advertisement
Rb Hip Hop

Kendrick Lamar Gets Former Toronto Raptor DeMar DeRozan For 'Not Like Us' Music Video

Drake is the global ambassador of Canada's lone NBA team, and one of its most beloved former players makes a cameo in the diss track targeted at him.

DeMar Derozan in Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us' Music Video

DeMar Derozan in Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us' Music Video

YouTube

On America's Independence Day, Kendrick Lamar just made things personal for Canadian basketball fans.

The rapper dropped his much-anticipated music video for "Not Like Us" tonight (July 4), which is filled with thinly veiled visual shots at Drake. The diss track's video was filmed in Compton, and it feels like the whole city came out to celebrate at Drake's expense.


For fans in Toronto, though, there's one cameo that cuts especially deep: DeMar DeRozan.

The NBA player appears at the 2:43 mark during this line: "I'm glad DeRoz' came home, y'all didn't deserve him neither."

For those who didn't catch the reference initially, or who thought he was somehow referring to D-Rose (another NBA player, Derrick Rose), it's now painfully obvious who it's about.

advertisement

The Compton-born professional basketball player is now a member of the Chicago Bulls, but was drafted by the Toronto Raptors — Canada's lone NBA team, for which Drake serves as the global ambassador.

He was traded in 2018 for Kawhi Leonard, who then led the Raptors to their first NBA championship that season. In multiple interviews since then, DeRozan has talked about how he felt betrayed by the trade and had wanted to play his whole career in Toronto. But he never had a bad word for the city or the fans, who continue to treat him like a hometown hero every time he returns.

DeRozan was once close enough to Drake that he accidentally spilled the beans on an upcoming mixtape, so it's hard not to interpret this as him picking his hometown rapper Kendrick Lamar's side.

DeRozan also appeared onstage at Kendrick's Juneteenth "Pop Out" concert in Los Angeles, so this doesn't come fully out of nowhere. But his brief cameo looking into the camera in the "Not Like Us" video feels another direct hit.

advertisement

advertisement
Drake performs onstage during "Lil Baby & Friends Birthday Celebration Concert" at State Farm Arena on December 9, 2022 in Atlanta.
Prince Williams/Wireimage

Drake performs onstage during "Lil Baby & Friends Birthday Celebration Concert" at State Farm Arena on December 9, 2022 in Atlanta.

Legal News

Spotify Responds To Drake’s UMG Legal Action, Blasting ‘False’ Claims & Demanding Dismissal

The rapper claims Spotify helped UMG boost Kendrick's "Not Like Us," but Spotify now says the action is a "subversion" of the legal system and never should have been filed.

Spotify is firing back at Drake’s accusations that the streamer helped Universal Music Group artificially boost Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” calling the allegations “false” and blasting the rapper’s legal action as a “subversion of the normal judicial process.”

The new filing is the first response to a petition filed last month in which Drake accused UMG and Spotify of an illegal “scheme” involving bots, payola and other methods to pump up Lamar’s song — a track that savagely attacked Drake amid an ongoing feud between the two stars.

keep readingShow less
advertisement