On Friday, July 12, Lil Wayne remixed his hit with Drake and Tyga, “The Motto,” on stage at Zouk Nightclub in Las Vegas. His improvisation sounded something like the hook of “Not Like Us,” Kendrick Lamar’s scathing and popular last shot back at Drake on wax from their battle this spring. Clips of the show circulated over the internet and sparked confusion as to whether Wayne was dissing his longtime friend and collaborator Drake with this new addition — either by repeating “they not like us,” the Kendrick song’s original lyric, or by saying “they don’t like us,” a new take on it. Adding to the confusion, Wayne clutches and displays a chain, reportedly of the owl that symbolizes Drake’s October’s Very Own enterprises, in the clip.
So what’s the answer? Has Lil Wayne turned on Drake after all these years? No.
A source close to Wayne confirms to Rolling Stone that he was, in fact, repping his close ties to Drake by saying “they don’t like us,” and that he will always support the Canadian MC he signed to his label, Young Money Entertainment, back in 2009. Drake and Lil Wayne have showed deep affection for each other since then through many collaborations, kind words, and time spent together. Though Wayne has not publicly commented on Drake’s spat with Kendrick Lamar, in June, he named Drake as one of the top five rappers of all time. (On Wayne’s list, Drake was in company with Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, Eminem, and the Notorious B.I.G.)
On the original “Not Like Us,” Kendrick questions Drake’s loyalty to Wayne with the bar “Fucked on Wayne girl while he was in jail, that’s conniving/Then get his face tatted like a bitch apologizin’.” That doesn’t seem quite right, either: In Wayne’s 2016 memoir, Gone ‘Til November: A Journal of Rikers Island, he wrote that Drake and his girlfriend at the time did have sex before she and Lil Wayne got together. He goes on to say the pair just revealed their history to him once he was behind bars.
Lil Wayne has upcoming shows in California and Canada, performing in Stockton in on Sept. 20 and Ontario on Sept. 21.
