The Singles Jukebox

From “fucking Drake” to “fuck you, Drake”…

[Video]
[6.73]

Katherine St. Asaph: “Meet the Grahams” was more vicious, but this has schadenfreude off the charts: one-upping “Family Matters” with something even more engineered as a crossover bop and succeeding at that crossover, thus depriving Drake of his one argument in the court of public opinion; the simultaneous coinage of many new memes dunking on Fucking Drake; the various streams of Drake stans squirming in anguish trying to suppress the urge to dance; clubs playing it almost immediately; the NBA playoff broadcasters adding it to rotation almost immediately (especially considering OKC is in them); the sheer fact that there is an enormously popular track that calls Drake a predator for his publicly predatory behavior.
[10]

Will Adams: i ain’t reading all that. i’m happy for u tho. or sorry that happened.
[3]

Alex Clifton: “Meet the Grahams” was one of the darkest songs I have ever heard and took the Kendrick-Drake beef to an entirely new level. But while “Meet the Grahams” has more damning accusations, “Not Like Us” acts as a real sucker punch because it’s so catchy and funny. Why not beat Drake at his own game by rapping about how he sucks over a dance beat? A jab about Drake’s predilection for younger girls turned into the most quotable line of the summer—honestly a genius move. People will be yelling “it’s probably A minorrrrrrrrrrr” whenever it comes up. The rest is fun, too; the colonizer line in particular makes me snicker. The fact that it was written so quickly with such smart lyrics leaves me in awe. Do I feel good about watching all this unfold? Not exactly; if any of the accusations these men hurl at one another end up being true, I don’t think anyone “wins.” But I am a messy bitch who loves drama, and this is drama to the highest fucking degree. If it sounds this good, all the better. 
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: The most seething, unflattering portrait of a theater kid raging that their talent and charm has not gained them the unflinching loyalty of their audience (and by extension their partner), and we will either have to hastily disavow this in four months/four years/tomorrow. That said, incredible, so full points!
[10]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: All moral and ethical concerns aside, I celebrate this as the triumphant return of the most notable figure in West Coast rap over the past decade: DJ Mustard! And thank god for it, too — before this, the aftershocks of “Like That” were mostly caught up in boring video essay-type beats (Jack Antonoff was involved) that existed merely so that these guys didn’t have to just do spoken-word poetry. (I refrain here from talking too much about “BBL Drizzy,” maybe the most interesting work in all of this scuffling.) It’s not just that this is a fun beat; it’s a beat composed with such obvious glee that it forced Kendrick into doing his best Drakeo (RIP) impression, taunting and generating quotables like he’ll never need to rap again. Even when he comes back to his senses and executes a rigorous and serious cultural critique of Drake’s extractive practices with regard to the Atlanta rap ecosystem, he gets some good jokes in – if some told me that 2 Chainz had LIED when he said I was good, I would retire immediately.
[8]

Jackie Powell: I compare this titular moment in music, the now very public feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, to a sports rivalry I follow quite closely. Kelsey Plum of the Las Vegas Aces told reporters during the 2023 WNBA Finals that her rival team, the New York Liberty, didn’t really “care about each other” in tough moments as teammates. She compared them to her Aces, a group of players who show on the internet and on television how close they are. In other words: For Plum, they (the Liberty) aren’t like us (her Aces). This rivalry was built from a couple of ideas: 1) these are the two teams with the most talent in the league, and 2) rivalries are hot-button stories that elevate and bring more eyes to the product. That second idea is where I land when it comes to our hip-hop feud at hand — and hey, the WNBA is super in style now, so hip-hop should be honored that I’m making this comparison. Reanna Cruz remarked on “Switched On Pop” that this beef is “getting played up to get people to pay attention to rap music again.” She’s not wrong. A huge difference between these two conflicts, of course, is that Drake and Kendrick Lamar are taking cheap shots at each other that make the trauma and pain of many women public. This beef is becoming too personal, rather than just a promotional catalyst for the genre. The synth strings that accompany Lamar’s flow do make this a worthwhile listen without soaking in the numerous disses on the track, and I always enjoy when Lamar adds jazz elements. But the compelling and catchy arrangement aside, I was disappointed in the hook. Saying someone isn’t up to par is a weighted statement, and repeating the title of the track six times isn’t an innovative way to hammer that point home. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: I acknowledge the anguish of many writers deploring the unfounded accusations here and in “Meet the Grahams.” Exploiting the misery of the victims for the sake of a diss track is gross. Maybe Nas vs. Jay-Z spats no longer suit our times — I grew up with them and loved them. But I’d be lying if I denied the motherfuckin’ catchiness of Mustard-on-the-beat and Kendrick Lamar’s arsenal of whines, repetitions, and biographical data. I also remember: art and journalism intersect but have divergent responsibilities. 
[8]

Julian Axelrod: If there are any winners in the great Graham-Lamar Beef of 2024, it’s the cadre of Genius-pilled rap fans who scour over every stray Kendrick line like it’s holy scripture, teasing out assumed allusions and nebulous entendres. Now Kendrick’s footnoting with purpose, each toss-away reference loaded with subtext about Drake’s personal (and potentially criminal) misdoings. But the most shocking thing Kendrick did — the thing that probably made Drake madder than any other slight in this saga — was make a good old fashioned rap radio banger, the kind he hasn’t attempted since SZA dropped Ctrl. And even more thrillingly, it’s an obsessively reverent LA rap resurrection that nobody does better than Kendrick at his loosest and best, alternating between Drakeo yammers and E-40 yowls over a Mustard beat that sounds like congested traffic on a hot day. (What’s crazier, the fact that two of Kendrick’s diss tracks are produced by Mustard and Jack Antonoff? Or the fact that the likely chart-topper is produced by one Dijon McFarlane?) If anything, the diss/bop duality is a disadvantage; there’s too much weight for the song to feel truly breezy, and it’s hard to turn up to direct accusations of sex trafficking and pedophilia. But casual menace is the defining trait of a West Coast diss track, and it’s satisfying to hear Kendrick returning to his home turf. 
[7]

Hannah Jocelyn: I’ve seen criticisms for the mix, and anyone who’s followed my blurbs during my eight years (!) writing for TSJ knows I’m all for that; believe me when I say that for once, it actually is nitpicking. All that matters for a song like this is that the vocals are intelligible but not too far above the beat. And these vocals are very intelligible, with every syllable as enunciated as Pusha T’s “you are HIDING a CHILD” for three minutes straight. The verse calling Drake out for his genre-hopping is as insightful and intense as anything Kendrick’s ever written. But this is obviously most famous for the “A minorrrrr” joke, mocking both Drake’s “Dave Freeeeeee” delivery on “Family Matters” and Nicki Minaj’s eccentric drawn-out deliveries. (Never mind that the line isn’t that strong — it’s the same pun Bo Burnham used over a decade ago.) Even as things get dark, it’s an incredibly fun listen; I enjoyed the showmanship of the beef, culminating in Kendrick beating his sworn enemy at his own game. But everyone who hates what it’s become is right. Do we really want jokes about these topics? If any of it is true, does that even change anything? Drake’s not too famous to get caught, despite what he said; he’s just too famous to face any meaningful consequences. The humiliation in “Not Like Us” might be the best we can do about alleged predators on this scale, in place of anything resembling justice.
[7]

Oliver Maier: It should be valid — encouraged, even — to admit that Kendrick Lamar is at his most annoying when he makes chart music. We are all losers in this godforsaken beef.
[2]

Taylor Alatorre: It doesn’t live up to the promise contained in that heart-resuscitating DJ Mustard tag, but I don’t know if any song could. The song that could live up to that DJ Mustard tag exists only in the realm of pure forms, alongside the band that could live up to the name Libertines and the album that could live up to the title ARTPOP. The actually existing “Not Like Us” lives down here in the muck with us fallen people, in a place of impermanence and unsettledness and compromise. A place where productive collaborations from a decade ago can be recast as colonial thievery in an instant; where populist pandering comes in the strategic use of the words “pedophiles” and “minor”; where sex offender registries are of dubious criminological impact; where my YouTube homepage just looks like this now; where apps are now battlefields and “post-truth” is a casus belli; where the bloodied gears of History churn on in the background, or foreground; where the Macklemore apology form exists; where in some arcane yet deeply intuitive way this all prefigures another Trump electoral victory. And yet, for all of Kendrick’s “me against the industry” posturing, only by climbing on the shoulders of its fraught context is “Not Like Us” able to claw its way into the halls of pop immortality. From “euphoria” onward, this has been the diss track as alternate reality game, roping in everyone from confused Chinese restaurant patrons to the luminaries named in Kendrick’s Real Atlanta Roll Call. We bob our heads to the lines about statutory offenses not because the bars are the hardest-hitting ever, or because we particularly care about the legal fate of Baka Not Nice, but because we imagine the thousands of other people bobbing their heads at that exact moment, astounded that (or wondering whether) we’re allowed to do so. Because the floodgates have been opened, Carnival is upon us, and for a few charged weeks even a beat that Stay Dangerous-era YG would have left alone can become a defining document of its time. Monoculture status: alive, in Serbia. 
[7]