Top Dog Entertainment President Punch is letting Questlove know that his critique of Kendrick Lamar amid the height of the Drake beef did not go unnoticed.
Kendrick’s new video “squabble up” pays homage to various aspects of California culture from the Bay to LA., while also sprinkling in nods to several iconic album covers and music videos. Among the latter is a tribute to The Roots‘ 2009 music video for “The Next Movement,” which sparked a response from Quest on Instagram.
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“I wanna thank Kendrick Lamar for acknowledging something I thought no one saw or cared about,” he wrote.
Back in May, however, Questlove sternly criticized both Kendrick and Drake for their rap battle.
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“Nobody won the war,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “This wasn’t about skill. This was a wrestling match level mudslinging and takedown by any means necessary — women & children (& actual facts) be damned.
“Same audience wanting blood will soon put up ‘rip’ posts like they weren’t part of the problem. Hip Hop truly is dead.”
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Challenging both Kendrick and Drake to step their game up, morally speaking, he added in the caption: “Here We Are Now…Entertain us?”
While this was more of a critique and less of a diss, Punch still took note of the “hating,” as he acknowledged on X on Tuesday (November 26).
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Retweeting a post about Quest thanking Kendrick for the homage, an X user named Monie wrote, “Mind you, he was one of them n-ggas hating. Lol.”
Someone else replied to her, “Wasn’t Issac Hayes son hating too during the beef?” Hayes is also represented in the “squabble up” video.
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“Boff of’em. We seen them,” Punch replied.
Boff of’em. We seen them.
— Punch TDE (@iamstillpunch) November 26, 2024
Apparently peeping the critiques didn’t stop Kendrick Lamar from paying homage – which seemingly lit a fire under The Roots to finish their long-awaited new album.
Alongside a screenshot of a viral tweet highlighting the similarities between “squabble up” and “The Next Movement,” Questlove wrote on Instagram: “Damn now we GOTTA FINISH THIS LP huh? We back BABY!”
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Quest followed up with a separate Instagram post thanking Kendrick and further confirming that a new Roots project is happening.
Over the last decade, The Roots have been busy with their gig as the house band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, while Black Thought has released several solo projects and a memoir, and Questlove has directed an Oscar-winning documentary and written several books.
However, Quest did recently reveal that the group are still working on their long-awaited 15th album and credited Common and Pete Rock‘s The Auditorium Vol. 1 with inspiring them to complete the project.
Speaking on his Questlove Supreme podcast, the 53-year-old said: “Not to be outdone, my band has been sitting on the sidelines watching all this action happening and, you know, it’s made us… I will say that it’s made Tariq [Black Thought] into — the muthafucka wrote seven songs in one day! We have not done that since our second album.”
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The Philadelphia native then offered an update on the album’s long-awaited release, saying: “I know the exact date when I want to release it, and it’s not 2024. But it’s a very seminal 2025 date that will make sense once it comes out.”
