Kendrick tracks vanish from Apple Music

Kendrick Lamar’s music did not vanish everywhere. That’s the first useful thing to know. What actually happened is narrower — but also weirder. On Monday, May 11, parts of Kendrick’s catalog briefly disappeared from major platforms, with *GNX* and “euphoria” going missing on Apple Music and the official videos for “Not Like Us” and “Luther” dropping off YouTube before at least some of them came back. ### What exactly disappeared? The reports line up on the main pieces. Fans noticed *GNX* was unavailable on Apple Music, and “euphoria” was missing there too. At roughly the same time, YouTube links for “Not Like Us” and “Luther” showed the familiar “removed by the uploader” message on Kendrick’s verified channel. ### Was this a full Kendrick takedown? No — and that’s why people immediately treated it as intentional. (thegrio.com) Other Kendrick songs stayed up. Hot 97 noted that “Not Like Us” and “Meet The Grahams” were still playable on Apple Music even while *GNX* and “euphoria” were missing. Spotify also appears not to have had the same problem with those releases. That pattern makes this look less like a total platform outage and more like a selective pull, metadata issue, or rights-side change tied to specific assets. (hot97.com) ### Did the YouTube videos come back? Yes — at least that part seems to have reversed quickly. By Tuesday, coverage had shifted from “they’re gone” to “they were removed and re-uploaded.” One report said the videos returned within hours. Another said the move wiped out the old upload pages and restarted the conversation because fans were comparing the re-uploaded versions with the originals. ### What about Apple Music? (hot97.com) That seems to have been temporary too, at least for *GNX*. Coverage from May 11 described the album as gone and then back on Apple Music later the same day. The reporting around “euphoria” is less clear on timing, but the broad picture is the same — this looked brief, confusing, and unexplained rather than a permanent removal. ### So why would this happen? Nobody public-facing has given a firm reason. (ibtimes.co.uk) That leaves three boring possibilities and one noisy one. The boring possibilities are licensing cleanup, distribution changes, or a backend metadata problem — the kind of thing that can break links without touching an entire catalog. Apple’s own support pages make clear that missing songs can happen for technical or library-status reasons on the service, though that doesn’t explain Kendrick’s specific case by itself. (complex.com) ### Why did people jump to Drake? Because the missing pieces weren’t random. “euphoria” and “Not Like Us” are central to the Drake feud, and the timing landed right as online chatter around Drake’s next release picked up. That does not prove a feud-related strategy. But it does explain why fans read the removals less like housekeeping and more like a signal. Several outlets framed the timing that way, even while admitting there was no official confirmation. (support.apple.com) ### Is there any official explanation yet? Not that the current reporting shows. No public statement from Kendrick, his team, Apple Music, or YouTube has clarified why these specific songs and videos disappeared and then, in some cases, returned. Right now the firm facts are the removals, the partial restorations, and the selectivity. Everything else is inference. ### Bottom line This looks less like censorship and more like a short-lived platform or rights-side disruption — but because the missing tracks were feud-defining Kendrick records, the silence around it became the real story. (tribune.com.pk) (hot97.com) (thegrio.com)