Oscars Writer Wins Bet For Conan O’Brien’s Joke About Kendrick Lamar & Drake

A writer for the Oscars made a bet with one of the show’s executive producers and is now $50 richer.

At the halfway point of the Academy Awards telecast, host Conan O’Brien made a quip addressing the feud between the rappers.

“Well, we’re halfway through the show, which means it’s time for Kendrick Lamar to come out and call Drake a pedophile,” O’Brien joked getting laughs from the Dolby Theater.

The joke was in reference to Lamar’s performance at the Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans where he performed “Not Like Us,” a Drake diss track.

Oscars writer, Skyler Higley, who has worked with O’Brien before on late-night show Conan and Taylor Tomlinson’s After Midnight, shared on social media he had made a bet his joke would be well received.

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“Wrote the Kendrick Lamar joke and bet our executive producer $50 that it would kill. just made $50,” Highley posted on X, the microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter.

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“Not Like Us” is a diss track directed at Drake that Lamar released on May 4, 2024, amid a series of back-and-forth diss tracks between the two rappers. In the track, Lamar calls Drake a “certified pedophile.”

Drake’s team filed a claim at a Manhattan court in November 2024, in which he claims Universal Music Group (UMG) conspired to inflate the popularity of the diss track.

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