The beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake ended nearly a month ago, and fans on social media are still doing their best to keep it alive.
If you were unaware, during the peak of the beef, streamers and YouTubers played a big part in driving the narrative on which rapper was “winning.” YouTube channels posting reactions to the songs as they were being released were almost just as important as the songs themselves.
In the midst of that, many YouTubers were very vocal about Lamar lifting the copyright claims for the diss tracks, making it easy for the creators to profit from their videos.
No Life Shaq, who has nearly 4.5 million subscribers on YouTube, was among the creators who spoke positively about Lamar’s decision.
But this week, there have been claims that the reaction videos to those diss tracks have since been hit with copyright strikes and that the revenue creators made from them has been claimed.
This interaction between a fan and popular YouTuber Scru Face Jean has led people to believe this is true.
However, despite this interaction, other content creators have denied this. In response to the above interaction, content creator Zias wrote in a tweet on Tuesday, “Nobody videos got striked, just auto claimed. Label released the claims for 3wks during the height of it to allow ppl to make money from it in that period, before reclaiming it. You don’t lose any revenue you generated before a claim.”
In another YouTube video, No Life Shaq took a similar stance, saying that Kendrick is the one who decided to lift copyright claims on those reaction videos and that Universal Music Group (UMG) came in weeks later to hit content creators with copyright strikes.
No Life Shaq and Zias weren’t the only popular streamers to speak up.
On Thursday, Simba Tha God wrote in a tweet, “HOLY YA N****S GOT PAID FOR A WHOLE MONTH AT THE HEIGHT OF THE BEEF.. THEY DIDNT HAVE TO DO ANY OF THAT.. STOP COMPLAINING.”
Just a couple of hours prior, Scru Face Jean wrote on X, “Imagine bein more mad at Kendrick Lamar & UMG for givin you a month to get paid, than you are at the 100s of other artists who claim your video the second you drop it. Wonder why ppl aren’t makin tweets about those other artists?”
He added, “I’m lowkey happy this happened cuz it showed a lot of ppls true colors yall weren’t there for the cultural moment, yall were there to monetize the culture.”
In the meantime, it seems that Kendrick has more important business to attend to. The “Not Like Us” MC announced “The Pop Out - Ken & Friends Concert” at The Forum in Los Angeles on Juneteenth.
It seems that he wasn’t lying when he said, “Sometimes you gotta pop out and show n****s.”