Now that we’ve have a few days to digest what went down at Kendrick Lamar’s Juneteenth Pop Out performance, let’s get into it, shall we?
Listen to Kendrick Lamar Radio and more on the free Audacy app
Kendrick's fiery set at The Pop Out – Ken & Friends Juneteenth concert at the Kia Forum will go down in history. The sold-out concert of 16,000 fans, which streamed live on Amazon Prime Video, comes a month after the Compton rap beef with Drake -- and K.Dot took the opportunity to only further cement his disdain.
Starting off with “Euphoria,” Kendrick also performed "6:16 in LA" and "Like That,” but opted to skip the nearly seven-minute diss track, "Meet the Grahams.” Lamar also dipped into some of his past discography, before being joined by Dr. Dre to perform "Still D.R.E." and "California Love.” Before the Hip-Hop producer left the stage, he intro’d the opening line to Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” whispering, “I see dead people.”
And as it seems, one, twice, three, nope, not even four times was enough, as Lamar ran the track back FIVE times, telling the crowd between one of the encore performances, ”Y'all ain't gonna let anyone disrespect the West Coast, huh?" while bringing out famous Los Angeles friends and some of the night's performers on stage for the final encore.
Despite renewing the feud fever with his setlist, as mentioned above, the night was also heavily drenched in Cali pride, as fellow California-bred musicians like Tyler, The Creator, Steve Lacy, former label mates from his supergroup Black Hippy (Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul), as well as Ty Dolla $ign, DJ Mustard, YG, Roddy Ricch, and Dom Kennedy also performed at the Inglewood venue in addition to former and current NBA players — including Russell Westbrook and DeMar DeRozan, who joined the rapper on stage, and LeBron James who was in attendance.
Other recognizable faces included Rick Ross, Chlöe Bailey, The Weeknd, radio host Big Boy, and Lamar's fiancée, Whitney Alford.
The internet obviously did it’s thing, sounding off with reactions to the barrage of bullets, directed at Drake, that came with each repetition of the diss track and beyond hype response from the every-single-lyric-knowing crowd. Check out a few we rounded up below...