Kendrick Lamar drops music video for Drake diss track ‘Not Like Us’ on Fourth of July

Kendrick Lamar just dropped the next bomb in his ongoing feud with Drake — and he may have ended the beef without having to release a new song.

The rapper released the highly anticipated video for “Not Like Us,” his massively popular Drake diss track widely regarded as one of 2024’s songs of the summer — and used the opportunity to take a few more shots at the Canadian musician.

The video opens with a snippet of unreleased music, which fans speculated may be a track from Lamar’s next album. Lamar knocks on a door, and Tommy the Clown — the dancer who appeared at the rapper’s Los Angeles “Pop Out” show on Juneteenth — slides open an eye hole and asks for the password.

That’s when the video transitions into “Not Like Us,” as Lamar responds with the song’s opening whisper: “I see dead people,” which is both a reference to The Sixth Sense and the suggestion that Drake has lost the beef so spectacularly that he’s dead.

The video features a plethora of symbolically charged imagery solidifying Lamar’s confidence in his position as the winner of the feud. The two most overt visual digs at Drake involve an owl, which the “God’s Plan” musician uses as a logo for his music label, OVO Sound. About a minute and a half into the video, Lamar beats an owl-shaped piñata with the caption, “Disclaimer: No OVHoes were harmed in the making of this video.” (Lamar also repeatedly mocks the record label in the song’s lyrics, as he raps about “OVHoe.”)

The other owl moment comes at the conclusion of the video, when Lamar stands menacingly in front of a real barn owl, which is then revealed to be trapped in a cage.

Another detail bound to get Drake in his feelings is a cameo that occurs around halfway through the video: a cameo from NBA star Demar Derozan, who used to play for Drake’s beloved hometown team, the Toronto Raptors.

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The video also allows Lamar to put two allegations that Drake lobbied against him to rest. In “Family Matters,” Drake insinuated that Dave Free, who is Lamar’s lifelong friend and frequent collaborator, secretly fathered one of Lamar’s children. The “Not Like Us” video ends with a bombshell credit that should dispel rumors of any tension between the childhood friends: “Directed by Dave Free and Kendrick Lamar.” 

Additionally, “Family Matters” suggested that Lamar was physically abusive with his fiancée Whitney Alford. Lamar never responded to these claims — until the “Not Like Us” video, which showed Alford joyfully dancing around the living room with Lamar and their two children, implying that the family has nothing but love for one another.

The recent beef between the two rappers began when J. Cole referred to himself, Lamar, and Drake as the “big three” of contemporary hip-hop in October, which prompted Lamar to respond, “Motherf— the big three, n—a, it’s just me” on “Like That” in March. 

Several songs and insults later, Drake ultimately released the final song in the feud, “The Heart Part 6,” on May 5. However, he deleted an Instagram post promoting the track shortly after its release, which some fans interpreted as a concession of defeat. And even before “Not Like Us” received a video, Lamar already had the last laugh in the conflict: he performed the song five consecutive times at his Juneteenth show last month.

Watch the full “Not Like Us” video above.