Kendrick Lamar broke Amazon Music’s streaming record with his “The Pop Out — Ken and Friends” concert in June, amassing millions of viewers. The Grammy winner welcomed several upcoming acts from the West Coast to perform and inevitably took shots at current rival Drake. However, according to the e-commerce company, their beef didn’t come into consideration when organizing the event.
“This was about culture for us,” Kirdis Postelle, Amazon’s global head of content and artist marketing, told Billboard on Thursday (July 18). “I don’t think that [feuding element] even came into it. We don’t take sides.”
“We didn’t anticipate, and neither did Kendrick, this kind of outpouring for the video on demand,” she further explained. “We hadn’t planned for it. Everyone is actively — between Kendrick’s team and our team — figuring out what it’s going to take to get this up.”
During the concert, musicians like Bino Rideaux, Blxst, Dom Kennedy, 310babii, Roddy Ricch, BlueBucksClan, and Remble graced the crowd with renditions of their hits. Lamar later brought out Dr. Dre and his Black Hippy collaborators: ScHoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, and Jay Rock.
Meanwhile, celebrity attendees included Rick Ross, The Weeknd, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, DeMar DeRozan, SZA, and even Ye’s eldest daughter, North West. The four-hour show concluded with Lamar performing “Not Like Us” several times in a row before inviting all his openers onstage.
According to Postelle, Amazon had a turnaround time of 10 days to prepare everything. “[We had to] get the marketing on point, Prime Video on point, to get [Amazon’s livestreaming partner] Twitch on point. To get all these teams rallied behind this one thing,” she noted before adding, “There were some really late nights and some really early mornings trying to get this done.”
The visuals for Lamar’s “Not Like Us” came out on July 4. At the time of reporting, they’ve amassed over 62 million views on YouTube.