Kendrick Lamar’s epic “Not Like Us” diss track has become the de facto song of the summer (as well as an all-time hater anthem) after effectively ending the short-lived, but all too entertaining beef with the Toronto rapper Drake. Just about every party and club I’ve been to in the past few months has played the song at least once, and a recently released music video has catapulted its popularity even higher. Folks…we now have a video game to accompany it.
Not Like Us: The Game gives it to you straight. It’s free of any frills, just like the track it’s based on cuts through the noise and calls Drake a “certified lover boy, certified pedophile.” You’re just a pixelated version of Lamar swinging a bat at an owl, a direct reference to the acclaimed music video, which features Lamar swinging a bat at an owl piñata, the animal that Drake has adopted over the years as a symbol for his record label OVO Sound.
The whole thing is set to a chiptune rendition of “Not Like Us,” and the high score to “beat” is 69, a reference to one of Lamar’s lyrics. It’s all just wonderful. The game feels vintage in the same way that the track’s Bay Area sound does, purposeful given Lamar’s ties to the area and the influence that ‘90s West Coast hip-hop has had on culture beyond rap.
Not Like Us: The Game was developed by Richie Branson who, per the credits on the game, “designed games for Bleacher Report and worked for Epic Games on a little game called Fortnite.” His words, not mine, Epic. Not Like Us: The Game is completely free and playable on desktops as well as smartphones. Though it seems like Branson was solely responsible for the programming and music of the game, the credits list a slew of collaborators that worked on its visuals.
Now, the next time you go to a party and someone asks you if you got games on that phone of yours, queue up “Not Like Us” on the aux cord, and pull this up.
