Songfacts®:

• "Not Like Us" is the knockout blow in Kendrick Lamar's longstanding beef with Drake, set up by the jabs of "Euphoria," "6:16 in LA," and "Meet The Grahams." Less than a day after releasing "Meet the Grahams," Lamar dropped "Not Like Us" on May 4, 2024. The rapid turnaround confirmed K-Dot's relentless pursuit of Drake in their feud.
  
  It's not often we can declare a clear winner in these fights, but "Not Like Us" became the most famous diss track of all time and left Drake with no musical counterpunch. The song was so pervasive, it had people with no stake in this beef singing along to lines like:
  
  Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young
  You better not ever go to cell block one
• Lamar doubles down on his prior allegations made against Drake of sexual deviancy. This time he outright calls the Canadian rapper "certified pedophile" – a savage play on Drake's album title, Certified Lover Boy.
  
  But Lamar doesn't stop there. He blasts Drake for exploiting Atlanta rappers like Future and Lil Baby, comparing him to a slave owner using them for street cred and cash. K-Dot also claims Drake hooked up with Lil Wayne's girl while Weezy was locked up and suggests one of Drake's cronies needs to be on a neighborhood watchlist. Yikes.
• Produced by Mustard, Momberger and Lamar's go-to beatmaker Sounwave, "Not Like Us" is a West Coast banger. Drake loves these types of tracks, but Lamar's letting him know he can go hard on West Coast bounce too.
• "Not Like Us" debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was Lamar's fourth chart-topper, following his verse on Taylor Swift's 2015 track "Bad Blood," the rapper's own 2017 song "HUMBLE." and his feature on Future and Metro Boomin's "Like That" earlier in 2024.
• "Not Like Us" was the first Hot 100 #1 for Mustard. His previous best ranking as a producer was the #5 that Ella Mai's "Boo'd Up" reached in 2018.
• Mustard was one of the last collaborators to hear the completed song. "I wasn't in the studio with them," he revealed to Billboard. "I had never heard that song. So when everybody else heard it, I heard it."
  
  Mustard also explained that when he was creating the instrumentation, his thought process was: "What would Dr. Dre do if Lil Jon was in the studio, and they were just clapping on the beat?" It took him approximately 30 minutes to create the soundscape.
• Kendrick Lamar gave "Not Like Us" its live debut during a star-studded concert in Los Angeles' Kia Forum on June 19, 2024. Fueled by the electric crowd, Lamar ripped through the song five times, each rendition escalating in intensity, leaving the audience buzzing.
• Co-directed by Kendrick Lamar alongside Dave Free, the video features a slew of celebrities, including YG, Roddy Ricch, Steve Lacy, Thundercat, Brandon T. Jackson, Hit-Boy, Tommy the Clown, producer Mustard (wearing a Toronto Blue Jays cap) and former Toronto Raptor DeMar DeRozan.
  
  The video opens with a reference to Drake's diss track "Push Ups." We see Lamar doing pushups on cinder blocks, a playful jab at Drake, who used a photo of Lamar exercising to promote his song.
  
  One of the most heartwarming parts of the video is the appearance of Lamar's fiancée, Whitney Alford, alongside their children. This scene seems to directly address rumors of infidelity and family mistreatment sparked by Drake's "Family Matters," suggesting a happy and united family life for Lamar.
  
  There are several references to owls in the clip, the bird associated with Drake's OVO label. In one symbolic scene, Lamar takes a swing at an owl-shaped piñata with a humorous disclaimer at the bottom assuring viewers that, "No OVHoes were harmed during the making of this video."
• A free-to-play 8-bit video game inspired by "Not Like Us" was launched on July 15, 2024. Developed by game designer Richie Branson, the game directly references the scene in the video where Lamar beats the candy out of an owl piñata. Players take control of a pixelated Lamar, tasked with swinging a bat and smashing owl piñatas while beepy rendition of "Not Like Us" plays in the background.
• The song began with Momberger sending some sample ideas to Mustard, who worked his magic by creating a production that was "infectious" and "catchy," featuring what Momberger described to Billboard as a "simplistic beauty driven by bouncy drums and a West Coast undertone." Mustard then sent that beat, along with about six others, to Lamar, who responded with a heart emoji. From there, Lamar and Sounwave took over to finish the track.
• When "Not Like Us" logged its 21st week at the summit of Billboard's Hot Rap Songs chart, it surpassed "Old Town Road" for the most weeks at #1 on the chart since its launch in 1989.
• In a conversation with SZA for Harper's Bazaar, Kendrick Lamar opened up about the meaning behind "Not Like Us." While the song gained attention for its sharp critique of Drake and controversial rumors surrounding the Canadian rapper, Lamar emphasized that the song reflects his personal principles.
  
  "'Not Like Us' is the energy of who I am, the type of man I represent," Lamar shared. "Now, if you identify with the man that I represent?... this man has morals, he has values, he believes in something, he stands on something. He's not pandering."
  
  "He's a man who can recognize his mistakes and not be afraid to share the mistakes and can dig deep down into fear-based ideologies or experiences to be able to express them without feeling like he's less of a man," he continued.
  
  He elaborated further, saying, "This is a man who acknowledges his mistakes and isn't afraid to talk about them. He's able to confront fear-based ideologies or experiences and express them openly, without feeling less of a man."
  
  When SZA asked if anger was the driving force behind the track, Lamar responded, "I don't believe I'm an angry person. But I do believe in love and war, and I believe they both need to exist. And my awareness of that allows me to react to things but not identify with them as who I am. Just allowing them to exist and allowing them to flow through me. That's what I believe."
• In November 2024, Drake's company, Frozen Moments, filed a lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) and Spotify, accusing them of conspiring to artificially inflate the streams of "Not Like Us."
  
  The lawsuit alleges UMG used bots and pay-for-play agreements to manipulate the streaming charts, and that Spotify collaborated by offering special licensing rates and biased recommendations. Drake claims this scheme was orchestrated to harm his career and benefit Lamar.
  
  UMG denied these allegations, calling them "offensive and untrue."
  
  Drake voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit on January 14, 2025, following a meeting with representatives from UMG and Spotify. The reason for the withdrawal was not publicly disclosed.
• Mustard sampled jazz-funk saxophonist Monk Higgins' 1968 recording of "I Believe to My Soul" for "Not Like Us." The sample sets a dramatic tone, with a pitched-up snippet of Higgins' saxophone opening the song and its orchestral stabs reimagined for a menacing edge.
• "Not Like Us" was the most played song globally on Spotify in 2024.
• Drake filed a defamation lawsuit against UMG in January 2025, alleging that the label, despite knowing the track contained false allegations against him, published and promoted it. Judge Jeannette Vargas dismissed the lawsuit in October 2025, affirming that diss tracks are protected speech.
  
  "This is precisely the type of context in which an audience may anticipate the use of 'epithets, fiery rhetoric or hyperbole' rather than factual assertions," she wrote. "The lyrical accusations contained within 'Not Like Us,' however serious or offensive they may be, were presented as part of a heated rap feud and would not incline the reasonable listener to believe they impart verifiable facts about Plaintiff."
• Kendrick throws in two movie references that you might not get if you weren't around in the late '90s and early '00s:
  
  "I see dead people"
  
  This is a famous line from the 1999 thriller The Sixth Sense, where the main character, a young boy, reveals his hidden power, which is also a curse.
  
  "You Malibu's most wanted"
  
  Malibu's Most Wanted is a 2003 comedy starring the comedian Jamie Kennedy as a white guy who acts black in a desperate attempt to fit into hip-hop culture.
• "Not Like Us" was a big winner at the Grammy Awards in 2025, sweeping the five categories it was nominated for: Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Best Music Video, Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song.
• When Kendrick Lamar unexpectedly released his album GNX later in 2024, fans quickly noticed that "Not Like Us" was missing from the tracklist. A fan asked about the omission on X, to which TDE executive Punch offered a simple explanation:
  
  "Integrity," he said. "That record was for the battle. The album was a separate thing. Could have added it to boost sales, but we left it as it was. Integrity."
• When Kendrick was announced as the headliner for the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, it was a pretty sure bet he'd include "Not Like Us," but we wondered if he would take out the references to Drake, who was getting litigious. He didn't. In fact, K-Dot looked right at the camera for the "Say, Drake" line, and he wore a necklace with a lower-case letter "a," referencing the "Tryna strike a chord and it's probably A-minor" line.
  
  And that's not all!
  
  He spiked the football with an appearance by Serena Williams, who danced on stage during the song. She and Drake were an item around 2015, and Drake's song "Too Good" is about her. In 2022, Drake picked a fight with Serena's husband, Alexis Ohanian, saying, "Serena, your husband a groupie" in his song "Middle Of The Ocean."
• The song broke the record for the longest run at the top of Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. On the list dated February 22, 2025, "Not Like Us" sat at the summit for its 22nd week, overtaking the 21 weeks spent at the peak position by SZA's "Kill Bill."
  
  Kendrick Lamar took his own record when "Luther" notched its 23rd week at the summit on the list dated June 7, 2025.
• On February 21, 2025, nine months after its release, "Not Like Us" finally climbed to #1 on the UK Singles Chart, giving Lamar his first UK chart-topper. It rose to the top late in bloom thanks to Lamar's Super Bowl LIX halftime show performance.