Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” Just Got Its First Awards Nomination

One of the funniest lines in the whole Kendrick Lamar and Drake beef comes on The Boy’s “Family Matters”: “Kendrick just opened his mouth, someone go hand him a Grammy right now.” Not only is it a comically dismissive assessment making fun of K.Dot glazers in the white-dominated industry, but it’s also pretty accurate at Drizzy’s expense. Because it seems like the most fun, mocking, disparaging, and lightly disrespectful track in the whole battle, “Not Like Us,” is not just a hit with fans and critics, but with awards shows. Moreover, the Mustard-produced banger has just received its first award nomination: Song of the Year at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards.

While it’s no golden gramophone, it’s still a pretty big and visible award that speaks to what Drake meant to say about Kendrick Lamar. Disses aside, the song and music video is undeniably worthy of high praise from pretty much every corner under the sun. But there are a lot of fans out there that find this nomination (and presumably more to come) pretty odd. On one hand, it’s a great song and visual treatment, but on the other, do we really want big corporations and the larger music industry to chip into a rap beef that should really just be a one-on-one cultural affair?

OVO Stans will use this and other “Not Like Us” nominations to call Drake a prophet and clown Kendrick Lamar even further, whereas pgLang fans will rejoice in how embarrassing of a look this is for Aubrey Graham in the industry. But at the end of the day, a huge chunk of both fanbases couldn’t care less about awards, and would rather have ceremonies ignore their material instead of trying to pick a side, remove their context, or give praise to both.

We’ll see how this discourse evolves, and whether or not Kendrick Lamar or Drake actually show up to the event. We don’t have a clear idea of what all the nominations for this year’s VMAs look like, so keep an eye out for that in the coming days. In any case, the ceremony goes down on September 10. Will the Compton lyricist pop out, is this just an obligatory nomination, or does he really not care at all as long as the culture knows his victory?