Not even the Oscars was a safe space for rapper Drake, who again was the subject of mockery for his longstanding feud with Kendrick Lamar.
Coming out near the halftime mark of the ceremony, Oscars host Conan O’Brien made a joke at Drake’s expense, making a callback to Kendrick Lamar’s recent Super Bowl Halftime Show performance.
“Well, we’re halfway through the show, which means it’s time for Kendrick Lamar to come out and call Drake a pedophile,” O’Brien said to the crowd, who audibly cringed and giggled at the dig.
The joke was a reference to the Grammy-winning song “Not Like Us,” a product of Lamar’s feud with Drake that includes several not-so-veiled accusations against the Canadian-born rapper.
“Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young,” one lyric states. “Make sure you hide your lil’ sister from him,” another says.
During Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show performance, the crowd of tens of thousands of people joined in unison for the song’s most famous lyric: “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.”
The two rappers have collaborated in the past, but there’s no love lost in recent years, with the two exchanging blows in their songs. Drake has said recently that he’s interested in moving on from the beef, but after the critical and commercial success of “Not Like Us,” many in the hip-hop community believe the knockout blow was landed long before he made that decision.
