Kendrick Lamar accused of using streaming bots amid Drake beef

Kendrick Lamar is now facing accusations that he used illegal streaming methods to achieve success with Drake’s “Not Like Us.”

An underage man who calls himself Anthony Saleh claims Kendrick’s record label hired him to use a streaming bot during a live conversation with Akademics to promote “Not Like Us.” Saleh claims he handles promotions through his management company, allegedly called Emagen Entertainment group.

Saleh reportedly paid a down payment of $2,500 to provide 30 million streams. Saleh also claimed that he had been threatened by parties associated with Kendrick and had not received the full amount agreed upon to promote the record.

To prove the credibility of his claims, Saleh reportedly released evidence of payment receipts between his company and Kendrick’s record label as compensation for his robotic services on the single. Saleh also reportedly created a fake Instagram account that attracted more than 160,000 followers to once again prove the validity of his claims.

Since the theory emerged, Drake fans have been contributing to the discussion surrounding the accusations by drawing connections between the performance of the diss record itself and the surrounding context. A user on Twitter (X) retconned a tweet shared last month in which they appeared to discover that Kendrick’s team was using bots on the platform to spread pedophilia accusations against the West Coast rapper Diss songs directed at Drake have always existed.

Academics also retweeted an early theory claiming that Drake’s album reached hundreds of thousands thanks to YouTube videos for “Family Matters” and “The Heart Part 6” and his feature on sexyy Red’s “U My Everything” Rejected. Fans also claim that Drizzy may have been aware of the bot activity all along, even mentioning it in the bar’s “Family Affair”: “Anthony set up the match/Kojo will charge you double for nothing.”