The Number One song in the country is a diss track. Is this a good thing?

This week, the The Number One song in America is a diss track. Kendrick Lamar's “Not Like Us” debuted at the top of the charts, surprising no one who saw the track go viral since its release earlier this month. The song is bolstered by a catchy DJ Mustard beat and a series of Kendrick verses that are delivered memorable — even if the lines are vulgar shout-outs to his rival Drake.

What does record success mean? First, it highlights how desensitized we are as a music-listening audience. Drake's “Back to Back,” a 2015 Meek Mill diss that went No. 1, was filled with G-rated shots like, “Is this a world tour or your girl tour?” But on “Not Like Us,” Kendrick lays career-ending — if not freedom-ending — accusations at Drake, and we've collectively decided to face it.

So much of the Drake and Kendrick beef, which TDE CEO Top Dawg recently said in an X Post that it's over, rested on speculation about a “red button” record — “Not Like Us” was a deep red . But the song presents cultural problems as well as moral ones. The main premise of the record is that Drake is a voyeur of black American culture. When Kendrick says “we,” he's referring to Black Americans like the Atlases he came out with in the song's third verse, when he claims Drake traded his visibility for their cultural credibility and tells him, “You ain't a fellow, you're a fucking colonizer” .” (Yes, 21 Savage was technically born in the U.K., but he spent his formative years in Atlanta and is respected like a local.) This verse ties into Kendrick previously asking Drake, “How many other Black traits until do you finally feel like you're black enough?' and Canadian OVO members rhyme “tell them to run to America, they imitate heritage, they can't imitate this violence,” on “Euphoria.” Early on he drew the dividing line in their war of words.

“Not Like Us” is meant to be an anthem for those who share the Black American experience, but its astronomical streaming numbers make it safe to assume we're not the only people enjoying the record. What are we to do with millions of listeners screaming “they're not like us” to the heavens — including people who aren't like us? There are many viral videos of the song being played at sporting events and other public gatherings. A group of college-aged Torontonians danced to a remix of the song outside Toronto's New Ho King (where they apparently have a Kendrick Lamar special). British producer Fred Again even released an edit of the track, which was recorded on TikTok and it was seen by almost 100,000 people. One X user noted, “Just went to a graduation party and the girl screamed 'A minorrrrrrrr' as soon as the beat dropped.”

Then again, it's a little disturbing that one of the hip-hop moments of the year is about a child's booty. But dissonance covers hip-hop, and the tone of a diss song leaves room for bars that would likely be spoken in a “normal” song. So people are having fun with “Not Like Us.” Aside from the song becoming an opportunity to dance on Drake's figurative grave, DJ Mustard's Monk Higgins' “I Believe to My Soul” has a classic West Coast swing and Kendrick sounds as playful as ever. Even if some of his accusations are basically fighting words, he says them so colorfully that listeners can't help but recite them.

The song is going viral on TikTok with videos of people walking towards the Crip, which, in LA parlance, is weird. In 2003, CJ Mac released a documentary called C-Walk – It's A Way of Livin where he asked people from Los Angeles how they feel about the assimilation of dance into mainstream culture. Ice T noted that he saw it as “just a dance”. But others in the documentary purporting to be Crips lamented that they are not fans of co-opting because there was a time when “you had to be from somewhere” to do it without risking violence, “somewhere” being a Crip neighborhood. . Despite what the dance's true progenitors said about their preferences, people who've never heard of Tookie Williams — or the CJ Mac documentary — heard the “LA-type beat” on “Not Like Us” and decided to channel their inner Snoop Dogg. . Having a gang dance to a song that kicks someone out for appropriating street culture is pretty dense, but maybe we're all having too much fun.

Toothpaste is out of the tube when it comes to hip-hop. There is a hip-hop culture and a hip-hop consumer base. artists deal with the latter. They probably can't become multi-millionaires (and billionaires) without opening the floodgates to hip-hop listeners who don't have proximity to the communities that started the art form. Critical listening is only an option in this cohort because many of these fans would not understand the full range of what is being said, even if He made I hear. We've seen this dynamic play out in a racially based beef many of the keenest observers can't speak to with credibility. And now we see it in the epilogue.

“Not Like Us” isn't just a Drake diss, it's a rally against perpetrators who turned hip-hop from a Black and Brown community with culturally understandable ways of being into an at times parodic circus. So when Kendrick rallies his cultural peers against Canada with “the braids,” one can't help but wonder if the virtual victory parade is being watched by people who aren't on the winning team. Kendrick probably doesn't care who fills his bank account, but the song's virality presents a strange paradox. “Not Like Us” has become a microcosm of hip-hop itself as art by and for black people and coffees consumed by the entire world.