Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 album GNX briefly disappeared from Apple Music on May 11, and the move set off a flurry of speculation across fan communities that track every shift in his catalog. The album was still visible on Spotify but not on Tidal, while the videos for “Luther” and “Not Like Us” vanished from YouTube, were re-uploaded, and then had their view counts reset.
“Euphoria” also disappeared from streaming and was re-uploaded the same day, before GNX returned to the platforms. By the time fans began comparing versions, the re-uploaded YouTube clips were gone again and the originals had taken their place, keeping the views they had already accumulated.
The timing mattered because Lamar’s catalog has been under a microscope ever since his diss tracks against Drake became part of the larger pop culture conversation. Fans in the pop culture chat subreddit quickly began trading theories, and many of the comments landed on the same idea: the removals looked more like a copyright or Content ID adjustment than a dramatic takedown. One theory said the credits for “Not Like Us” may have changed, with some users speculating that UMG may have been removed from the song’s credits.
That theory was rooted in the idea that YouTube could have been updating its Content ID system and temporarily pulling the videos while the metadata changed. Under that reading, the clips may still have included Interscope Records in the ID while the edit was made to add pgLang to the publishing information. Lamar co-founded pgLang in 2020, and he remains exclusively linked to Interscope through the company.
Not every fan agreed on the explanation, and there was one more wrinkle. A Reddit user suggested YouTube may simply have needed time to process the edits, which would explain why new uploads appeared as placeholders before the originals came back. Digital Music News later reported that the re-uploaded videos were removed again, and the originals returned in their place with their view counts intact.
For all the online detective work, the episode has stayed officially unexplained. There seemed to be nothing different about the album or the videos themselves, and no public explanation has clarified whether the removals were a rights-management hiccup or something else. What is clear is that the brief blackout fed directly into the rivalry narrative around Lamar and Drake, just as Drake’s latest album, ICEMAN, was set for May 15.
The question now is not whether the catalog is back, because it is. It is whether the sudden disappearances were only a technical cleanup inside the streaming system, or the first visible sign of a deeper credits dispute that fans pieced together before anyone involved said a word.
