It came just hours before Kendrick stepped onto the pitch to perform 😲

Drake issued a statement addressing the ‘certified p***ophile’ diss from Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’, performed for millions at the Super Bowl.

Drake is currently in the midst of a lawsuit with the Universal Music Group (UMG) who he accuses of artificially inflating the streams on the record as well as defamation.

He said in a statement issued via lawyers prior to the song playing in the half-time show of this year’s Super Bowl: “UMG is masquerading as a champion of artistic freedom by calling its actions merely ‘entertainment,’ but there is nothing entertaining about pedophilia or child abuse in the real world.

“We are confident that the evidence we will ultimately present at trial—including information we’ve already learned and continue to receive since filing the lawsuit—will expose UMG’s gross prioritization of its own corporate profits and executive bonuses over its exclusively signed artists’ well-being and the truth.”

Though both Lamar and Drake were close friends for many years, sharing several songs together a slow drift between them exploded last year.

Lamar and Drake engaged in a heated rap beef originating from a Kendrick Lamar verse on Future’s ‘Like That’ in which he took shots at Drake and J Cole over suggestions they were in a rap ‘big 3’ with him.

Drake issued the statement via lawyers (Amy Sussman via Getty Images)

This spiralled to Drake accusing Lamar of covering up domestic abuse allegations in one diss track and Lamar penning a song to Drake’s parents and child in which he said Drake ‘should die’.

The beef ultimately ended with ‘Not Like Us’, in which Lamar said the now famous line ‘Certified Loverboy, Certified ‘p***phile’… trying to strike a chord and it’s probably a Minor.”

The song led to Lamar winning five Grammys, including record of the year, and performed at last night’s Super Bowl.

Kendrick Lamar won five Grammys (CBS Photo Archive via Getty Images)

While some questioned whether Lamar would perform the song during the halftime show, he ended up looking directly down the barrel of the camera to rap ‘say Drake I hear you like em young.’

In addition to this, the Compton rapper brought out Serena Williams, someone long-rumoured to have dated Drake, against whom the Toronto rapper has put several references into his work.

One viewer said of the performance: “Kendrick Lamar performing “Not Like Us” and calling Drake a p*do in front of 100M viewers live at the Super Bowl is going down in history”.

Though Kendrick Lamar is not named in the lawsuit against UMG, it states that the allegations made against Drake are unfounded.

Kendrick Lamar performing at the Super Bowl (Patrick Smith via Getty Images)

UMG previously released a statement regarding Drake’s allegations against them: “Not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist—let alone Drake—is illogical.

“We have invested massively in his music and our employees around the world have worked tirelessly for many years to help him achieve historic commercial and personal financial success.

“Throughout his career, Drake has intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth ‘rap battles’ to express his feelings about other artists.

“He now seeks to weaponize the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from [Universal] for distributing that artist’s music.”