“Kendrick took away the only thing Drake brags about ‘numbers’” — Fans react to Not Like Us music video hitting 1.5M views on YouTube in 1 hour

On July 4, 2024, Kendrick Lamar released the highly-anticipated music video for Not Like Us, his hit Drake diss track that smashed records and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The music video, co-directed by Lamar and Dave Free, featured DJ Mustard, DeMar DeRozan, Tommy the Clown, and even Lamar's partner, Whitney Alford, and their two children.

The video amassed 1.5 million views on YouTube an hour after its release, a feat that was widely celebrated by fans online, with one person tweeting:

"lol Kendrick took away the only thing Drake brags about ‘numbers’."

Hip-hop fans took to trolling Drake online, adding that Kendrick Lamar "cooked" the Canadian rapper.

"kendrick cooked drake," one fan tweeted.

"i don't even know how drake could recover from all this," added another fan.

"Drake is finished," wrote someone else.

"drake ain't coming back from all of this... he's done for," said another person.

However, some Drake fans alleged the numbers were fakes, claiming it was bots that took the video to 1.5 million views.

"all bots lmaooo" said one fan.

"Them bots working overtime," added another fan.

"1.5 million . . . FAKE ! everybody either driving to the BBQ getting ready for it or already at it or drunk ishell setting off fireworks FOH wit that," said someone else.

The Not Like Us music video has 9.6 million views just eight hours after its release, at the time of writing this article.

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Not Like Us music video had several references to Drake

Drake and Kendrick Lamar's rap feud became the talk of the town since the two rappers took shots at each other in back-and-forth diss tracks, starting with Lamar's verse in Metro Boomin and Future's Like That track in March.

The hip-hop battle overtook the music industry for months, with both rappers releasing five diss tracks each. But Not Like Us, released on May 4, saw many crown Kendrick Lamar the winner, as the song smashed records and dominated the charts, still occupying the No. 3 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 two months after its release.

Kendrick Lamar announced that he was filming a music video for the track along with DJ Mustard, who produced the song, days after his Juneteenth concert, The Pop Out: Ken & Friends, where he performed Not Like Us six times. The long-awaited music video began with the Compton rapper introducing a new verse, before kicking off the track with the iconic one-liner, "I see dead people."

Several owl motifs popped up throughout the video, referencing the owl logo of Drake's label, October's Very Own, aka OVO. During a section of a song, Lamar can be seen destroying an owl piñata with a bat, with the disclaimer, “no OVH**s were harmed during the making of this video” below it.

This is a direct call back to Lamar mocking articulating OVO as "OV-Ho" in the track. In another shot, Kendrick Lamar walks away after trapping an owl in a cage.

Other instances of Lamar referencing Drake's lyrics from his diss tracks included the rapper doing push-ups, a direct correlation to Drake's first diss track Push Ups, in which he raps, "Drop and give me 50, drop and give me 50."

Another reference was Lamar enfolding his partner, Whitney Alford, and their children in the Not Like Us video, dancing to the song. Drake previously alleged that Dave Free was the biological father of one of the children and also insinuated that Lamar physically abused Alford in Family Matters.

The Not Like Us music video also had several iconic Compton locations as the backdrop, including Tam's Burgers and the Compton courthouse. The video's closing shot is a group of people singing, "Are you my friend? Are we locked in?/ Then step this way, step that way/ Then step this way, step that way", with Kendrick Lamar in the middle of the crowd.