Did Kendrick Lamar release new music on YouTube? Everything to know about the track Money Without Me popping up on his channel

On Thursday, December 19, 2024, a new track appeared to have been uploaded on Kendrick Lamar's YouTube channel. Per Pitchfork, the song, titled Money Without Me, was believed to be an unreleased track dating back to K-Dot's Section.80 era. However, within a few hours of its release, Money Without Me disappeared from the LOYALTY rapper's channel.

While the media outlet has reached out to Lamar's representatives for a comment about the track's disappearance, they're yet to respond.

Meanwhile, Lamar's fans came up with multiple possibilities behind the unannounced drop and sudden disappearance of the track on social media platforms.

"has to be a teaser for GNX deluxe! I'd believe it was a leak but that cover image is some deliberate shit stirring and we all know kenny calculates," wrote an X user.

"I wouldn’t get excited this is definitely someone who hacked him, it doesn’t even pop up on his YouTube channel. This happens to Kanye all the time," posted another.

"Idk exactly what it means but it was auto generated by YouTube I don’t think Kendrick himself uploaded it," commented a third one.

Meanwhile, others claimed that the track could've been a fan upload.

"Its a fan upload, his other releases say 'Provided by Universal Music Group' and this one says 'by Kendrick Lamar,'" replied a fourth user.

"Pretty sure this was uploaded by a Youtube user and got matched to Kendrick's channel accidentally," wrote a fifth one.

"Sounds like a diss if you ask me," added a sixth one.

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Kendrick Lamar is no stranger to surprise-dropping music

While fans are speculating the unexplained disappearance of Money Without Me from Kendrick Lamar's YouTube channel within hours of its upload, the rapper has earned a reputation for surprise-dropping music.

On November 22, 2024, the Money Trees rapper surprisingly released his sixth album, GNX, a 12-track album that is named after the Buick Grand National Experimental (GNX) car. Lamar had purchased a 1987 vintage, limited-run car of the same model earlier this year.

In an album teaser dropped on Kendrick's YouTube channel the very same day, the Hood Politics rapper was seen getting out of a GNX car in a garage, after which he delivered a short rap verse.

Soon after its release, GNX topped both Billboard album charts in the US and 13 other global charts. All 12 tracks from the album also made it into Billboard Hot 100's top 30. Here's the ranking they received on the chart:

• Squabble Up - No. 1
• TV Off - No.2
• Luther - No. 3
• Wacced Out Murals - No. 4
• Hey Now - No. 5
• Reincarnated - No. 8
• Man at the Garden - No. 9
• Dodger Blue - No. 11
• Peekaboo - No. 13
• Heart Pt. 6 - No. 14
• GNX - No. 24
• Gloria - No. 27

Squabble Up, Kendrick Lamar's fifth Billboard-topping track sampled Debbie Deb's 1984 track When I Hear Music. A 15-second snippet of the song was teased months earlier, attached at the beginning of his Not Like Us music video.

At one point in the track's music video, Kendrick is seen sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, reading a book titled How To Be More Like Kendrick For Dummies. This garnered a lot of attention on social media at the time.

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In the weeks following GNX's release, Kendrick Lamar also announced a North American tour titled the Grand National Tour, which he is going to co-headline with his latest collaborator, SZA. SZA is featured in two tracks of Lamar's latest album, Luther and Gloria.