Kendrick Lamar performs Drake diss five times and demands Tupac’s ring

Lis Sinatra

Kendrick Lamar performed his Drake diss track ‘Not Like Us‘ a total of five times during his show in Los Angeles earlier this week.

Lamar took over Los Angeles’ Kia Forum for his ‘The Pop Out: Ken & Friends’ concert on Wednesday June 19. The show was in celebration of Juneteenth and was live-streamed by Amazon Music on its website and on Twitch. Those streams have ended and cannot be replayed.

The gig aimed to showcase a plethora of  West Coast talent, with over 20 special guests performing including Dr. Dre, Schoolboy Q, Ty Dolla $ign, Tyler, The Creator and Steve Lacy.

To kick off the gig – the ‘Humble’ rapper’s first since his heated rap beef with Drake earlier this year – Lamar performed the live debut of his Drake diss ‘Euphoria’, which featured a deafening singalong from the audience.

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The performance also featured a new verse, in which Lamar called for Drake to return Tupac‘s ring: “Give me Tupac ring back and I might give you a little respect“. The dig comes after Drake seemingly confirmed on Travis Scott’s ‘Meltdown’ that he had purchased one of Tupac’s rings at an auction.

As per the Independent, Shakur wore the custom, ring set with rubies and diamonds on his left ring finger during his final appearance at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards roughly a week prior to his death in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas at the age of 25.

Lamar was also dressed in a red hoodie, light-washed jeans and sneakers, an outfit that was reminiscent of what Tupac had worn during one of his concerts in 1994.

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To wrap up the gig, Lamar took his feud with the ‘Hotline Bling’ rapper one step further and performed ‘Not Like Us’ five times in a row. Dr. Dre came out during the first round of the song to sing the track’s opening line “Pssst, I see dead people”.

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The track restarted following the final line from the first verse: “Tryna strike a chord and its probably A minor”. Lamar repeated the same thing for the following two times. During the fourth performance of the song, Mustard – the American record producer and DJ who produced the track – came on stage for the performance.

For the final performance of ‘Not Like Us’, the likes of Black Hippy, Mustard, Blxst, Steve Lacy, YG, Big Boy, G Perico and more guests who were in attendance joined the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper on stage.

According to a Complex report, attendees at the ‘Pop Out: Ken & Friends’ concert included Lebron James, Rick Ross and other NBA stars James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Coby White and DeMar DeRozan.

In other news, last month it was revealed that ‘Not Like Us’ broke records and topped the singles charts. The song debuted at the Number One spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US.

‘Not Like Us’ has become Lamar’s fourth Number One song, following on from his feature on Future and Metro Boomin’s ‘Like That’ earlier this year, ‘Humble’, which arrived in 2017 and his verse on Taylor Swift’s 2015 track ‘Bad Blood’.

It has broken records too, with Brooklyn Eagle reporting that the track has become the hip-hop song that has been streamed the most times in a day on Spotify – racking up 6.8million plays.