On America’s Independence Day, Kendrick Lamar just made things personal for Canadian basketball fans.
The rapper dropped his much-anticipated music video for “Not Like Us” tonight (July 4), which is filled with thinly veiled visual shots at Drake. The diss track’s video was filmed in Compton, and it feels like the whole city came out to celebrate at Drake’s expense.
For fans in Toronto, though, there’s one cameo that cuts especially deep: DeMar DeRozan.
The NBA player appears at the 2:43 mark during this line: “I’m glad DeRoz’ came home, y’all didn’t deserve him neither.”
For those who didn’t catch the reference initially, or who thought he was somehow referring to D-Rose (another NBA player, Derrick Rose), it’s now painfully obvious who it’s about.
The Compton-born professional basketball player is now a member of the Chicago Bulls, but was drafted by the Toronto Raptors — Canada’s lone NBA team, for which Drake serves as the global ambassador.
He was traded in 2018 for Kawhi Leonard, who then led the Raptors to their first NBA championship that season. In multiple interviews since then, DeRozan has talked about how he felt betrayed by the trade and had wanted to play his whole career in Toronto. But he never had a bad word for the city or the fans, who continue to treat him like a hometown hero every time he returns.
DeRozan was once close enough to Drake that he accidentally spilled the beans on an upcoming mixtape, so it’s hard not to interpret this as him picking his hometown rapper Kendrick Lamar’s side.
DeRozan also appeared onstage at Kendrick’s Juneteenth “Pop Out” concert in Los Angeles, so this doesn’t come fully out of nowhere. But his brief cameo looking into the camera in the “Not Like Us” video feels another direct hit.
