Pretty much at the same time that Kendrick Lamar sent shots to J. Cole and Drake on the song “Like That,” Spotify put up a billboard in New York City that says, “Hip hop is a competitive sport.”
While speaking on The Joe Budden Podcast, Vince Staples accused the company of taking advantage of the battle and brought up the topic of publishing. [Jump to the 1:39:50-mark]
“We have every songwriter that weâve ever had in Hip Hop music complaining about their publishing splits, but we kind of donât pay attention to that,” Vince opined. “But once n*ggas get mad, the whole internet is activated and we got billboards from streamers talking about, ‘Hip Hop is a sport,’ but we ainât never seen a billboard from a streamer that said, ‘Give that n*gga his publishing back.'”
“Why are we at war with the n*gga thatâs making a song and not the motherf*cker who owns the whole thing?” he asked. “We donât say their name at all. We quiet when they do some f*ck sh*t.”