Kendrick Lamar, Haley Joel Osment and Joel Osteen. Getty Images (3)
Kendrick Lamar may have mixed up Haley Joel Osment and Joel Osteen on his new track, “Euphoria.”
“Am I battlin’ ghosts or AI? N— feelin’ like Joel Osteen / Funny, he was in a film called A.I. / And my sixth sense tellin’ me to off him,” Lamar raps in the song, which was released on Tuesday, April 30.
While Lamar name-dropped Osteen, he was seemingly referring to Osment’s The Sixth Sense and A.I. Artificial Intelligence characters.
Osteen, for his part, was not in the films; he’s a televangelist who made headlines in 2017 when he received backlash for his Lakewood Church’s response to Hurricane Harvey.
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Since the tune dropped, fans have taken to social media to react to the apparent switch-up.
“I just wish I was in the room as a movie expert to let Kendrick know that he mixed up Joel Osteen (the televangelist preacher) with Haley Joel Osment (the child actor who starred in A.I. and The 6th Sense) other than that though? No notes. 9/10. Madness,” one user wrote via X.
Another added, “Kendrick confusing Haley Joel Osment with Joel Osteen is so f–king funny, he didn’t even Google shit, just walked into the booth mad as hell lmaooo.”
Lamar’s song also made headlines when he took shots at Drake in their latest back-and-forth diss track battle.
“Them super powers gettin’ neutralized, I can only watch in silence / The famous actor we once knew is lookin’ paranoid and now is spiralin’ / You movin’ just like a degenerate, heavy antic, it’s feelin’ distasteful / Why calculate you, not as calculated, I can even predict your angles,” Lamar raps in the first verse.
“Euphoria” came weeks after Drake released a since-deleted track “Taylor Made Freestyle” earlier this month, where he called Lamar a “coward.” In the tune, Drake used AI-generated vocals from Tupac Shakur — which Lamar took aim at.
“Somebody had told that me you got a ring, on God, I’m ready to double the wage / I rather do that, than let a Canadian n— make Pac turn in his grave,” Lamar’s lyrics read.
Lamar also mentions J. Cole in his song, who played a role in the feud between Lamar and Drake when he called them the “big three” in his song “First Person Shooter.”
“Yeah, Cole and Aubrey know I’m a selfish n— / The crown is heavy, huh / I pray they my real friends, if not, I’m YNW Melly / I don’t like you poppin’ s–t, that s–t for real, I inherit the beef,” he says in the first verse. “Yeah, f–k all that pushin’ P, let me see you push-a-T / You better off spinnin’ again on him, you think about pushin’ me?”