Which White Comedian Caught Kendrick Lamar’s Wrath?

Andrew Schulz is claiming credit.

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Dec 5, 2024 - 14:00
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Which White Comedian Caught Kendrick Lamar’s Wrath?
Photo-Illustration: Getty Images (Stefanie Keenan, Charley Gallay)

Update, December 5, 2024: Kendrick Lamar hasn’t offered any further details about which liberty-taking white comedian inspired his subliminal shot on GNX opener “wacced our murals,” but since the release of the album, two comics have taken it upon themselves to step in front of the bullet. The day of the release, Gary Owen posted a screenshot of Kendrick’s lyric (“Don’t let no white comedian talk about no Black woman, that’s law”) with the caption, “If that’s the law that makes me a criminal.” And, on the December 4 episode of his podcast Flagrant, Andrew Schulz took credit for inspiring Kendrick’s barb and offered a lengthy response, calling Kendrick a hypocrite for balking at his racist jokes while working on a comedy with the creators of South Park and further deflected by pointing out that rappers sometimes write misogynistic lyrics. If Schulz wants to beat Kendrick, though, he’ll have to do better than charges of hypocrisy. “I’m the biggest hypocrite of 2015,” the artist rapped repeatedly on his well-known song “The Blacker the Berry.”

Original story published November 22, 2024, follows:

Beware any and all white comedians currently benefiting from an invited-to-the-cookout affect: Kendrick Lamar is here to snatch the plate from your hands. That’s especially true if you’re a white comedian who is bold enough to make jokes or comments about Black women. On the rapper’s surprise new album GNX, which dropped November 22, he includes a line on the opening track, “wacced out murals,” aimed specifically at these line-steppers. After saying that he’s about to “make Katt Williams proud” by exposing the truth — a reference to Williams’s infamous 2024 Club Shay Shay interview — he raps, “Don’t let no white comedian talk about no Black woman, that’s law.” Kendrick doesn’t specify which white comedian he’s referring to, but judging by the evidence available, we can make a few educated guesses.

Gary Owen

Gary Owen is a 50-year-old comedian from Ohio who has built a long and lucrative career playing to primarily Black audiences. He titled his 2021 Showtime special Black Famous in recognition of this fact. Because of this, Owen has sometimes been criticized for making jokes about the Black community, including Black women. He has more than one bit about them, but the jokes generally center on him being more attracted to them than women of other races. (Owen was married to one Black woman and is currently engaged to another). In one joke, he talks about how if he saw a lineup of ten “badass white chicks in bikinis” on a beach and there was a Black woman in a Starbucks barista uniform at the end of it, he’d walk up to her and say, “I want some coffee!” I’d be willing to bet Kendrick doesn’t love Owen’s whole deal, but I doubt he’d be annoyed enough about the man’s romantic preferences to dedicate a line to it on an album.

Matt Rife

Matt Rife is the type of comedian who’ll call the city of Baltimore “ratchet” in a comedy special but will also go on a podcast and joke that he hates the city of Atlanta. The 29-year-old crowdwork performer has drawn much criticism for using a Blaccent onstage and has joked about Black women publicly on at least one occasion. In a clip from September 2023, he interacts with a white male audience member who has a preference for Black women. At one point, Rife asks the man, “Do you believe in the universe?” and follows it up with, “No? You just love black holes?” Given Rife’s massive popularity, it’s reasonable to assume Kendrick is aware of him and his reputation, which makes him a contender.

Andrew Schulz

Co-hosting the podcast Brilliant Idiots with Charlamagne Tha God since 2014, Schulz has steadily risen to fame riffing on current events in Black culture, something that’s carried over to his massive podcast Flagrant. In September, Schulz came under fire when, during the July 17 episode of Flagrant featuring British podcasters James Duncan and Fuhad Dawodu from ShxtsNGigs, he made a few jokes about his guests’ description of a “Black girlfriend effect,” in which a non-Black man dates a Black woman and adopts a new style, fade haircut, and beard. “They grow their beard because they need a cushion when they get slapped,” Schulz says. “I think the ‘Black girlfriend effect,’ it might be a protective instinct.” A clip of this went viral online, and Duncan and Dawodu eventually issued an apology on September 17 for laughing at Schulz’s joke. Schulz, however, refused to apologize. Given how recent this incident was and the splash it made online, Kendrick was likely addressing Schulz with his “wacced out murals” bar. After seeing what Kendrick did to Drake, I bet Schulz wishes he apologized now.

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