Kendrick Lamar put on one of the biggest hip hop moments in recent memory Wednesday night in Inglewood … and there were a lot of highlights on the heels of the Drake beef.
The concert served as the ultimate victory lap in what many have called a crushing win against Drizzy in their recent rap battle — and the reason is pretty clear … KL played “Not Like Us” 4 times in a row, and the instrumental even closed out the show!
Kendrick made sure Juneteenth 2024 will go down in history … West Coast DJs Hed and Mustard opened the show and offered no shortage of cameos and hype music for the crowd.
BTW … it was a star-studded event too — outside of music stars … lots of athletes were in attendance too. NBA stars LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, DeMar Dorozan and James Harden were in attendance, as were anti-Drake delegates The Weeknd and Rick Ross.
Tyler, The Creator, YG, and Ty Dolla $ign were the headliners during the DJ sets — which also highlighted 310babiii, OhGeesy, KalanFrFr and “krump” legend Tommy The Clown.
K. Dot eventually hopped onstage and wasted no time reminding the world he came at Drake’s neck … the rapper opened his set with his instant classic diss “Euphoria” — which was a harsh review of Drake and his rep in the game (from Kendrick’s POV anyway).
His TDE and Black Hippy groupmates — Jay Rock, ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul — also joined Ken onstage, where he blazed through one of his other Drake darts “6:16 in LA.”
The biggest surprise came courtesy of Kendrick’s Compton OG mentor, Dr. Dre… who not only rocked the Kia Forum with his classic records “Still D.R.E.” and “California Love” … but also led right into Kendrick’s most scathing diss track against Champagne Papi.
The “Chronic” creator exited stage left whispering the “Psst… I see dead people” intro that set off the “Not Like Us” onslaught — like we said, Kendrick played the track several times … and the crowd was into it each and every time. He did censor himself though … refraining from saying the word “pedophile.”
Rap beef aside, the crowning moment came when Kendrick unified several L.A. gangs onstage … emotionally stating the city’s been “f***ed up” since Nipsey Hussle and Kobe Bryant died.
Bloods, Crips, Pirus, Hoovers and everyone in between all stood together in solidarity and posed for pictures onstage … a push to hopefully end the gang culture’s never-ending war.
As many have already dubbed him … King Kendrick came and delivered. 👑