Kendrick Lamar's club-worthy Drake diss track 'Not Like Us' becomes #1 song in US

WASHINGTON (TND) — While the rap beef between pop star Drake and Pulitzer prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar may not have officially ended, the feud reached a certain crescendo Monday when Lamar's diss track "Not Like Us" hit number one on the Billboard 100 chart.

The most popular song in the U.S. -- and the world, according to the Billboard Global 200 -- this week is one that features Lamar calling Drake a pedophile while rapping over a beat that has already earned it a spot in DJ's setlists in nightclubs across the country and around the world.

The track, Lamar's (at time of writing) latest word in a war of words and melodies in a feud that began in late March, is the Compton-born emcee's fourth number one hit and his first to debut on the national and global pop charts' top spots. It also broke the record for Billboard for first hip-hop song to reach number one in a limited tracking week, became Lamar's first number one to be penned solely by him (he co-wrote his other three) -- a rare feat in today's pop music world, according to Billboard -- and earned producer DJ Mustard his first number one song. "Not Like Us" also hit the top 10 in several other countries pop music charts, including South Africa (number one), Canada (number two), New Zealand (number six), Lithuania, Luxembourg (both number eight), Australia (number nine) and the United Kingdom (number 10). Lamar also clinched the top spots on the U.S. and U.K. hip-hop charts.

"Not Like Us" also broke several streaming records for hip-hop singles, many of them previously set by Drake, notably setting a new record for most streams of a hip-hop song in a single day on Spotify since the service launched in 2008.

The record-setting diss track, which may also be the first of its kind to go number one on the pop charts, received a total of 70.9 million official streams, 5 million radio airplay audience impressions and 15,000 units sold in the U.S. in the week ending May 9, according to Variety. All of this pushed the song to the top spot in a four-day time frame.

The catchy yet lyrically brutal song, in which Lamar accuses his foil of pedophilia, sexual misconduct with minors, and appropriating the unique Southern American hip-hop culture of Atlanta for personal financial gain, among other sins, was the Pulitzer-and-Grammy-winners' apparent final nail in the coffin he was building for Drake over the week of April 28.

While many hip-hop critics and fans note that the pair had been butting heads professionally since 2013, the warning shots were fired by Drake in October of last year when he released the song "First Person Shooter" on his eighth studio album "For All The Dogs." On the track, guest emcee J.Cole referred to himself, Drake and Lamar as the "Big Three" of hip-hop, claiming they were the most popular acts in the genre. Lamar apparently took umbrage to this assertion and made his thoughts known in a surprise appearance on the track "Like That" by rapper Future and producer Metro Boomin released as part of their "diss album against" Drake called "We Don't Trust You" on March 26. Lamar took shots at both and declared there was no big three ("only big me").

While Cole released a diss track, "7 Minute Drill," in response to Lamar's verse, he pulled it from streaming services less than a week later and bowed out of the feud.

That led Lamar and Drake, real name Aubrey Graham, to escalate over a series of tracks throughout April, the majority of which were released between April 30 and May 5. What began as Drake mocking Lamar for his height and an alleged bad record deal with his creative partner on "Push Ups," standard beef fair, quickly turned into something bloody and personal as Lamar unloaded streams of highly personal, ad hominem vitriol against Drake in "euphoria" and "6:16 in L.A." The feud reached near comical levels of conflict the night of May 7 when Lamar released a dark series of verses addressing Drake's family members called "Meet the Grahams" less than an hour after Graham dropped a high blow to Lamar called "Family Matters."

While Drake would release another diss track, "The Heart - Part 6," it failed to gain the kind of steam Lamar's bouncing, humorously clever "Not Like Us."

The duo's rap blows would set records as they entered into the top 10 most streamed diss tracks of all time on Spotify. "Like That" reached the top five, occupying the top five spot, while "Not Like Us" climbed to the number eight spot, with "euphoria" reaching number nine and Drake's "Push Ups" rounding out the top 10, partial based on findings presented by by JournoResearch.

TuPac Shakur's "Hit 'Em Up" remains the most streamed diss track of all time on Spotify, with just under 600 million streams.

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