Reports Are That Kendrick Lamar Will 100% Perform "Not Like Us" At Sunday's Super Bowl. How Does Drake Survive This Week?

Drake’s 2024 was already a dumpster fire, and 2025 isn’t looking much better. He spent the entire year getting bodied in a rap battle with Kendrick Lamar- who rode that wave to a Grammy sweep, a Pulitzer (seriously), and basically every major accolade you can imagine, all with the diss track to end all diss tracks, “Not Like Us.”

This week has been especially awful for the guy.

First Drake has to watch Kendrick Lamar CLEAN UP at Sunday night's Grammy Awards for a song that possibly ended his career, and destroyed his reputation. 

And now he was to count the days until Sunday, when Kendrick will take the biggest stage in the world, at the Super Bowl Halftime, and more-likely-than-not, perform that song in front of 100 million viewers. 

I keep asking the question: what in the world did Drake do to deserve this? 

But hold up. Enter the lawsuit. Drake, grasping at straws, has filed a defamation suit against Universal Music Group (UMG), not Kendrick himself, claiming they pushed the “malicious narrative” that he’s a certified pedophile. And he's got a point that those are some pretty nuclear accusations.

But he (claims), none of this has got him down. 

He just started a tour in Australia. Where he came out dressed like this-

and said this- 

His best friend Lebron stabbed him in the back by not dissociating and Xing out Kendrick from his life. In fact, he did this- 

after doing this a few months ago-

Advertisement

Which set Drake off. To the point he released and then unreleased a freestyle aimed at Lebron titled "Fighting Irish" (Lebron's high school mascot), 

and then did another very adult thing and changed the lyrics in his song to this the past few nights - 

Advertisement

And let's not forget this man has Lebron's face tattooed on his body. 

But the number of big names jumping on the pile to bury Drake only continues to grow.

Mike Coppola. Getty Images.

Dr. Dre piled on this week, saying how much he loves not only Kendrick, but the song, "Not Like Us". 

Billboard - Dre joined the debut episode of interview series The Unusual Suspects With Kenya Barris and Malcolm Gladwell on Thursday (Jan. 30), during which he publicly voiced his support for Lamar’s “Not Like Us” knockout blow and said he didn’t appreciate Drizzy speaking negatively on Kendrick’s family throughout the battle.

Barris brought up Kendrick’s Pop Out concert and how it made the director “feel proud to be from L.A.,” which prompted Dre to defend his mentee.

“I love that record,” the Death Row icon said of “Not Like Us.” “I’ma say this on camera. I don’t want to get negative. My whole shit is about being positive and moving forward and all that shit, but the fact I heard Drake say something negative about Kendrick’s wife and his kids, that made me say, ‘Ah, adios!'”

So, for the story that just refuses to die, the drama is still very much alive. 

Turns out, people who actually understand libel law say there’s no real reason for Lamar to skip “Not Like Us.” Samantha Barbas, a defamation law whiz at the University of Iowa’s College of Law, basically said Drake’s case is softer than my dick after seven beers. In her words, rap battles are full of “bombast” and “rhetorical hyperbole”- it’s the name of the game. She’s betting the average person listening knows it’s not literal fact, so Drake can’t easily claim defamation.

Then you’ve got Roy Gutterman at Syracuse University’s Tully Center for Free Speech co-signing that. He points out Drake is a public figure, and public figures need to meet an insanely high burden of proof for defamation. We’re talking “they knew it was false or they were basically ignoring the truth to run with it.” On top of all that, as Dr. Dre pointed out, Drake also lobbed some insane accusations right back at Kendrick, like Lamar fathering a child that isn’t his and abusing his fiancée, so if we’re calling one “defamatory,” we’ve gotta open the can of worms on all the diss lines.

Advertisement

So, Kendrick is good to go on Sunday right?

You’d think so. “Not Like Us” is the hottest rap song since forever, fresh off sweeping the Grammys, and it’s the track that stoked the biggest rap beef of the modern era. Of course Kendrick wants to perform it. And this is the NFL. They’re about big headlines, big controversies, big drama. Remember when they told Snoop Dogg not to crip walk and he did anyway? That didn’t exactly crater civilization.

But, corporate lawyers are a real thing (sadly). They might not want to end up as defendants in Drizzy’s war if there’s a chance he tries to sue everyone from the NFL

Does that mean the NFL, FOX, or UMG might have already politely asked Kendrick to either skip the track or water it down? Maybe so. Because, the “Certified pedophile” lyric might not vibe well with the Federal Communications Commission or your grandma who just wants to watch the football game. 

It’s hard to imagine Lamar performing the entire diss verbatim on network TV. As the legal experts said, you can’t call someone a sex offender during prime time and not expect a call from the FCC. The safe bet? Kendrick will bust out the instantly-recognizable beat, for fucks sakes, the NFL’s already teased it- 

Advertisement

And maybe some sanitized version of the iconic hook. But the spiciest parts (“Trying to strike a chord and it’s probably A MINORRRRRRRRR”) might get the old “bleep” treatment or a rewrite.

The real question is whether that even matters? 

Everyone from your cousin who only listens to Taylor Swift to your stoner roommate who worships Kid Cudi knows how that lyric actually goes off.

Again, look at the whitest people in the world singing it in unison at Sunday's Grammy's. 

Cutting a line or two doesn’t remove the sting of the original from the public consciousness. In many ways, leaving it out might only stoke social media's fire. 

So again, back to my question, where does Drake go from here?

This has gotta be the worst week of his life. I don't care how much you hate the guy, you gotta be a ruthless son of a bitch, full up to your eyeballs with schadenfreude, to enjoy seeing this happen to him. 

Is it karma as some say? Possibly. 

I mean Drake pretty much ended Meek Mill's career with "Back 2 Back". It was over and don't let people forget how hard everybody loved clowning Meek and how bad everybody was on Drake's dick back then. Then Michael Rubin came to his gangsta buddy's rescue and paid convinced Drake to bury the hatchet and befriend Meek again. 

Fast forward 9 years, and the tables have turned on Drake. 

If the lyrics do get changed, Drake might claim a tiny “victory,” like “See, they had to censor it because I’m right” 

BUT, he’s still the guy who got flamed in the biggest rap war of the decade and had to show up in court with a stack of papers to beg for the dogs to be called off. 

If the lyrics don’t get changed, well, that’s an even bigger L for Drake. Because it’d confirm that neither Kendrick nor the NFL is losing sleep over his lawsuit, or getting on his bad side.

Advertisement

At the end of the day, the experts say this defamation suit is likely going nowhere. 

The NFL probably isn’t too worried about it, and neither is K-Dot. He’s got a show to put on. If anything, it’s all just more press, more eyes on that halftime performance, and more talk about the man who might actually be unstoppable right now- Kung Fu Kenny.