Kendrick Lamar made an uncredited appearance on Future and Metro Boomin’s new album “We Don’t Trust You,” and with it delivered a series of apparently sharp, pointed words for Drake and J. Cole.
Lamar, whose fiery verse lights up “Like That,” steals the spotlight on the track, where he addresses a few bars from Drake and J. Cole’s “First Person Shooter” included on the former’s “For All the Dogs.” On that song, which released last year, J. Cole makes mention of the “big three,” referring to Lamar, Drake and himself: “Love when they argue the hardest emcee / Is it K. Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the big three like we started a league.”
Drake retorted with a bar that could be interpreted as a shot at Lamar, excluding him from the “big three” designation: “Who the G.O.A.T.? Who you bitches really rootin’ for? Like a kid that act bad from January to November, n—a, it’s just you and Cole.”
On “Like That,” Lamar directly references the rappers’ bars and comes gunning for them. “Yeah get up with me, fuck sneak dissing / ‘First Person Shooter,’ I hope they came with three switches,” he raps, later adding, “Motherfuck the big three, n—a, it’s just big me.”
Later in the verse, he comes for the quality of their music and says that his legacy will outlast their influence, comparing himself to Prince and his relationship to Michael Jackson. “Your best work is a light pack / N—a, Prince outlived Mike Jack / N—a, bum, ‘fore all your dogs get buried / That’s a K with all these nines, he gon’ see Pet Sematary.”
This isn’t the first time that Lamar has stirred up controversy by directly referencing his peers. In 2013, he delivered a scene-stealing verse on Big Sean’s “Control,” also featuring Jay Electronica, running down a list of rappers and stating that while he has love for all of them, he sees them as competitors and intends to bring them down.
While Lamar’s verse on “Like That” was certainly the most newsworthy moment from the album, Future and Metro Boomin’s long-awaited collaborative project “We Don’t Trust You” arrived on Friday, marking the first of two releases from the pair. The second, which is currently untitled, will be released on April 12.
