Kendrick Lamar accused of prioritising personal vendetta over hip hop
The rapper's Super Bowl act allegedly focused on Drake feud, not hip-hop celebration
Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s bitter feud has prompted extreme allegations from fans on both sides.
The trend continued on Saturday when podcaster and Drake supporter DJ Akademiks criticised Lamar’s Super Bowl performance.
He accused the Grammy winner of prioritising personal vendettas over representing hip-hop as a whole.
Akademiks suggested that the Halftime show, rather than elevating the genre, may have damaged its standing in mainstream entertainment and potentially discouraged the NFL from featuring rap artists in future events.
Citing the 37-year-old’s rendition of Not Like Us, Akademiks argued the performance felt more like a diss track than a tribute and added that the feud between the two rappers has put the entire music industry on pause.
The highly publicised rivalry between Drake and Lamar originally began in 2013 when the Canadian rapper responded to the Compton native’s verse on the track Control by Big Sean.
After years of subtle jabs, the feud became mainstream in 2023 when J. Cole collaborated with Drake on First Person Shooter.
In the song, Cole claimed that he, Drake and Lamar are the “big three” rappers of contemporary hip-hop, a notion that was dismissed by Lamar who proclaimed in Like That that it is “just big me.”
The beef escalated in 2024 when the two artists traded insults in diss tracks such as Family Matters and Euphoria.
Things got serious when Drake sued Universal Music Group (UMG) and Spotify in November for allegedly conspiring to inflate streaming figures of Not Like Us.
In January, however, the 38-year-old dropped the lawsuit and filed a new one for defamation against UMG for allegedly promoting the diss track.
Who is DJ Akademiks?
Livingston Allen, widely known as DJ Akademiks, is a prominent streamer and YouTuber, whose channel has become a go-to source for all things hip-hop.
The 33-year-old is also the host of the podcast Off the Record with DJ Akademiks on Spotify.
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