Carmelo Anthony says he was surprised that Drake allowed Kendrick Lamar to beat him to the clubs with the Not Like Us track

On Thursday, December 19, Carmelo Anthony was joined by Sam Jay, Bomani Jones, and Kazeem Famuyide on his podcast, 7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony.

An 11-minute clip from the nearly 2-hour-long podcast was later uploaded to X and has since gone viral. In it, Carmelo and the others are discussing how Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us beat Drake to the clubs, which was surprising to Anthony, who said:

"He beat him [Drake] to the club. That was usually a Drake move."

Further in their conversations, Jones recounted that Lamar's Not Like Us was released between 8-9 PM on the East Coast and was in the clubs the same night.

And because it was such an easy record to sing along to, people knew the words almost instantly, Famuyide pointed out. One of the guests called K-Dot's track "a bop," and others agreed.

Carmelo, Jones, Jay, and Famuyide had come together on Thursday's episode for The Hook at 7 PM in Brooklyn's annual year-end awards, the 7PMMYs, highlighting the most memorable moments of 2024 in sports, popular culture, and the 7PM universe.

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Carmelo Anthony believed that everyone paid attention to the hook of Not Like Us

Talking about how the Money Trees rapper was able to beat Drake, Carmelo Anthony pointed out that the hook of his track—the Not Like Us chorus—was so catchy that everybody was paying attention to it.

Kazeem then added:

"The brilliance of that song is that because the first two records are a typical diss record bop, right, and then he saved the last verse for like, 'All right everybody listen up. We was hauling chains."

The subject of their conversation then changed to the Pop-Out Concert, about which Sam Jay said:

"To me, that was one of the biggest blows of the whole battle. I've never seen someone throw a f**k you party with all your friends."

Jones called it "a cultural shake-up," and others agreed, with Carmelo adding that it made the industry pick sides among the rappers. The Pop-Out Concert was a one-off concert Kendrick Lamar threw on June 19, 2024, at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California.

The 3-hour-long concert was organized by PGLang and featured over 25 West Coast artists, including Tyler The Creator, Roddy Ricch, Schoolboy Q, Dr. Dre, Ab-Soul, Ty Dolla Sign, Mustard, Jay Rock, DJ Hed, Dom Kennedy, and others.

In his setlist for the concert, the Backseat Freestyle rapper performed four of the five diss tracks released this year, with Not Like Us performed five times in a row. Over 16,000 Lamar fans attended the concert, which was also live-streamed on Amazon Music.

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Carmelo Anthony's son talked about his first meeting with Drake on a podcast

Carmelo Anthony's podcast about Kendrick Lamar beating Drake comes a year after his son, Kiyan Anthony, opened up about his nervous encounter with the One Dance rapper.

In a video uploaded by Overtime on September 16, 2023, when Kiyan was asked about his experience of meeting Drake, he expressed his nervousness, saying:

No, it wasn't the first time, but it was the first time in a minute, like, I didn't know he was going to recognize me like that and come up to me. And I didn't, yeah, it was just, I was panicking, I'm not going to lie, yeah. He was like, 'Keep going.' That was definitely one of the biggest, you know, points of the summer besides basketball stuff."

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Kiyan also revealed his goal of having Drake and/or Lil Baby promote his clothing line, One Way, on the podcast. The junior Anthony said he believed that if one of these rappers wore his brand, it would definitely blow up.