Kendrick Lamar, the widely recognized champion of this year's most brutal rap feud, will take a victory lap on stage this month in the form of a just-announced live performance on June 16 in Inglewood.
On June 19, Lamar will headline “The Pop Out – Ken & Friends” at the Forum in a show produced with his label/creative agency pgLang and Free Lunch. While the full lineup has yet to be announced, this will be Lamar's first live set in Southern California since he and Drake swept the land with reams of chart-topping diss tracks and changed their legacies forever.
The feud with Drake began with Lamar's appearance on Future and Metro Boomin's song “Like That,” which started a generational war between two of hip-hop's most successful and acclaimed artists.
Lamar arguably came out ahead with cuts including “Euphoria,” “Not Like Us,” and “Meet the Grahams,” which showcased a whole new level of cruelty from the Pulitzer winner, including unsubstantiated accusations of pedophilia against Drake. Drake stopped with songs like “Family Matters,” “Push Ups,” and “Taylor Made Freestyle,” deploying Tupac Shakur’s ghost AI, but after accusing Lamar of domestic abuse (also without evidence), he finally threw in the towel. . “The heart, part 6”.
Amid the heated rivalry, several intruders harassed people at Drake's Toronto home, including one incident in which a security guard was shot.
“How, then, do Lamar and Drake (the latter whose Toronto home was the site of a shooting that injured a security guard, according to police) top this?” asked Mikael Wood of the Times. “Do they make new work within the parameters of what we have learned about them? Or do they treat the meat as some kind of unofficial exhibition game, as Lamar says in 'Meet the Grahams' that he initially intended?
The concert seems to take its name from a line from “Not Like Us”: “Sometimes you gotta go out and show… / Certified bogeyman, I'm the one who raises the score with them.” One potential guest, SoCal's own DJ Mustard, who produced “Not Like Us,” just announced a new album of his own, “Faith of a Mustard Seed,” coming out this summer.
Tickets for the show are already on pre-sale and general sales will begin on Friday.
