Not Like Us: A sentiment many Americans agree with

Atlanta was the Mecca, building railroads and trains
Bear with me for a second, let me put y’all on game
The settlers was using town folk to make ‘em richer
Fast-forward, 2024, you got the same agenda
You run to Atlanta when you need a check balance

— Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us”

It is cosmic irony, at the moment when the new administration is plunging into a trade war with Canada, that the Grammy Song of the Year, quite possibly the song that will begin the Super Bowl halftime show next weekend, is a diss track that targets a Canadian rapper.

There may not be a more accurate cultural marker right now than “Not Like Us.” The older and whiter you are, the more likely you have no idea what it’s about. The younger and blacker you are, the more likely you have followed every twist in its complicated backstory and catch every allusion in the rapper’s words. Yet the people who’ll be headed for the wings in the dining room the minute Lamar comes on the field Sunday night have more in common with his fans than either group would imagine.

A diss track is one in which rappers insult and disparage each other, much the way President Donald Trump has approached his political battles. Like our congressional politics, it’s more performative than substantive. Some diss tracks generate lengthy exchanges, as is the case in the more than decade-long feud between Lamar and the rapper Drake. Lamar raised the stakes in “Not Like Us,” accusing Drake of being a pedophile, and broke streaming records amid the controversy that ensued.

Lamar is based in Los Angeles and Drake, Toronto, but Atlanta became a battleground in this hip-hop feud because Lamar accuses Drake of being a “colonizer” who pals around with Atlanta rappers to give himself street cred. It’s part of his complaint that Drake, the Canadian son of a black father and a Jewish mother, isn’t culturally authentic, in the 21-Century way of of putting it.

When he chants “They not like us. They not like us,” over the producer Mustard’s jaunty beat, that’s what Lamar is talking about. The thing is, though, that if you lay that same refrain down under footage of an immigrant roundup, it fits just as perfectly. “Not Like Us” could mean different things to different people, but it’s sure not “We Are the World.”

There are a lot of sudden developments in these diss track feuds, sometimes on an hourly basis. Much the same thing can be said so far of the administration’s trade negotiations with Canada, Mexico and China. After stocks got off to a shaky start Monday, Trump announced a one-month delay on the Mexico embargo, and that was enough to steady the market, and later the Canadians said they had a delay as well. Like Drake’s threats to sue Lamar, the “pain” Trump mentioned in passing over the weekend is still only hypothetical.

Just as surely as Saquon Barkley’s going to run and Taylor Swift’s going to cheer, there’s going to be a wave of complaints about the halftime show this Sunday. It has become traditional. Kendrick Lamar is not the first rap artist to appear at a Super Bowl halftime, but he’ll be the first to arrive on a wave of acclaim for a diss track.