Over the past few years, Kendrick Lamar has been the target of numerous speculations. Terrace Martin has fueled the flames by ostensibly confirming that he and the MC are working on new music.
“I’ve been locked in with Roddy Ricch creating something special./ The Navy album,” tweeted Martin on Friday, May 31.
After that, a fan asked for updates on K.Dot in a reply to the post, saying, “Sounds like a big W.” But who’s currently locked in with Dot?
Without providing too many specifics, the producer and multi-instrumentalist responded, quoting, “All of us.”
Naturally, Martin worked closely with a number of artists, including Sounwave, Flying Lotus, Robert Glasper, Thundercat, Kamasi Washington, Robert “Sput” Searight, and many more, to create Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 hit song To Pimp a Butterfly.
In other news, as a result of their current rap feud, Kendrick has been gaining ground on Drake in terms of Spotify streaming statistics.
With the J. Cole-assisted “First Person Shooter” last year, Drizzy had a big lead early on, according to Chartmetric data, but the Compton native came up fast when he appeared on Metro Boomin and Future’s “Like That” in March.
Over 300 million streams have been produced by both cuts, with the 6 God having a tiny advantage over Kendrick’s 309 million streams at about 319 million.
The following exchange featured Drake’s “Push Ups,” to which Kung Fu Kenny responded with “Euphoria”; with 135.3 million streams to its rival’s 93.7 million, the latter is leading this round.
The following two, “Meet the Grahams” and “Family Matters,” are virtually deadlocked at 50 million.
The Los Angeles MC is the main character on the Mustard-produced follow-up song “Not Like Us,” though. It surpasses the Canadian superstar’s last album, “The Heart Part 6,” which has not yet been added to streaming services, with 217.7 million streams in less than a month since its release.
During the conflict, Drake also dropped “Taylor Made Freestyle,” but he was obliged to take it down from all platforms since the late rapper’s estate objected to the song’s usage of his image.
The song, which featured AI vocals from both ‘Pac and Snoop Dogg, was officially removed from the “Hotline Bling” hitmaker’s social media pages after he was given 24 hours to take it down.
In a cease and desist letter issued in April, the Death Row spitter’s estate wrote: “The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality. Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use.
“The unauthorized, equally dismaying use of Tupac’s voice against Kendrick Lamar, a good friend to the Estate who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, compounds the insult.”
It continued: “If you comply, the estate will consider whether an informal negotiation to resolve this matter makes sense. If you do not comply, our client has authorized this firm to pursue all of its legal remedies including, but not limited to, an action for violation of […] the estate’s copyright, publicity and personality rights and the resulting damages, injunctive relief, and punitive damages and attorneys’ fees.”
