A diss track that debuted at number one, swept five Grammy Awards, headlined a Super Bowl and produced a federal defamation case. No record has ever done that combination before.
Here is what the title means, what the song is arguing, and where the litigation stands.
The Short Answer
Not like us means not one of ours. Kendrick Lamar’s case against Drake is that he is a visitor to the culture he profits from, a Canadian who borrows regional sounds and local artists, and that Los Angeles should not treat him as family. The song also makes serious personal accusations, which Drake denies and which a federal judge has since characterised as opinion rather than statements of fact.
The Story Behind the Song
The feud goes back more than a decade, to jabs Lamar started making in 2013, and the two had collaborated before that. It escalated in March 2024 with “Like That,” a Future and Metro Boomin track on which Lamar’s verse targeted Drake directly.
What followed was a rapid exchange of records through April and early May. “Not Like Us” arrived on a Saturday night, 4 May 2024, as the fourth or fifth entry depending on how you count, produced by Mustard and released through pgLang and Interscope.
Lamar wrote it alone. That is rarer than it sounds: solo-written songs account for roughly seven percent of Hot 100 number ones this decade.
Why did this one land when the others did not?
Because it is a party record. The earlier tracks in the exchange were long, dense and built for people following the argument closely. This one is under five minutes, built on a Mustard beat designed for a car and a club, with a hook a crowd can shout.
Within days it was being played on NBA broadcasts, used as walk-up music at baseball games and chanted in Los Angeles bars. A diss track normally reaches the audience for the feud. This one reached everybody, including people who could not have named the other participant.
What is the argument about authenticity?
That Drake operates as a tourist. Lamar’s charge is that he arrives in a city or a scene, adopts its accent and its sound, works with its local artists, extracts a hit and moves on, without carrying any of the risk or the history that produced the music.
The song frames this in territorial terms. Lamar is from Compton, the beat is unmistakably West Coast, and the record positions Los Angeles as a place with its own claim to make. Drake’s defenders read the same argument as gatekeeping, and note that regional borrowing has been standard practice in rap for forty years.
What about the personal accusations?
The song accuses Drake of sexual misconduct involving minors. Drake has consistently denied it and there have been no charges.
In January 2025 he sued Universal Music Group, the parent company of both artists, for defamation, alleging that the label knowingly published and promoted a track containing false claims. He did not sue Lamar. He linked the fallout to attempted break-ins at his Toronto home, one of which involved his security guard being shot, and to sustained online harassment.
What did the court decide?
On 9 October 2025, US District Judge Jeannette Vargas dismissed the case. Her ruling held that the lyrics are non-actionable opinion rather than statements of fact, and that a reasonable listener could not have understood the song to be conveying objective facts about Drake.
She pointed to the form itself, noting that the track is full of profanity, trash-talking, threats and hyperbole, all of which signal opinion. UMG had argued the suit was an attempt to save face after a rap battle Drake provoked and lost.
Drake filed his appeal in January 2026, arguing that the ruling created a dangerous categorical rule under which nothing said in a diss track could ever be actionable. UMG responded in March. Yale Law School’s Floyd Abrams Institute and a group of legal scholars filed briefs supporting UMG. Drake’s reply came in April. As of mid-2026 the Second Circuit has not scheduled oral argument, so this is worth checking for updates.
How successful was it?
It debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 dated 18 May 2024 with 70.9 million streams, Lamar’s fourth chart topper and Mustard’s first as a producer. It was the best-selling rap recording of 2024 and the most-streamed song worldwide on Apple Music that year.
At the 2025 Grammy Awards it won all five categories it was nominated in: record of the year, song of the year, best rap song, best rap performance and best music video. It is the first diss track to win a Grammy at all.
What happened at the Super Bowl?
Lamar performed it during the halftime show in February 2025 in New Orleans, in front of the largest audience a halftime show has ever drawn. The crowd sang the chorus back at him.
Drake’s amended complaint cited that performance directly, describing it as a broadcast to over 133 million people including millions who had never heard the song, and calling it the first halftime show staged to destroy another artist’s character.
Why does it matter?
Because it collapsed the distance between a genre argument and mass culture. Rap feuds have produced great records before and stayed inside the audience for rap. This one produced the biggest song of its year, a Grammy sweep, a Super Bowl performance and a federal ruling about whether a diss track can be read as fact.
That last part is the lasting consequence. Whatever the appeal decides, the case has forced American courts to say out loud how they read a rap record, which is a question artists have been asking for years in a very different context.
Songs that arrive inside a public argument get remembered as the argument rather than the record; when you have a chorus and no name for it, our song lyrics search sorts it out.