Not even the Oscars was a safe space for rapper Drake, who again was the subject of mockery for his longstanding feud with Kendrick Lamar.

Coming out near the halftime mark of the ceremony, Oscars host Conan O’Brien made a joke at Drake’s expense, making a callback to Kendrick Lamar’s recent Super Bowl Halftime Show performance.

“Well, we’re halfway through the show, which means it’s time for Kendrick Lamar to come out and call Drake a pedophile,” O’Brien said to the crowd, who audibly cringed and giggled at the dig.

The joke was a reference to the Grammy-winning song “Not Like Us,” a product of Lamar’s feud with Drake that includes several not-so-veiled accusations against the Canadian-born rapper.

“Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young,” one lyric states. “Make sure you hide your lil’ sister from him,” another says.

During Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show performance, the crowd of tens of thousands of people joined in unison for the song’s most famous lyric: “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.”

The two rappers have collaborated in the past, but there’s no love lost in recent years, with the two exchanging blows in their songs. Drake has said recently that he’s interested in moving on from the beef, but after the critical and commercial success of “Not Like Us,” many in the hip-hop community believe the knockout blow was landed long before he made that decision.

The Kendrick Lamar and Drake feud has touched the most prestigious stages in pop culture this year.

First, at the Grammy Awards in early February, a crowd was captured singing the infamous “A minor” line from Lamar’s “Not Like Us” when he accepted record of the year. In addition to that trophy, he took home four other awards for the song while donning a Canadian tuxedo.

Days later, the Super Bowl 59 crowd also chanted that line in unison when the Pulitzer Prize winner performed the diss track during the halftime show. A rendition of the hit even made it to the “Saturday Night Live” 50th anniversary concert.

Now, at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday night, host Conan O’Brien mentioned the beef in front of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

“Well, we’re halfway through the show, which means it’s time for Kendrick Lamar to come out and call Drake a pedophile,” O’Brien joked.

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“Don’t worry, I’m lawyered up,” he continued, referencing the Canadian emcee’s pursuit of legal action following the height of the battle.

Kendrick Lamar, Drake:Rap beef explained after the Super Bowl halftime show

Why are Kendrick and Drake beefing?

Drake and Lamar are feuding because of years of subliminal comments between the two via songs dating as far back as 2013, in Lamar’s song “Control.”

Then on Drake and fellow rapper J. Cole’s 2023 track “First Person Shooter,” Cole rapped that he, Drake and Lamar were the “big three” of rap music. On rapper Future and Metro Boomin’s March song “Like That,” Lamar fired back, distancing himself from the trio (rapping forget “the big three … it’s just big me”) and said, apparently in reference to Drake: “It’s time for him to prove that he’s a problem.”

The first two full songs in their feud came from Drake, in “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle” in April. Lamar responded with his track, “Euphoria,” just over a week later and with “6:16 in LA” in early May.

This was when things took a turn from par for the rap course to serious allegations with real potential consequences.

Fourteen hours after “LA,” Drake followed up with the track “Family Matters” in a track that claimed Lamar physically abused his partner Whitney Alford. Minutes after, Lamar laid out serious allegations of abuse, addiction and a hidden second child against Drake in “Meet the Grahams.” Then on May 4, Lamar released “Not Like Us,” with accusations of grooming girls, calling Drake and his associates “certified pedophiles.”

Though it’s hard to boil down the exact reasoning of a decade-long feud, Lamar has used “Not Like Us” as a vehicle to attack Drake’s presence and status in the industry, which he’s said is one of a “colonizer” – someone who tries to ingratiate himself in Black culture and try on for size without really being of the culture.

Of all the songs in the feud, “Not Like Us” blew up on streaming and with fans, becoming a hit song everywhere from commercials to parties. The feud between the rappers took on new life with the instigation of social media, who felt Lamar came out victorious, as well as honors from the Grammys and performing at the Super Bowl.