1 Year Later, The Smoke Still Hasn’t Cleared From Kendrick Lamar’s “Like That” Verse

It’s officially been a year since the rap song that flipped the industry on its head dropped. On Saturday (March 22), Hip Hop took a moment to celebrate the anniversary of WE DON’T TRUST YOU, Future and Metro Boomin’s joint project that housed Kendrick Lamar’s explosive “Like That” verse — the same one in which he took aim at J. Cole and Drake.

In the several diss tracks that followed, it became clear some relationships weren’t bouncing back. Drake, for one, still hasn’t made peace with either Future or Metro Boomin, despite how often they’ve worked together in the past.

Kendrick Lamar’s “Like That” Verse Brought Everyone Else’s Grievances To The Surface

Aside from Future and Metro Boomin — who probably were the only ones in on what Lamar was about to do — “Like That” ended up exposing a lot of quiet tension in the industry. Just days after it dropped, Rick Ross was accused of “picking a side” for jamming to the track. His co-sign quickly snowballed into a full-blown diss, with the Port of Miami rapper responding to Drake’s “Push Ups” with “Champagne Moments” in April.

NAV also got swept into the chaos, having quietly unfollowed the Views creator around the same time. Meanwhile, The Weeknd seemingly revisited Drake’s attempt to sign him to OVO on “All to Myself,” one of the many pointed offerings on WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU: “They could never diss my brothers, baby/ When they got leaks in they operation/ I thank God that I never signed my life away.”

To many, “Like That” had less to do with who Lamar called out and more to do with the ripple effect it caused. Artists who had been quiet or riding the fence for years suddenly found their voice. Ultimately, it served a much-needed reminder that Hip Hop is still a competitive space, and the pgLang founder’s verse pulled some of the biggest names right back into that headspace.

Metro Boomin And Drake’s Fallout Started Long Before “Like That”

Of course, the tension between Drake and Metro Boomin had already been there months before the diss track came out. Some might recall the beatmaker shading Her Loss for “winning Rap Album of the Year over” his own HEROES & VILLIANS in a since-deleted tweet in 2023. The Canadian hitmaker eventually fired back by calling out “tweet and deleters” during a Stake livestream that same year.

By the end of 2024, Metro Boomin told GQ that the feud actually started behind the scenes over a “personal issue,” not because of a woman like the internet had been speculating. “It was a personal issue that really hurt me and disappointed me,” he explained. In hindsight, “Like That” might’ve just been the perfect opportunity for him to finally pick a side.

Will The Smoke Ever Clear?

Sure, it’d be great to see that smoke clear one day and watch all the aforementioned artists come together to make magic like they used to. For now, though, that feels like a long shot — and with how deep some of their rifts seemingly run, it might stay that way for a while.