At the start of his "Pop Out" show in Los Angeles on Wednesday night, Kendrick Lamar didn't take any chances. He not only began his performance with the Drake diss song "Euphoria," but he also performed a brand-new verse for it.
Naturally, the allusion refers to a ring that belonged to the late Tupac Shakur and was acquired at auction by an unidentified buyer—whom it was later revealed to be Drake—last year. Even though it's only one new verse in a brutal duel between the two best rappers, which Lamar easily won and was essentially called off after multiple burglars attempted to break into Drake's Toronto home, perhaps there will be more.
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In the upcoming hours, Variety will have a comprehensive review of the show, which included cameos from Tyler, the Creator, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock, Dr. Dre, and Schoolboy Q. During Black Music Month, Amazon Music's hip-hop/R&B brand Rotation livestreamed the concert as part of their "Forever the Influence" celebration of Black musicians and creatives.
The concert, titled “The Pop Out — Ken and Friends,” takes its name from a different song in the feud, Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” where he raps, “Sometimes you gotta pop out and show n—s / Certified boogeyman, I’m the one that up the score with ’em.” The song was a diss directed at Drake that released a month ago and has continued on to scale the top of the charts, arguably becoming the most successful of the songs released between Drake and Lamar.
Throughout the battle, the two rappers went at each other’s physical appearances, lobbed accusations of pedophilia and made claims of hidden children. It ended with Drake’s “The Heart Part 6,” a play on Lamar’s long-running song series of the same name, and showed that Drake was tiring of the beef between them.
This nigga said WOP WOP WOP and the camera started cutting like an Anime this shit is HILARIOUS 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/dWWVQdOOqT
— Big Boss 🇵🇸 (@LordBalvin) June 20, 2024
Drake recently made a reference to the battle with a verse on Sexyy Red’s “U My Everything,” where he rapped over producer Metro Boomin’s diss beat “BBL Drizzy.” Metro helped facilitate the start of the beef with Lamar’s appearance on his song “Like That,” a collaboration with Future that came out in March.
