‘Like That,’ One Year Later: How One Kendrick Lamar Verse Shook Up The Game (Again).

It was just another Friday in March. Future and Metro Boomin’s long-anticipated joint album was finally here and fans were looking forward to hearing some menacing trap beats and toxic tales of women, percocet and Gucci flip flops. But Kendrick Lamar had other ideas.

We Don’t Trust You was already a hypnotic ride five tracks in when “Like That,” with its opening burst of frantic laser horns, took it to a new level. With its Eazy-E and Rodney-O & Joe Cooley samples and sinister keys, Metro had conducted his finest opera since “Don’t Come Out the House,” while Pluto flipped the gothic aesthetic into something seductive.

Then the nasally tones of Kendrick Lamar popped up out of nowhere on the second verse. “These n-ggas talkin’ out of their necks” was the aggressive opening line from the usually cerebral Compton superstar, setting the tone for a verse that would change the course of Hip Hop (and his own career) for at least the next year.

After puffing his chest out ever further with each blistering line, Kendrick made it clear that he “chooses violence” and took aim at Drake and J. Cole over their Super Bowl-level boasts on “First Person Shooter.” Though Lamar’s jabs were tame in hindsight compared to what was to come on “Euphoria”, “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us,” his line about “snatchin’ chains and burnin’ tattoos” should have been a warning heeded by the 6 God.

A year on from the thunderbolt that was “Like That,” the rap game is still catching its breath. Friends are now enemies. Empires have crumbled. Lawsuits have been filed. And Hip Hop has a new king. It’s funny how one verse can fuck up the game.

Below, HipHopDX explores how Kendrick Lamar’s appearance on “Like That” changed everything.

Hip Hop Civil War

At one point in time, nobody appeared to have more friends in Hip Hop than Drake. Joint albums with Future and 21 Savage, smash hits with Lil Wayne, Lil Baby and Lil Durk, and enough collaborations with Rick Ross to keep the big man collecting sizeable royalty checks. Not to mention his history with The Weeknd, A$AP Rocky and even Kendrick himself. But by the end of 2024, Drizzy cut a much lonelier figure with seemingly only PARTYNEXTDOOR, The Game (a.k.a. the West Coast’s own Benedict Arnold) and a bunch of right-wing streamers left by his side.

“Like That” ignited this schism in Hip Hop. It was declared open season on Drake, with Rick Ross in particular enjoying dissing his previously close collaborator. Future and Rocky also fired shots at the Toronto native, seemingly over women. Pretty Flacko was particularly justified given Drake’s frequent subliminals aimed at his former fling and Rocky’s current girlfriend Rihanna.

The hardheadedness of both Drake and Kendrick, exacerbated by how heated their feud got, has meant there’s been no playing both sides. There’s not even a metaphorical Switzerland where peace can be made with few, if any, of the many, many artists that Drake has associated with over the years, rushing to his defense.

The Downfall of Drake

Drake couldn’t resist. Even after surviving Pusha T‘s scathing “The Story of Adidon” and the ghostwriter revelations from his feud with Meek Mill, his ego would not let it slide. Kendrick was always four chess moves ahead and knew exactly where his longtime rival would escalate to and how, but “Like That” was always the warning shot.

Drizzy’s response to the song (and the flurry of shots aimed in his direction across Future and Metro Boomin’s two albums) revealed so much about the man’s fragile psyche, pettiness, self-pity, the lack of finesse in his playground insults and the lack of hesitation to take aim at women. Kendrick likely knew all that when sanctioning the release of “Like That,” tossing out the most irresistible piece of bait imaginable. Drake bit, lost his crown, and went and cried to his lawyers.

Though the battle itself technically finished last May with the forgettable “The Heart Part 6,” two of the biggest blows were dealt earlier this year. In the space of seven days in February, Kendrick won a record five Grammys for “Not Like Us,” the most awards given to any one song, before performing his hit diss track at the Super Bowl in front of 133.5 million viewers, another historic stat.

It’s hard to imagine that it was merely coincidence that Drake had scheduled a tour on the other side of the world as these events took place.

Kendrick Supernova

Who knows if when Kendrick decided to pull the trigger on Drake and J. Cole, he expected to be the biggest thing in music by the end of the summer. It was an acceleration in popularity by an established artist already more than a decade in the game that was without precedent. And it wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan flush of attention, either. A year on from “Like That” hitting number one on the Billboard Hot 100, Kendrick still sits atop the chart with “Luther,” a song that was released four months ago.

Heading into the battle, Drake was the undisputed commercial heavyweight of Hip Hop. In all of music, he was probably only behind Taylor Swift. But his war of words with Kendrick left him on his knees. None of his four diss tracks (“Push Ups,” “Taylor Made Freestyle,” “Family Matters” and “The Heart Part 6”) made the type of impact that we’ve come to expect from Spotify’s most-streamed artist of all time.

Adding insult to injury, his first post-beef album, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, not only failed to spawn a hit single but continues to get bodied by GNX on the Billboard 200. Drake likely thought that even if Kendrick out-rapped him, he could bully him on the charts and streaming services. Instead, the Canadian has been beaten at his own game.

Kanye West’s Increasing Irrelevancy

Nothing can happen in the world, let alone Hip Hop, without Kanye West trying to leach some attention towards himself. A longtime frenemy of Drake, Ye basically barged into Kendrick’s living room and snatched the TV remote, but thankfully he was quickly escorted out. If there was ever a sign that Hip Hop had moved on from Kanye, it was when he dropped a remix of “Like That” and the world treated it with a collective shrug. (The song never even made it to DSPs.)

His rhymes were lame (“Y’all so outta sight, outta mind / I can’t even think of a Drake line / Play J. Cole, get the pussy dry”) and his only real issue with Drake was that he had become more popular than him. Since then, West has endorsed assaulting women, aligned himself with Nazis and gone deeper into his hateful well of antisemitism as he continues to have a meltdown about every artist that is better liked than him.

Competition Time

When his Earth-shaking “Control” verse dropped in 2013, Kendrick’s unabashed proclamation of greatness riled up more than a few of his peers. That call to arms revealed a great deal about his philosophy on Hip Hop — that it’s an intellectual artform, competitive at heart and should not necessarily be easily palatable. The song received defensive responses from Drake and Big Sean, but few actual response tracks from those named in his verse. Instead, Lupe Fiasco and Joe Budden delivered two of the most notable rebuttals.

“Like That” has had a similar but different impact. It not only inspired Drake to come with some of his hardest ever lines (which still weren’t enough), but it seemingly motivated J. Cole to go back to basics with reinvigorated songs like “cLOUDs” following the calamity that was “7 Minute Drill” and his subsequent apology to Kendrick at Dreamville Festival.

Joey Bada$$, who considers himself in the lineage of top rappers, has also since thrown jabs at Cole and the entire West Coast while proclaiming himself the King of New York on his recent string of singles. It’s been a long time since there was a fight night edge to Hip Hop, but 2024 was the year of combat thanks to Kendrick’s “Like That.”