Streams for Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 chart-topping diss track “Not Like Us” soared 430 per cent on Spotify within three hours of his much-hyped set at the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday.
While “Not Like Us” saw the most streams, the nine other songs he performed at the show also registered major spikes, according to data released on Monday morning.
The multiple Grammy winner headlined the 59th Super Bowl with a medley of his hits, including “Not Like Us”, which takes aim at his Canadian rival Drake.
The song was released last year as part of a musical feud which saw both Lamar and Drake put out multiple tracks criticising the other. Lamar’s 2017 song “Humble” saw a rise of 300 per cent while “Man at the Garden” from GNX saw a 260 per cent increase in streams. “All the Stars” from the Black Panther soundtrack went up by 290 per cent.
Overall, Lamar’s music saw a jump of 175 per cent in streams after his performance.
R&B star SZA, who was featured in the “All the Stars” track and joined Lamar for the halftime show, saw her streams go up by 80 per cent in the US.
Fans had been waiting to see if Lamar would perform “Not Like Us”, which features brutal lyrics about Drake including allegations around his conduct with younger women.
Lamar, 37, self-censored the controversial line branding the “One Dance” singer a “certified pedophile”, which had prompted Drake to sue Lamar’s, and his own, record label Universal Music Group last month. He alluded to the lawsuit while teasing the track’s intro throughout his set, quipping: “I want to perform their favourite song, but you know they love to sue.”
Universal denied Drake’s allegation of defamation, telling The Independent in a statement: “Not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist – let alone Drake – is illogical.”
Reviewing for The Independent, critic Mark Beaumont wrote that Lamar’s blistering set would “undoubtedly go down as one of the most important half-time shows in the history of the event, if not the most significant mass-televised rap performance of all time”.
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“That troupes of Black dancers in red, white and blue spew out of Lamar’s GNX like a cool retro clown car and form the US flag for G-funk opener ‘Squabble Up’ is the most forthright finger in Trump’s face from a proud and unbroken Black America,” he wrote. “But that the show then throws these citizens into a series of America-coloured Squid Games in light-up arenas of cubes and crosses – to the brutal yet haunting ‘DNA’, a track about the multitudes contained within Lamar and his heritage – is a metaphor for the exploitation and manipulation to come, which will likely have bounced straight off Trump’s impervious skull.”
Lamar’s show was watched by the who’s who of celebrity guests like Sir Paul McCartney, Bradley Cooper and Taylor Swift, who showed up to cheer on her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, as his team took a beating from the Philadelphia Eagles.
-chief-executive-officer-of.jpeg?trim=0,0,0,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "PBS caves to Trump closing its DEI office and seeing its staff leave the company – UK Times")