in the clip. And so Kendrick is walking him down with these disc tracks as well. Say, Drake, I hear you like him young. You better not have a go to sell Black one. To any bitch that talk to him and they in love, just make sure you hide your little sister from them. They tell me Chub's the only one that get your hammy downs and party at the party playing with his nose now.

And Baca got a weird case, why I see around, certified lover boys, certified pedophiles. Wwop, Wap, Wack. That fuck him up. So, whop, rap, rap, wow. I'm gonna do my stuff. Why are you trolling like a bitch? Ain't you tired?

Trying to strike a chord. And it's Polly A minor. So verse continues with Kendrick calling Drake out by name in one of the more memorable parts of the song where he says, Say Drake, I hear you like him young. Better not go to cell block one. To any bitch that talk to him and they in love, just make sure you hide your little sister from him. So pretty obvious what the implication there is here. But at this moment, exactly when he says, say Drake, I hear you like him young.

you better not ever go to cell block one. We get another all-white background scene. And of course, it's the jail cell. So this ties into the courthouse kind of trial motif. Kendrick is playing the prisoner that awaits Drake when he gets convicted and goes to cell block one. And as we know, notoriously prisoners treat predators not very kindly. So that's the implication there. And you've probably seen this online, but I'll point it out here. Kendrick does 17, push-ups during this section. So one, he's nodding to push-ups the song, the first Drake disc, and 17 the age is still a minor, right? So I think they're kind of playing with this idea that Drake doesn't like girls past 17. That would make them legal. That would make them adults.

And of course, during this part, he says, hide your little sister from him. Another Easter egg, one of the more clever, subtle ones, is that during this part, exactly when Kendrick says, hide your little sister from him. He does this kind of hand movement with like two L's going back and back side to side. And this is mimicking a TikTok that Drake did, doing this same kind of hand movement with a tent, like what looks like a 10 year old girl, which again, within the context of these accusations isn't the greatest look, right? It could just be a harmless video. It probably is. But, you know, Kendrick is using all these little bits and pieces to assemble a case against Drake and having this consistently weird relationship

with women underage. Also, I've seen online people speculating about the photo or the painting in the background of this scene. There's a painting that's turned backwards, that's standing against the wall in the jail sale. At least in my interpretation, there's a few possibilities. I'm not actually sold on either one, but I'll point out both. On push-ups, which of course, Kendrick is alluding to by doing push-ups in the scene, I know my picture on your wall when you cookup, meaning Drake's like their inspiration. And so by turning the picture or the painting backwards and it's not hanging on the wall, they're kind of disproving that claim. I don't know about that one. Also, the second interpretation that I've seen a lot of people running with online is

that on the 4th of July, when this video dropped, was the same time that Michael Rubin, I don't even know who this guy is, I guess he's a big celebrity, but he has these famous white parties where just tons and tons of high-profile celebrities go. dressed in all white and you see the pictures online and it's, you know, the who's who. But apparently this year, the invitations for this party were original one-of-one paintings by the artist George Kondo. You probably know him from his work on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy cover art, but the invitations for this year's white party were these one-of-one paintings by George Kondo that were sent to the celebrities. So people are speculating that Kendrick was sent one

of these condo paintings and that by putting it in the scene and turning it backwards that he was not only rejecting the invitation but also kind of making a mockery of that event what it means it's like a who's who's who in the industry it's celebrity it's indulgence all that and that that that was a statement so i did look into the actual invitations they're much smaller than the painting that's seen in the video not to say that would disprove this theory also people are pointing out that Kendrick is wearing all white in the video, which they were saying is a nod to this party again. I don't know how much this party's on Kendrick's radar if he would be that petty to drop the video specifically during this party, but it does seem like a party that Kendrick

would be kind of despise and what it represents. And Drake being there at the Fourth of July party and the video dropping at the same time as the party. People are again saying that all this was intentional. So if it resonates for you, I'm not sure it does for me, but I can see people thinking that. But in any case, this scene is pretty brilliant. You could see a thread now, right, where Kendrick and Dayfrey are looking at these lines and you don't want to be too obvious with the interpretations. And so they're finding these really subtle and clever and effective ways that are communicating ideas around the lines and what they mean, but not throwing in your fate. It's like obvious enough where you kind of get it, but not so obvious that it doesn't make you think or it doesn't add an

extra layer to what's being said or implied in the in the lyrics. So we're going to see these kind of vignettes throughout the whole video. It's very clever and it's very much of the film language that Kendrick and Day Free have been developing for the past couple of years. We see these kind of symbolic references throughout all their videos. So it doesn't surprise me that all these scenes, and there's not that many scenes in the video, but all of them are very thought out, have multiple layers and all kind of work really well with each other. And again, this scene, a jail cell relating to the trial motif, is all white. So they're bridging the courtroom, the courthouse, and now the jail cell all dominated by white backgrounds. All right. So the next lyrics kind of go in on the

OVO crew. He calls out Chubs for getting Drake's hamming downs. I think that means he gets some of the women that Drake sleeps with. He goes at party next door who's an OVO artist playing with his nose now, meaning he might have a cocaine or drug problem. And then of course we get the very memorable line, Baca got a weird case. Why is he around? So Baca, actually, I didn't say who Chubs was. Chubs is Drake's head of security and close friend. But Baca is Baca not nice. He's an MC, but also was formerly Drake's bodyguard. And the weird case that's getting referenced here was an accusation against Baca in 2015 of sex trafficking and forced prostitution.

So ultimately he was held in prison or in jail for 10 months. He was found guilty of assault. The sex trafficking charges were dropped because the woman did not want to testify. So he wasn't technically found guilty of. of sex trafficking, but it's a weird case, right? So Kendrick's calling attention to that. He's kind of discrediting all these people around Drake saying not only Drake, you're kind of sketch, everyone you run with is kind of sketch as well. And by naming all these people and the OVO crew, it kind of all builds up into this very, very effective punchline of certified lover boy, certified pedophiles.

So I think we've got accustomed to hearing this, but when we first heard it, this was the first time Kendrick really just plainly, plain as day, calls Drake and his crew pedophiles. So he's calling attention to Baca's weird case. He's alluding to Drake's videos with underage women that have been circulating the internet, his weird friendships with Millie Bobby Brown when she was like 13. There's a very healthy list of underage women that Drake has associated with or interacted with that just look a certain way. And when taken all together, just look pretty suss. So Kendrick plays this card pretty effectively. It becomes like a very memorable moment in the song.

And then he follows it up with like another quotable, the wop, wop, wop, wop, dot fuck him up. I'm going to do my stuff. Like this stretch of the song is absolutely insane because it's building up to the A minor line and it's just quotable after quotable, like all these little moments accumulating, right? This scene in the video is great. Obviously it's when he's beating up the owl pinata. Al is OVO's mascot, of course.

So it's again, one of those symbolic moments that we understand in the moment, but it's still so creative and something that we would never expect. It's not the obvious thing to do right there, but also ties into this adolescent theme, where do you hit pinatas at children's birthday parties? So, motivocally, it works perfectly. Also notice next time you watch, the colors in that scene are very obviously red, white, and blue.

There's a solid blue background. the text at the bottom is red and white. And so again, red, white and blue, the secondary motif, very consistent throughout the video. All right. So then we get probably the most memorable line of the entire song and beef. Why you trolling like a bitch, aren't you tired, trying to strike a chord and it's probably A minor? I think we all understand this line. No, the song is not in A minor.

I originally thought it was. I went crazy for like 30 seconds. And then I was like, oh shit, it's B minor. But this line has entered the lexicon of pop culture quotables. It reminds me of forever, ever, forever, forever, in Ms. Jackson, just those lines that are going to live forever. I just don't think this is ever going to go away. It's so memorable. The way that he holds the note throughout the entire instrumental section after that,

it is just perfect, perfectly executed, clever, but you understand. the double entendre there right away so the masses can enjoy it but it still works on a technical i mean it just everything about it is so well executed and this part of the song before the video was a moment right and kendrick and day free understand that and so there's kind of a lot of pressure of what they're going to put visually during this part and again they nail it because as you know we see Kendrick kind of shuffle dancing across a hopscotch court. And hopscotch, of course, is a game that you play when you're a minor, just like the pinata. So just like the line, it's clever, but we understand it in the moment.

It has layers. And it's just so well executed. It's not the obvious move, but there's enough visual information and motivic relation to what's being said that we understand it. and it really makes an impact, just so well executed. And there's actually another layer on top of all this. If you look at Kendrick's outfit and the way this particular scene was shot, it really resembles, I think it's called the Your Wack meme. If you just Google your Wack meme, it'll come up.

Let's play the audio of it here. His hair, whack. His foot stands, whack. The way that he talks, whack. The way that it doesn't even like to smile, whack. Me, I'm tight as for. So it's this black guy in the middle of the street, and he's kind of yelling at no one that you're whack and kind of going in on this person

that may or may not even be there. But if you look at the way visually that video is shot, it's shot from above, as if I think someone from like a second level of an apartment building is like zooming in on this person. And that's the way that they shoot the hopscotch scene from above at a sloth. light angle and also Kendrick is dressed like that guy. And so it could just be coincidence,

but on Euphoria, he also did a similar thing where he says, I hate the way that you walk, how it way that you talk, and does that list thing. And that's a callback to a DMX video where DMX was specifically talking about Drake saying, I hate the way that he walks, I hate the way, and saying I hate everything about him. And this is spiritually akin to this guy in the street saying you're whack. I hate the way you dress is whack. So it's a way. So it's a same thing. And so that's enough for me to think that the reference is intentional. Kendrick is dressed like the guy, it's shot at the same angle, and there's another layer if we consider euphoria in the DMX video. So incredibly clever moment on all fronts. Also, we have to talk about

kind of the musical function of this A minor line. So as I mentioned, Kendrick holds the A minor note across the entire instrumental. This builds tension musically. And we're coming off the Wop-Wop-Wop part. We're coming off the certified pedophile. This whole final sequence of the first verse is just quotable after quotable, hit after hit. Then he stretches the A minor part across the instrumental,

building tension. And when the beat kicks back in, we hear the chorus for the first time. So just musically, I cannot emphasize enough what the final sequence of lines in that first verse and the tension of the A minor and the memorability of it and the effect of it, to follow that up with the chorus for the first time

is a huge reason why this chorus hits as hard as it does the first time you heard it and every time you hear it. Because functionally, he has set this up brilliantly. And so when we hear, they're not like us, which is incredibly simple, but very, very effective for a number of reasons. I'm just trying to point out and we'll listen to this section now,

just next time you listen to the full song, just notice that drop and notice how everything that builds up to that moment makes the chorus such a moment. All right, so we get the chorus, and in the video of course, you hear the actual crowd layered on top of the chorus, which is really cool. I'm not going to talk about the chorus too much right now.

I'm saving that for the end because it ties into the conclusion of this entire beef, I think. But one layer I'll point out here is that he had just gone in on OVO, multiple people in their crew. And so when we hear they're not like us, one layer is that OVO is not like PG-Lang or TDE or the West Coast. Those guys don't move like we do. I also just say that this is a four-word chorus, which is similar to We Gonna Be All Right, that turns into this anthem that's so simple, but so powerful, just like a good kind of slow,

not to reduce it, but, you know, like a slogan. It needs to be perfectly crafted so that it's memorable, easy to recite, easy to remember. It's something that you can sing along to literally the first time you hear the song. So just technically very well crafted. And of course, we get the. the visual during this moment where the MLK statue in front of the courthouse is now just totally filled the entire frame is just filled with Compton natives. Kendrick is in there if you look

closely he's one of them but that's the point he's just one in a million right like he's he is I am I am all of us this is the larger entity the larger culture that I am simply a mouthpiece for again we'll talk more about that later but let's get into the second verse You think the bag will let you disrespect pop knicker? I think that Oakland show will be old at stop, nigga. Dick cold foul. I don't know why you're still pretending. What is the owl?

Bird niggas and bird bitches go. The hearty ain't not dumb. Shape the stories how you want. Hate trade, they're not slow. Rabbit hole is still deep, I can go further, I promise. Ain't that something be rest, that's for bitching. You malaboo most wanting. Ain't no law boy, you ball boy, fetched a raid or something.

Since 2009, I had this bitch jumping. You niggas would get a wedgy. Be flipped over your boxes or hove in your foe. The other vaginal option? Pussy, Hickle better straight and they posture. I might write this with a doctor Tell the pop star quit hiding.

Fuck a caption, won't action. No accident. I'm my hands on. He fuck around. Get polished. Kicks it off with the Tupac reference, calling Drake out for imitating Pock on Taylor Made.

And during this part visually, we see DJ Mustard and Kendrick in a Ferrari, which is kind of odd if you've been following Kendrick his entire career. He doesn't usually do this kind of flashy materialism thing. And he also think of the popout show where he was wearing. those huge necklaces made of diamonds, which for me at least was very shocking to see Kendrick. He doesn't really do that or hasn't done that historically in his career. But I think it's working for him now.

And I think it's because of Mr. Morrell. So on Mr. Morale, the first track and throughout the album, he talks about how he bought jewelry, cars, infinity pools, kind of behind the scenes. He wasn't one to flaunt them, but he was indulging in materialism, which historically he's been kind of against, right? And that was kind of one of the revelations of kind of the hypocrisy where he was sleeping with women and indulging in materialism, but kind of had this image of being the role model that was engaged and maybe we assume faithful and that didn't indulge in materialism. and yet behind the scenes he was living this second life that he reveals on Mr. Morrell. And this is just me speculating, but he's driving a Ferrari in the video, he's wearing his chains for everyone to see at the pop-out show.

And maybe this is him being a little bit more comfortable in that indulgence, like accepting that part of himself that does genuinely like jewelry or nice cars. I think historically Kendrick has put a lot of pressure on himself to present himself in a certain way where now maybe we're seeing some sides of him that he wasn't comfortable always expressing maybe I'm looking too much into it but it was weird seeing Kendrick driving a Ferrari I don't think I've ever really seen that in a Kendrick video and maybe this is him popping out and showing us but color scheme consistent here go watch that scene of the car it's a blatant all red interior Kendrick's wearing a blue jacket mustards wearing a red coat with a blue hat so we're getting this

red, white, and blue thing again. They go to Tams, which is a burger joint in Compton that Kendrick has talked about on multiple songs and grew up eating at. The exterior paint of Tams is red. There's a blue sign. The inside of Tams is red, white, and blue. Go look at those scenes. The red, white, and blue thing is very consistent throughout the whole thing. So, lyrically, he says, Did Cole Fowl? I don't know why you're still pretending. What is the owl, bird N-words, and bird bitches. This is sneakily clever, so let's dissect the layers here. Did Cole foul? He's talking about J. Cole, of course. So how did Drake do Cole foul? Well, one theory would be that first person shooter was originally supposed to be all three Drake, Kendrick Cole on the same track. Kendrick

rejected the feature request. Cole and Drake did the song anyways. Apparently, this is rumor speculation. I think DJ Academics is the one that brought this up who obviously can't be trusted always, but with Drake information, he does seem to be somewhat reliable with these kind of details. And this is not a pro- Drake stance. So I think academics was being an affair and revealing this information if it's true. But the information is that J. Cole recorded his verse thinking Kendrick was going to be on the track. And if you listen to it with that in mind, it does make sense. the way that he's talking about all three of them. But Drake's verse has a Kendrick diss in it,

which we had assumed that he wrote after Kendrick declined the feature request, declined to be on the song. And so doing Cole Fowl is like putting Cole's verse on there where Cole thought it was the celebration, and Drake kind of used the song for his own agenda to take another sneak disc at Kendrick on the song that was supposed to be a celebration of the three conceptually. So that might be some of it.

I'm not exactly sure, but he did do Cole foul on pushups and family matters. On pushups, he said, I don't care what Cole think that dot shit was weak as fuck. On family matters, he said, Cole losing sleep on this, it ain't me. So not quite being as loyal to Cole and this whole thing that you would think since they did this song together, since they went on tour together and did this kind of public team up. From Kendrick's view, it's probably, again, Drake using a big name, associating. himself with a big name teaming up to make himself look a certain way to get another high profile hot name on his side and then after the fact when Cole backs out he's still taking these little jabs at him and not being loyal to Cole in the way that maybe he should have

but foul did Cole foul so this is a homophone foul foul F-O-U-L but also foul F-O-W-L which is a bird I have the definition here, it's essentially a bird like a duck or goose or turkey or a pheasant, a bird that's used as food or hunted as game. And so this is setting up what is the owl. So foul rhymes with owl, of course, but also means bird. And then he says bird N words and bird bitches. So clever wordplay there. And the bird has layers two, bird of course owl, but also birdman, who was the owner of cash money. Young Money, which was Little Wayne's label, was a subsidiary of cash money. And Birdman and Wayne famously had beef that had to do with shady business dealings by Birdman,

who has a reputation for this kind of thing. So Kendrick is again calling back into the push-ups claim that Kendrick is being extorted by TDE, that they get 50% of everything he makes. And Kendrick's rebuttal of, you were signed to this person that was signed to this person, that was signed to that person in Euphoria, where he was saying, you're assigned to Wayne, who was signed to cash money, who was signed to Universal, and that your splits aren't looking that good or in the past either. So why are you calling me out on my old deal as well? And then this illuminates another detail. So in the video, if you watch the close captions

in the video, it doesn't say bird bitches. It says burnt bitches. And bitches is a homophone with bridges. So burnt bridges. So burnt bridges. And so if you're thinking about Birdman, Wayne, Drake, extortion, it kind of makes sense. What is Oveo? Well, in part, it's burnt bridges, these torn relationships. And in a second, he's going to show TDE on screen to say that, although I might have parted ways with TDE, there's no beef, we're still good. I didn't burn bridges.

They didn't either. It was simply what was best for me financially going forward and my kind of independence as an artist. So I thought that was really clever. and then he follows it up with another clever thing where he ends the line saying go and then this gets paid off in the next line he says go and then he says the audience not dumb so he's playing with the very well-known bay area slang go dumb this was i think more popular what 15 years ago e40 had a song called tell me when to go that said go dumb uh that was a pretty big song so within the teupac reference the oakland shout out you know the west coast thing is consistent throughout this entire song. It's consistent in the flows that he uses, the beat that he's using. It's in the video like West Coast just runs throughout this entire thing. And then the full line, the audience's not dumb. Shape the stories how you want. Hey, Drake, they're not slow. So this is Kendrick's way to rebut all the things that Drake is saying about Kendrick and just keeps it moving, right?

Drake makes a whole song, Heart Part 6, that essentially is a PR statement that denies everything that Kendrick was saying about him. And Kendrick does a similar thing here, but he does it, accomplishes that in one line. And he does so very cleverly because he compliments the audience our intelligence. And it just assumes and makes the assumption that we're going to see through it.

Kind of, again, kind of complimenting us and not spending too much time on it and just keeps it moving. I think it's very effective. Because in a rap battle, we don't really want a PR statement. Like, we don't need them to be. denying these. At least I don't. Like, I'm kind of just saying, I'm, I'm with the feeling that this is all in the spirit of a beef that hip hop is built on exaggeration a lot of the time and that in a battle, you're just going to use all the angles that you can. And if they stick, they stick. But I hope

none of this is true. I hope it's all exaggeration in the spirit of the battle. And so to do what Drake did on Hart Part 6 to make it that serious, I guess, I don't know, it just didn't resonate, clearly didn't resonate for a lot of audiences. It's just not in the spirit of a battle. I think we all understand the conditions and the terms of these kind of things. And I just liked how Kendrick handled it. It's like, you call me a wife beater, Drake, they're not slow. They're not buying this.

There's no evidence. Like, keep it moving. All right. So then Kendrick says, rabbit hole's still deep. I can go further. I promise. Ain't that something B-Rad stands for bitch and you Malibu's most wanted. So Kendrick's obviously alluding that he knows even more about Drake.

He can keep this battle going if he wants to if Drake chooses to go that route. B-Rad was a character in the movie Malibu's Most Wanted, and that character named Brad Gluckman attempts to emulate black culture by becoming a rapper named B-Rad. So Kendrick is calling Drake B-Rad, someone who is emulating black culture, fits perfectly thematically. Also, we get the most wanted, which is of course, relates to criminals, trials, predators, and he follows it up by saying,

ain't no law boy. So we get the motif there, the most wanted, the law. Clever stuff. I love the next line, you a ball boy fetch gatorade or something. It's such a great line said with such a great flow. The tone of his voice is perfect, kind of just like tossing him away. I don't know, the dynamic of calling Drake a ballboy and tell him to get Gatorade is just so perfect. You can't hang with the big boys.

You're not on the court. You're not actually playing. He follows by saying, since 2009, I have this bitch jump in. You N-words or get a wedgy, be flipped over your boxers. What's OVO for the other vaginal option? And then he says, he says pussy so funny. So 2009, interesting year to cite because that's the year that KDOT, which was his kind of high school rap name, becomes Kendrick Lamar. He releases his first self-title EP, the Kendrick Lamar EP.

so he's calling back to that moment. The wedgy is so funny to me, kind of calling back to the Debo bully thing from the beginning of the song. But I saw this really funny theory online where I'm not saying I believe this, but I have to bring it up because it's pretty funny. OVO, if you look at the letters OVO,

people were comparing that, the shapes of those letters together to an actual wedgey. So think about someone getting a wedgy, There are two butt cheeks on either side, and then the underwear pulled up tight above the pants forms a V shape. So you have a butt cheek, V, and a butt cheek. O-V-O, which, I don't know.

It's pretty funny. And then he continues by kind of ramping up the aggression and the tempo and the speed of the flow where he says, better straighten your posture, got famous all in Compton. Importantly, he says might write this for the docket. again, tying into this courtroom vocabulary motif that runs throughout the song and it's accentuated in the video. I don't have much to break down lyrically for this kind of four or five line sequence, but the flow is just so great and really works. But let's jump ahead. Get polished. Fucked on Wayne girl. He was in jail. That's conniving. Then get his face tatted like a

bitch apologizing. I'm glad D. Rose came home. Y'all didn't deserve him neither. From a lounge or down to central. Nigel bad not speak on Serena. And your homeboy needs a subpoena. That pet of the moving flocks. That name got to be registered and paste on neighborhood watch. I lean on you niggas like a netherline to walk. Yeah, it's all lies on me and I'm gonna send it up to pot. Hey, put the wrong label on me. I'm gonna get them dropped. Hey, sweet chin music and I won't pass the ox.

How many stocks do I really have it stock? Aye. One, two, three, four, five plus five. Hey, devil is a lie. Here's 69 God. Hey, freaky ass niggas need to stay the ass inside. Hey, roll their ass up like a fresh pack of Zion. Hey, city is back up.

It's a must we outside. All right. All right. All right. All right. calling out Drake for having sex with Lil Wayne's girl while Lil Wayne was locked up in prison, I think 2009. It's a true story. Little Wayne admitted it in an interview some years later. You can find that clip online. Get his face tatted like a bitch apologized and refers to the

fact that Drake has Lil Wayne's face tatted on his bicep or somewhere on his body. And I'm not sure if it was an apology tattoo. I haven't, I couldn't find. anything about that, but obviously that's what Kendrick is implying. But I think Kendrick calling this out specifically is just another example of Drake disrespecting an elder statesman of hip-hop. Not only is Lil Wayne, one of the greatest rappers ever, and should be respected as such, a la Farrell, a la Common, who we're going to talk about in a second. Lil Wayne was also the guy that signed Drake to his label and gave him that co-signed early in his career. that really helped Drake and to then go and sleep with his girl while he was in prison.

Just another example of Drake, not really understanding how to treat his elder statesman as with reverence and respect. He continues, I'm glad D. Rose came home. Y'all didn't deserve him neither, talking about Damar de Rosen coming home from playing for Toronto Raptors, back to America, Chicago, and now Sacramento, which is the West Coast.

And then he says, from Alondra down to Central, better not speak on Serena. So this is sneakily clever because he's talking about Serena Williams, the goat of women's tennis, and she's from Compton. So obviously has a connection there. But Alondra and Central Avenue are two streets in Compton, and they intersect next to Trague and New Park. I don't know if I'm saying that right.

But this park at the intersection of Alondra and Central Avenue is where Venus and Serena Williams played tennis in their youth in Compton. Extremely clever word played there. But also, Kendrick is bringing up a little Wayne, and right after he's bringing up Serena Williams, who famously is married to Common, another hip-hop legend, and Drake in Common have had beef and have exchanged disses, because apparently, I don't understand the full timeline.

I didn't go down the rabblehold, but apparently Serena Williams and Common were dating. They took a break or something. and Serena Williams and Drake dated in that time. I guess Drake left her. Hopefully I have this right. This is the kind of stuff I don't actually care about. But again, following the little Wayne reference,

he's then following it up with another disrespect to another hip-hop legend, just building the case that Drake just does not know how to respect his hip-hop elders. Next, we get your homeboy need subpoena. That predator moves in flocks. That name got to be registered and placed on neighborhood watch. Again, this is calling out Bacchus case of human trafficking. And this is where I'll bring up the visuals for this part. So it's another all-white background shot, this time an exterior shot, but the entire frame is engulfed in an all-white shipping containers.

And we see Kendrick and some dancers, one from Sacramento, in front of these shipping containers. And pretty quickly, people online picked up the fact that shipping containers have been known to be used for human trafficking. and apparently there is an episode of the wire in which shipping containers were used for human trafficking. And so we have Kendrick in this scene talking about your homeboy needs a pina, meaning Baca, calling him a predator, and that his name needs to be registered because he's a sex offender and placed on neighborhood watch. During this scene showing shipping containers and creating the through line with the trial narrative with the all-white background. And what really sells me on this theory being true is look at the way Kendrick is dressed in this scene specifically. He's dressed in a suit, which is the only time he's wearing a suit in the video.

And I think following this trial thread, I think he's dressed like an attorney presenting evidence in the form of these shipping containers. So it's pretty cool. And to me, the selling point is that this scene occurs exactly when he says subpoena, predator, also another clever detail in this scene we also see day free and he's dressed in a plain tank top and we have a few quick shots of them together Kendrick in a suit day free in a tank top and it resembles the cover of metro boom and futures we don't trust you when you watch that scene in front of the shipping containers go back and look at the cover for future and metross we don't trust you album and it's pretty similar i think it might be a play on that of course, that's the album that like that is on and what kicked off this whole thing.

All right, then Kendra continues really ramping up the energy. I lean on you, N-words like another line of walk. Another line with great wordplay. Lean, of course, is a drug made up cough syrup. And the most commonly used brand of cough syrup is walkart, which is why he says another line of walk. That's why Lil Yadi has the line. I took the walk to Poland. But another line refers to the fact that on cough syrup bottles,

You measure a dose of cough syrup with a little plastic see-through cap that has lines that indicate the volume. So another line of walk, like more walk. So clever there. All right. Then he shots out, Tupac again, it's all eyes on me, referring to Pock's album, double album. I'm going to send it up to Pock, paying tribute to his legend. Put the wrong label on me. I'm going to get him dropped.

Sweet chin music and I won't pass the ox. More clever wordplay here. So sweet chin music is the finishing move of the wrestler Sean Michaels from the WWF. And the move is a high kick to the chin while the opponent is standing and then they drop to the ground and he pins them. So I'm going to get him dropped sweet chin music. I won't pass the ox. Obviously he's now playing off of these disc tracks doing damage to Drake and he's not going to stop. And this leads into the line.

How many stocks do I really got in stock? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 plus 5. alluding to the fact that he has 10 disc tracks ready to go or five more disc tracks after this one which by all accounts the whispers that you hear around this beef was true and i don't i believe kendrick when he says that he seems like he was very well prepared going into this thing and of course the rabbit hole goes deep i can go further i promise right he's got more on drake if he wants to keep going but there's more because this is a numbers bar and you know how kendrick loves numbers bars and you know how I like to dissect them. So 10 total disc tracks. And he says

stocks instead of songs. I don't know why he would do that, but let's think about the other time he said stock in this song, John Stockton, right? There's 10 stocks. Stockton, right? John Stockton. Reach, maybe, probably, but still fun. Also, The next line, devil is a lie, he has 69 God. So in the previous line, we had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and now he has 6 or 69 God. This is, of course, a play on Drake calling himself the 6th God. Kendrick flips it in a very battle-style way. Also, devil is a lie.

It's a common saying that implies another person is attempting to be deceitful or that a situation is not as it appears. This, of course, ties directly into Kendrick's claim that Drake is a liar. also the devil's number is 666. So we get the six word play, not only from the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now 6, we have 666, and plied in devil is a lie, and then 6.9 God. So, notivocally, Kendrick is brilliant at this kind of thing. Small details like this just prove he's a master lyricist,

even in lines that you don't think much is going on, stuff is going on. So then he ends the verse, freaky-ass N-words, need to stay the ass inside. We'll talk more about that later when it becomes a refrain, but then he contrasts that with Citi's back up. It's a must be outside. So again, a direct comparison, OVO, Drake, they need to stay inside. They're predators. Meanwhile, we're outside and we're showing you we're outside. Literally in the video, we see them all outside during this line. They're united, ready for action, and Kendrick is putting that on display for the world. So after this first, we see one of the more mysterious, I guess, images in the video, which is the dancer on the tightrope. So to jog your memory,

we see just a clear blue sky with some dotted clouds, a tight rope running a folly across the screen, and one of the crumper's or T-Squod members dancing across it. It's a great image. I've kind of confused on its meaning or not maybe as confident as I am about some other of my analysis in this episode. Some have compared the blue sky background to Drake's album cover, nothing was the same, and just kind of using that as an aesthetic callback to that album. If you want to look maybe a little too deep into that, you could say nothing was the same after this beef. I don't know. There is an idiom walking a tightrope, which is meant to imply someone being in a situation in which any small wrong move will lead to

their downfall, which again, you could apply to Drake. Those are the only two interpretations that I could think of. Again, I'm not that confident. If you have an idea, let me know. But what is cool about this scene is that directly after the tightrope scene, or what appears to be a tightrope, we then transition into an exterior shot of the Nickerson Garden Projects in Compton. And behind them, you see telephone wires. So I think it's implied that the dancer was not on a tightrope, but on a telephone wire, hence the sky background. So Nickerson Garden Projects is famously where Top Dog grew up, Kendrick tells that story on Duckworth at the end of Dam, but Top Dog, the owner and the founder of TDE, the one that discovered Kendrick Lamar.

This is where he grew up. It's also where TD hosts their annual toy drive. And in front of the projects we see not only Top Dog, we see Punch, we see J. Rock School by Q, Absal, kind of the founding members of TDE. And all the while we hear, they not like us, the chorus, during this scene. So not only is Kendrick showcasing them as pillars of LA culture, I think he's also implying that him and TDE are clearly still cool even after Kendrick left the label to start his own label because push-ups, Drake's first diss, a lot of that song, was claiming that Kendrick was getting exploited by Top Dog, and him leaving the label was implying that there was some

friction there, but clearly not the case. All right, so let's move into the third and final verse, which I'll say up front, I think is the most important verse within the trial narrative theory that I'm proposing in this episode. Once upon a time, all of us will send chains. Homie, still double down, crawling up some slaves. Atlanta, what's the me? Building, railroads and trains. Bear with me for a second.

Let me put y'all on game. The settlers was using town folk to make them rich a fast forward. For 2024, you got the same agenda. You run to Atlanta when you need a check balance. Let me break it down for you. This is the real nigger challenge. You call a future when you didn't see the club. All right, little baby help you get your lingle of

What, 21, get your far street cred. All right, so the third verse is just incredibly impressive Just from the craft of it. It's essentially one big setup for the final punchline And it's just so well written in terms of just the structure of it. So importantly, during this verse, We return to the courtroom for the first time in a long while. So that seems very deliberate

it and we stay here the entire verse. And this for me is where the courtroom theory really proves itself, because within the context of this trial narrative that I'm proposing, this third verse reads or is presented like a court docket. It's a very detailed line-by-line explanation of exactly how Drake has exploited black American culture. He's giving us the hard evidence to convict Drake as a colonizer as an exploiter. And so bringing this specific verse back to the courtroom for the entire thing to me feels very relevant, very purposeful. So we see this back and forth between two groups on either side of Kendrick, the T-Squad, doing their interpretive dancing, kind of choreographing this verse. So recently within the last couple days, Complex actually

interviewed the choreographer of this courtroom scene. Her name is Charm LaDal. and they asked her specifically about the dances that we see and some of the symbolic representation of them. She didn't give any. So she was pretty blatant about these dance moves just kind of coming from what she felt when hearing the song and that they were open to interpretation. And the interviewer seemed to be pushing on specific things and trying to get her to explain specific moves. and she kind of kept saying they were open for interpretation and they were more about feeling than creating some kind of code and message with them. The one thing that she did say, however,

and she was really loose with it in terms of like, this is what I feel, but it's not necessarily the answer, quote unquote, is that when they were laying on the ground during the line, Atlanta was the mecca building railroads and trains, that them on the ground symbolized the railroad. Again, even when she said that, she said that's what it is for me personally.

So all that to say, I'm not going to try to break down every single dance move we see during this scene. For me, what's important narratively within the context of the video is that we are again back in the courtroom for the entire thing. And that the verse reads within this context like a court docket, like a detailed explanation, evidence case by case, and it ends with a conviction. All right. So Kendrick sets up this verse pretty masterfully. He says, once upon a time, all of us was in chains. homie still doubled down calling us some slaves. So this is in reference to, I think a couple of lines, the most recent of which was in Family Matters, which had released just 24 hours prior, where Drake said about Kendrick, always rapping like you're about to get the slaves free,

you're just acting like an activist, it's make-believe. So this rubbed some people the wrong way, because if you think about what he's saying in this line, if Kendrick is rapping today about black issues and trying to make things better for his community, then essentially Drake is calling those people slaves currently. That's at least what my interpretation of Kendrick's rebuttal here is implying, right? Also on Drake's most recent album on For All the Dogs on the song Slime You Out, he said, whipped and chained you like American slaves. And again, I guess he's trying to be provocative there,

but specifically saying American slaves is just all. kind of in bad taste. And I think Kendrick is specifically calling attention to these kind of lines to just again show Drake's lack of understanding of the history, of the genre, of the country, and him just kind of getting too comfortable and forgetting where he comes from, what his background is, and how certain lines like this would resonate with someone like Kendrick and what he represents. So then Kendrick gets very specific and uses Atlanta as kind of like this use case to exemplify some of the ways Drake has kind of colonized black American culture. So he hones in on Atlanta, calls at the Mecca, points out that it was building railroads

and trains back in the day, that settlers were using folks from Atlanta, make them richer, and then says, fast forward, 2024, you got the same agenda. So obviously, Kendrick here is claiming that Drake looks at a city like Atlanta with this incredible history of transforming itself from a major part of, of the slave trade into kind of this vibrant black-owned, black-built city, which there are tons of black-owned businesses, black government officials, and instead looks at it as something he can harvest, something he can personally benefit from by associating himself with musicians from Atlanta. And so this leads into Kendrick going line by line, artist by artist from Atlanta that Drake has

worked with, citing what he gained from that specific artist. And the way in which Drake was attempting to gain credibility for himself by associating with these Atlanta artists. And the list to me is incredibly effective just from a structural kind of lyrical point of view, because it's building. This entire verse is building and building and building. And the way that he sets it up at the beginning and he keeps coming back to it, let me break it down for you. Bear with me for a second. Let me put you all on game, kind of setting up this long play and getting into this very specific list, this docket, this evidence, and all kind of building, this entire verse from line one, building to the final punchline, you run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars, you're not a colleague, you're a

fucking colonizer. And to me, within the trial narrative, this is the final punchline. It's the lawyer's closing arguments. This is the conviction. Guilty is charged. Drake, you are not like us. You're not a colleague. You're a colonizer. And I told you exactly why. What? Crable said you can be from Northside. What two chains say you good, but he lied. You run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars. No, you're not a colleague. You're a fucking colonizer. The family matter and the truth for the matter. Here was guys plan to show y'all the liar. And I think it's worth pointing out that Kendrick specifically uses Atlanta because it is in America. and it ties into this larger case he's presenting against Drake of exploiting black American culture specifically.

But he could have used the UK here, you know, Drake trying on the British accent with when drill music started really popping off over there. The Caribbean or the Jamaican accents that Drake has tried on, Spanish accents, you know, all these various cultures that Drake has kind of tried on in one way or the other in his music or even in his like social. media videos he'll be talking like in the Jamaican accent it's it all kind of paints this picture of like I think Kendrick gets asking throughout this beef like who are you drake really at your core who are you because your public persona and your music seems to kind of sway with the breeze it's kind of an amalgamation of whatever's trending at the moment kendrick on the other hand is Compton through and through he's west coast and he's showing that in the video in the song He is pure bread, and he's from a place with a rich history within hip hop within this culture.

And meanwhile, Drake, I don't know who you are. I don't think you know who you are. And again, you pretend to be of a certain culture, but I'm telling you, you are not. You are not like me. You are not like us. And so that's why I think the colonizer colleague line is so clever, so effective, within this beef, with everything that came before it in Euphoria 616, meet the grams. Kendrick has been elaborating on certain points throughout this entire beef, and I feel like it all

comes to a head in this final line of the third verse. But then right after we get another incredibly effective line, the family matter and the truth of the matter, it was God's plan to show you all the liar. So a lot here. Most immediately, of course, he's addressing family matters directly, which dropped just 24 hours before not like us dropped. So he at least recorded this line within that 24-hour span, right? I don't know how much of the song was pre-recorded. Definitely this third verse, which is, I think, the most impressive verse, was recorded the day after Family Matters,

the day that he released this song. I think he recorded it that day because it's entirely built off of what Drake said in Family Matters about rapping like you're trying to get the slaves free. So, I mean, we need a documentary on all this at some point. we need to know when these songs were written because if he wrote the entirety of not like us, which I just can't fathom to be true, but maybe it is, if he wrote the entire thing after Family Matters dropped and then dropped it the same day, I mean, Jesus. I just can't see how that's possible, but you never know. But back to the line, he also says God's Plan, which is, of course,

one of Drake's biggest songs of all time. It also has a very famous music video where Drake is seen kind of giving money to people and doing these humanitarian acts. So I think that plays in to like show you all the liar. It's like Drake is not who he is purporting himself to be. His image is false. It's it's manicured for him to look a certain way. And throughout this beef, I'm exposing the fallacy of his image. This has been one of Kendrick's central points from the very beginning in the very beginning of euphoria. He says, know you're a master manipulator and a habitual liar to. Also I think of the reversed sample coming from Oz about the Oz and that move. being uncovered as a phony and a fraud, and Kendrick is the one exposing the world of Drake's

false image. And then, of course, we get the visual paired with this line, which is just chef's kiss in terms of strategy. We see Whitney and Kendrick's two children kind of posing for a portrait within a living room. And of course, one of Drake's major claims throughout this beef was that Kendrick beat his wife and that he doesn't actually see his kids. and that day free is the actual father of one of these children. So we get the family matter and the truth of the matter. And so we get family and truth in the same line. And then by proxy, we see the family.

And Kendrick is saying, this is the truth of the matter. I am with my kids. I am with Whitney. Whitney in this scene is wearing a white tank top, an a.k.a. a wife beater. So that's definitely intentional. And essentially without. saying a word, Kendrick is disproving essentially all the major claims in Drake's discracks

with one image. And then we hear the bridge and Whitney starts dancing. So let's hear the bridge and we'll talk about it because it gets even deeper than this. He a fan, he a fan, he a fan, he a fan, he a fan, here, fan here. Freaky-ass nigger, he's 69 gods. Freaky-ass nigger, he's 69 God. Hey, hey, hey, hey, run for your life. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, run for your life. All right, so let's take it back to He a fan, he a fan, he a fan. In the video we see Whitney get her

moment in this beef. She's dancing in the living room, having a good old time with her kids and with Kendrick. Whitney, by the way, if you don't know, is from Compton. Her and Kendrick met, I think in high school, there's definitely photos of them together when they were very young. I think

they were on and again, off again type of thing. The timeline for the public at least is blurry. They don't really share that kind of information, but they've known and been together for a long time. So seeing her get dragged into this beef, but then kind of getting the final word, it's kind of a beautiful moment, right? But there's some layers within this scene. So Andres Tardo on Twitter pointed out that the black and white living room set that is seen in this video is possibly and probably most likely based on a photo from Latoya Ruby Frazier,

who is a black photographer from, I think, Chicago or Pennsylvania, somewhere on the East Coast. and she's a pretty well-known photographer, and Kendrick and Dayfrey are definitely known for referencing photography and their work, most famously probably on Element. But anyways, there's a photo by Frazier in a series called Flint is Family in Three Acts, and the living room and the framing of the photo look very, very, very similar to what we see in the scene, the Not Like Us video. So that adds a layer to this scene, some history behind it.

Frazier, I guess, I haven't done a full deep dive into her work. I just didn't have time to do that. But apparently she explores subjects like the notion of family. And this photo comes from a series called Flint is family. So it seems intentional, especially because this is literally where we hear Kendrick say, the family matter. So adds a layer to the scene. Also what I thought is interesting, and I didn't notice this until just like a day ago. In the original photo, there's not a fan on the ceiling. But in the video, there's very clearly a fan on the ceiling and spinning up full blast exactly when we hear he's a fan, he's a fan, he's a fan.

So we see Whitney and then Kendrick and Whitney dancing beneath a fan while we hear that line. It's very subtle because you're so focused on Whitney at this moment and rightfully so. But it's just one of those details. I was like, of course they kind of snuck it in. there. It's not going to be obvious, but it's there. Just another Easter egg in a video that has tons of them. So next time you watch the video, look for that. But let's talk about the notion of a fan, right? So obviously he's calling Drake a fan. He's a fan of the culture, but not a part of it, tying into this whole Not Like Us theme. Also, being a fan has been a slight motif throughout

this entire battle. On We Don't Trust You, Feature has a line saying, you an N-word number one fan dog. So he's calling out the fact that Drake is a huge fan of future and even in Family Matters, Drake never really disses Future. He just says he's kind of bummed out that they had a falling out. But also Drake on push-ups before Family Matters said, I could never be nobody number one fan as a direct response to Futures line. So Kendrick's giving his take on the fan things and calling Drake a fan, not of just future, but the entire culture.

But it also is an acronym, F-A-N, and then we get the freaky-ass N-word, 69 God. So F-A-N, Freaky-Ass N-Word. Super clever. Works on multiple levels, of course. So 69 God we already talked about is a flip of the six god. Sixty-nine, of course, is a sexual position, but also people have proposed that he's saying 69 to nod to Takashi 6-9, who is a controversial rapper and online kind of character who pled guilty to a felony level minor-related sex crime. which took place in 2015. So if you buy that, that's intentional. There is a very direct link to all these claims of being a predator.

All right. So then we get the hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, run for your life. This one is pretty interesting. Run for your life to me ties directly into this trial narrative or vocabulary. After the conviction, so after the conviction, Drake is on the run. He's a criminal on the run. I also think it calls back to what Kendrick said and meet the grams, Curry, keep the family away.

LeBron, keep the family away. So he's talking to kind of us, the audience. Everyone should be running from Drake and his circle. These guys are bad dudes. Don't be around them. Don't take your kids around them, etc. Also, some have proposed, I'm not sure, I'm kind of on the fence about this,

but the hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Some people are saying is Kendrick mimicking Bill Cosby's Fat Albert character, who is known for the catchphrase, hey hey hey and of course bill cosby very infamously now has done some very horrendous things raping drugging women just gross stuff so if you buy that it's intentional just like the six nine to koshy six nine there is a link directly to that interpretation and then at the end of the song kendrick just i feel like just starts having fun we get the let me hear you say o v ho the step this way step this way making this a dance song making this an anthem very intentionally putting these sing

song, call and response, type things into this song. It's super clever strategically, right? I mean, these are kind of corny bars. I think Kendrick understands that. But at this point in the song, the case has been made. And again, it is kind of fun and infectious and undeniably catchy. Or like, you can't resist the urge of yelling back OVO and then dancing when you hear a step this way, step that way. Kendrick understands the power of music. That's why he has centered the music in beef, he understands that IG captions, photos, anything you say online. You can say the same thing online through a photo or a tweet, but it's going to be way more impactful in a song and in a video form. And he understands that to the fullest. And he definitely knew this song was going to be a hit.

By the time they filmed the video, they already knew it was a hit. But, I mean, it was very clear the moment it dropped that this was going to be a hit. I don't know if anyone really predicted how big of hit it's I mean it's still number one to this day as we're recording this so by including these kind of sing-song call-and-response things like he's getting the whole world on his side because the whole world is now chanting o-vo and saying all these things demeaning drake just super clever strategically right oh-v-ho say o-v-o say o-v-ho say o-v-o they step this way step that way this step this way step this way Are you my friend? Are we liking?

They step this way, step that way. They step this way. And then in the video during this section, we see just a sequence of a bunch of the shots filmed in Compton, all the L.A. natives in the scene. And so they become part of this call and response. We see a bunch of cameos. We see YG, Thundercat, Steve Lacey, Big Hit,

which is Hit Boy's father and rapper. We see Problem, just a bunch of, I think, Cizzles, in there. Just a bunch of cameos, all of them being L.A. based artist. We also get the scene in the courtroom of just Kendrick alone in the room waving and smiling to the camera directly. One of the few times he actually looks into the camera. It's a very memorable moment because it contrasts so much of his persona in this thing, which we'll talk about in a second, which is very nonchalant. So I think it's definitely kind of taunting Drake, of course. But also when they filmed this video, they knew the song was a hit.

They knew Kendrick had won the battle. So I think it's just kind of waving goodbye. It's a celebration of the conviction. You know, it's interesting because without Not Like Us, Kendrick's victory wouldn't be so unanimous, right? Everything that we got up until Not Like Us, I think Kendrick still was in the lead. I think most people thought Kendrick was in the lead, but it wasn't like a huge margin, right? And not like us was just a true nail in the coffin.

I think anyone but Drake stands understand that. Kendrick unanimously won this battle. And that's why the penultimate image of the video, understanding that they knew Kendrick had won the battle while filming the video and conceptualizing it. So the penultimate image is incredibly impactful. So the song fades out. And while it fades out, we see the owl and the cage. So let's talk about it on a surface level, then go into detail. Most obviously, the OVO logo is a, an owl. That's Drake's kind of mascot. And so Drake is not killed, but tamed. He's put in his place through this battle. And Kendrick is the one to put him there. I think from the trial narrative

perspective, again, I think this is what cements it for me in a lot of ways, is that after being convicted, guilty is charged. We see the owl behind bars, literally locked up, right, in cell block one symbolically. And this formally ends the trial narrative that have been theorizing throughout this thing. So we have the courtroom, we have the evidence presented, we get to conviction in the third verse, and the evidence and the docket being presented. And now it leads to this moment of the owl behind bars. Interestingly, though, this scene is not in all white, but it's the opposite. It's all black. But Kendrick is wearing a solid white shirt. So in my mind, the solid white is still there. the symbol of the pure culture is still there.

And that's who put Drake in his place. The culture checked him. Doesn't kill him, but checks him. But there's more layers, and they all tie all these various threads that we've been talking about throughout this song and video. An owl is a predator. So the owl in the cage literally works on that as well.

It's a predator put behind bars. Also, people online I pointed out, I think rightfully so, that a caged bird, all a cage bird can do is sing. So that directly ties into a line on euphoria where Kendrick says, I like Drake with the melodies. I don't like Drake when he act tough. So again, don't pretend to be someone you're not. Don't imitate a culture. Just be who you are. There's no problem with you making pop songs. I don't have a problem with that. I only have a problem when you're imitating culture and then acting like you own it. So Al and a Cage works on that level as well. We should also talk about the

perspectives of these various shots during this scene. So it starts with the owl's point of view. So we see the owl from behind and we see Kendrick kind of looking at the owl like menacingly kind of. We're not sure what he's going to do to the owl. Is he going to kill it? It's going to strangle it, throw it across the room. But importantly, from this first vantage point, we do not see a cage. It's only on the second shot where we get Kendrick's point of view, or at least the back of Kendrick looking at the cage or at the owl. We see. the cage. And then Kendrick walks away and that's when we see the owl fully behind bars. So it's interesting those, the contrast between perspectives. And this is something I read online. So I'm not

taking credit for this interpretation, but I do think it is a thing. So from Drake's perspective, from the owl's perspective, no cage, and he's staring at Kendrick. And that's them going one-on-one in this beef. But then when we get Kendrick's perspective, we see the cage and that Drake was locked up this entire time. He just didn't know it. And it's only after Kendrick revealed to him and the world that this owl, this artist is limited. And he can't move freely within this culture. And someone like Kendrick wearing the pure white shirt symbolic of pure culture is the one to put him in his place. So again, from the owl's point of view, the owl could have attacked Kendrick because there was no cage there.

But it was revealed in the second shot that Kendrick has been protected this entire time. And this ties back to the other all black scene in this video where Kendrick is standing with the spirit of Convin dancing next to him. The Drake character sneaks up on him and is pulled back into the darkness supernaturally because Kendrick is protected. Just like the cage, right? The owl can't get to Kendrick because there's a separation there. They not like us. I'm protected by the culture because I am one with it. Right.

So this last scene is just brilliant. on multiple levels, the meaning is there. But importantly, I think the impact, we all understood the impact of and felt the impact of that final image when we first saw the video. I think this is interesting to contrast with what Drake tried to do in his video, where he was smashing the Good Kid Mad City van, which is a symbol of Kendrick.

And I think in the moment, it was clever, you know, in terms of the battle, in terms of strategy, it was like, oh, did he actually get the real van? No, it wasn't the real van. But it doesn't matter. I do think it was clever to do that. But I think the impact of that shot of him smashing the van, like no one talks about that now. Because if he had won the battle like Kendrick and then he had shown that image, it would have been 100,000 times more impactful. But he didn't earn the impact of that crushing the van shot. Drake thought by crushing the van, that would help him, to be victorious, but he didn't earn the symbolism of crushing the van. Kendrick earned the symbol of putting the owl on the cage. By this point in the beef, it was already understood that Kendrick had won. And so all that meaning, all that history is imbued in that symbol. And so it's just, to me, it's just the difference between these two artists and how they

operate and how they work with art and symbolism like this. like Kendrick is a master of symbolism. We know this. He understands it completely. Or Drake, we know that's not his thing. So it's interesting because we should kind of compare the two videos because going back to the beginning of this episode, the offering sheep from both sides is equal. And so we should compare the video of Family Matters to the video of Not Like Us because that's the direct comparison point within this battle in terms of medium. And so that to me was something I thought a lot about. just that difference between the symbol of crushing the van and its lack of lasting impact compared to the impact I think the world felt when they saw this final shot of the owl in the cage.

I think it's just an interesting case study in symbolism and why it works and why it doesn't work and why we feel just on an intuitive level the impact of these images because they are imbued with history and you kind of have to earn the symbolism behind it. You can't just offer it up and expect it to be impactful and for people to feel it on an intuitive level. And again, Kendrick is the master of this and this penultimate image and day free, of course, is really just the icing on the cake of this entire thing. But importantly, even though the song ends with the owl in the cage, the video does not. And so this is going to bring the episode full circle and back to what I was saying, why I think Kendrick engaged in

this beef, it has to do with this final shot. So instead of ending on the owl, Dave Free and Kendrick smartly and very importantly, chose to end it with the aerial shot of the MLK statue just filled with Compton natives, LA natives. We don't really see Kendrick. He's in the crowd. They kind of zoom in on him, but not really because that's the point. Kendrick is just one lost among this crowd that is representing not only the union of Compton, not only the union of pyruz and crypts, not just the union of the West Coast, but the union of the culture. We see kind of the living, breathing entity of the culture in this mass of people, right? And Kendrick is not singled out. He's just one among the masses. He's just one part of this

larger thing. And I think this final shot is so important. And it, emphasizes to me the entire point of the entire battle. Because since the pop-out show, and now after the video, Kendrick has made a very specific, calculated effort to de-center Drake in this battle and re-centered the focus on the West Coast, on L.A. on Compton. You saw that at the end of the pop-out show and that now iconic photograph of everyone on stage together in Yonel. union and you see it also throughout this entire video. And so we have to start thinking about Drake as a symbol and Kendrick as a symbol representing larger ideas. And in my opinion, or at least my interpretation, I think Kendrick is using Drake as a symbol of hip-hop's exponential growth

over the past couple of decades and the ways in which with that growth of popularity, the ways in which hip-hop has been decentered from its roots, from the places and the people who created the genre and the culture that created the genre. Hip-hop has become so big that you have a lot of voices, you have a lot of outside voices, commenting on the genre, curating the genre, controlling the narrative of the genre to some extent, and a lot of them are outsiders, and I'm 100% including me in this conversation. And what I think makes Drake the symbol of the outsider in Kendrick's view, and of course I'm speculating here, this is my own theory, let me be clear on that.

But I think Drake becomes that symbol because of specifically the way he has moved within the space, which we've talked about now at length. And all the ways that Kendrick has called out what he thinks is improperly moving within the culture and the ways in which he is abused and exploited the culture to his own advantage. And you can extrapolate that central idea to a lot of the outsiders now involved in the hip-hop space. And I think checking Drake, by extension, symbolically, is a check to the entire world. It is reminding the world, it is reminding people like me, outsiders who appreciate and are fans of this culture and this genre, that you are a guest in this house, that you do not control this thing,

that you did not create this thing, and to move within this thing with respect. Understand the history. Don't get so comfortable that you think you created this or that you control it in some kind of way, that you have some kind of ownership on it. Move within this thing with respect and reverence because you did not create it. You did not come from the places that created it and you did not suffer the same hardships that led to the creation of this thing in the first place. And that gets into a much deeper conversation of communities like Compton and the history behind them and the history of this country. And I think all that is kind of playing into what I ultimately think Kendrick has re-centered very intentionally at the end of this battle

is that we, I'm talking about me, I'm talking about probably a lot of you listening, we are not like them. We can appreciate what they have given us. We can be fans of the culture and the genre. And that's why that line resonates so much as we are fans. We do not own this thing. We do not control it. And I think ultimately that's what Drake, to me at least in this battle, has come to symbolize, is someone that got too comfortable in Kendrick's view, someone that is an outsider. I don't think it's necessarily a race thing. I think it's mostly the way in which he's disrespected the culture and the various ways that Kendrick has called him out on. And on the flip side of this coin, we also have to view Kendrick

as a symbol of that pure culture, of pure hip-hop. This again goes back into I Am All of Us. It goes back to what he said in Hart Part 5. I do this for my culture. It goes back to what he said in Element. I'm willing to die for this shit. I've done cried for this shit. It might take a life for this shit. This is more than just music to Kendrick. This music represents something at his very core. He is a product of this genre of this culture. And I want to play for you an interview clip that I saw resurface since the beef.

And I think it really illuminates a lot of the reasons why Kendrick engaged in this beef and why he ultimately centered the West Coast in Compton. at the end of it. So let's hear the clip and we'll talk about it. I'm so passionate about hip hop, man. Like, I don't know what era everybody else comes from, but when I listen, man, like, I love it to a point I can't even describe it, you know?

And when I heard these artists say they're the best coming up, I said, I'm not doing it to have a good song. or one good rap or a good hook or a good bridge I want to keep doing it every time period and to do it every time

you have to challenge yourself and you have to confirm to yourself not anybody else confirm to yourself that you're the best period I don't

no one can take that away from me period and that's my drive and that's my hunger I will always have and at this point right now The years and the time and effort and the knowledge and the history, you know, I've done on the culture and the game I've gotten from, you know, those before me and respect I have for them. I want to hold myself high on that same pedestal 10, 15 years from now. And that's where you were going when you were so blunt on control. You were like, I need to say this. This is what I mean.

What are we doing it for? Right. This is culture. This is not something you just play with. You know, get some few dollars and get out. You know, people live their lives to this music, period. You know, it's my partner's in the hood right now that they listen to rap every day because it's the only thing that can relate to their stories and their tribulations.

They live and breathe it. You can't play with this. and you have to take in consideration of what you write down on that paper. And if you're not doing it to say the most impactful or doing it to be the best you can be for the listener to live that day of lives, then what are we doing here?

All right, so this interview was with Zane Lowe at the time of Dam's release, but I think so much of it still applies now. So we heard him express his passion for hip-pop, the ways in which he studied the history, wanting to continue the legacy in the right way that makes the forefathers of this thing proud. And then he specifically says, this is culture, this is not something you can play with to make a few dollars. And then says how powerful this music is to specifically the people in his community who live their lives through this music

because it's the only thing that relates to their own struggle. They see a reflection of themselves in the music. And so again, bringing this back to the beef. If we're talking about Drake and Kendrick as symbols, I think we've already covered the Drake part of it. I think Kendrick most likely saw himself as the only person that could take down Drake. And in this way, I really do feel, and this is again my interpretation, but I really feel like Kendrick feels like what he did through the beef

was a service to hip-hop and a service to his culture that he is a protector of because he has this skill set, because he comes from Compton, because, you know, he's talked about in the past of being hip-hop savior. I know he's kind of shed some of that weight since Mr. Moral. But in terms of just hip-hop and not maybe necessarily trying to change the world, I still feel like the hip-hop savior or the arbiter or the protector of. I still think that applies. I mean, why else would he engage in this beef?

And why else would he re-center the West Coast at the end? of it. I think, and again, this ties back into the last image of the video and the last image of the pop out show. This is the visual period, exclamation mark of this entire thing. And history will look back at the pop out show. It'll look back on Not Like Us and the video as a historical, pivotal moment in hip hop. And so I think Kendrick engaged in this beef as a service to hip hop. And also this new Dave Free interview came out with Elephant Magazine just yesterday as I'm recording this, so mid-July. And there's a few quotes I wanted to read because I think it ties into this idea of being at service to hip-hop. And Dave Free, of course, is the co-owner of PG-Lang, it's Kendrick's

creative partner for years now. And he talks about what PG-Lang is supposed to represent and what its service is as a creative service. So in this interview, Dave Free, was asked why he doesn't do that many interviews. And he essentially says, I'm more comfortable behind the spotlight, but I am making a point to do more of these. And this is why. And so here are some quotes I want to read you. He says, quote, hiding out serves me well, but it's bigger than me. I'm just trying to be a contributing player to the new age of how information is shared. I'm just trying to bring an offering. And then later he says, quote, I'm trying to share more, be less selfish. That's our value proposition, talking about PG-Lang.

That's our value proposition, actually being at service to something more than yourself. So this to me ties in directly to PG-Lang into this video that is co-directed by Day Free, that is put out by PG-Lang, Kendrick being at service to his community through this beef, re-centering and reminding all of us where this hip-hop thing comes from as it's kind of grown and separated from its roots. And through this beef, through this video, through the pop-out show, Kendrick has reminded the world that we fans, us outsiders, are not like them. And I think more than anything, that's what I'm personally taking away from this whole battle. This battle for Kendrick was a restorative act. It was an act of service. I always suspected there might be a larger message

at play, and that's my interpretation of it. That's why I think Kendrick engaged in this thing. I don't think it's entirely ego. I don't think it's entirely. I'm the greatest rapper alive, although I think it's very clear that Kendrick has the crown. I honestly just don't think there's an argument anymore. It really is. Fuck the big three. It's just big me. But through the battle, Kendrick has made it clear that the me and it's just big me represents the us and not like us. Thank you all for listening this far. I know it's a super long one. If you have any thoughts, hit me up at Dissect Podcast. And as a little gift for those of you have stuck around this long, I'll just say that I will be back very soon with some Kendrick content that might last a couple of months.

So listen to the last song Standing on Outcast and the meantime. time and I'll talk to you guys soon.