Kendrick Lamar is currently touring North America alongside SZA and Mustard on their "Grand National" trek, his final victory lap. While the Drake battle is old-as-dirt news that we and many others harp on too much, at the end of the day, most fans just want a catchy song to dance to.
This explains the consistent success behind "Not Like Us," which exited Billboard's Hot 100 this week after a record-breaking 53 weeks on the chart. But the longest-running hip-hop song in that chart's history isn't the only record the Compton lyricist broke this week.
As caught by Jah Talks Music on Twitter, the West Coast banger reportedly surpassed 1.5 billion Spotify streams in 388 days. This makes it the fastest rap song to ever reach this metric.
Of course, you either feel vindicated by a drawn-out diss track win or are hating all over a massive hit song for succeeding at its mission. Neither the lovers or the haters of "Not Like Us" have fully acknowledged the systems pushing its success. And no, we're not talking about bots or payola, but just the industry doubling down on a successful formula.
Kendrick Lamar "luther"
As such, we couldn't help but understand Key Glock when he recently said the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef should end. It already did, obviously, but fans continue to drag its context out rather than engage with each MC earnestly.
"How long yall gonna drag this Drake and Kendrick Lamar s**t??" the Memphis spitter tweeted. If the current landscape is anything to go by, hip-hop fans and media will milk this forever.
That's not necessarily a bad thing if the debates were more about the music and die-hards didn't go to war over different opinions. But alas, that's just the Internet for you.
Elsewhere, Kendrick Lamar's "luther" also ended its chart-topping reign. So maybe Key Glock is onto something here.
One day, we will look back at both Kendrick Lamar and Drake with a more individualist context when it comes to what they offered the culture over the past year. But much to the dismay of people who hate overplayed material and conversations on either side, it is not this day.
